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10 Years Under The Lights At Daytona

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 4, 2008

Saturday will mark 10 years since Daytona International Speedway was transformed into America's largest lighted sports complex and the track's 400-mile summer race was moved from the mid-day heat into prime time. Here's a look at how the feat was accomplished and a little bit of history about the Coke Zero 400 at night:

BY THE NUMBERS

150

Miles of wire

202

Outer perimeter poles

ranging from

70 to 110 feet tall

430

Infield and pit road light poles

800

Tons of concrete

1,932

Light fixtures

2,600

Square feet of mirrors

3.5 million

Watts of light per hour

3.8 billion

Candlepower

INTERESTING FACTS

•Lighting Daytona International Speedway is equivalent to lighting a residential street running from Daytona Beach to the Muscatine, Iowa, headquarters of Musco Lighting, the company that installed the lights.

•The electricity needed to illuminate the 21/2-mile track would power 24,285 blocks of standard residential street lighting.

•Lighting the track's backstretch along Lake Lloyd required the development of a fixture that is 116 times brighter than the high-beam headlights of a passenger car.

MEMORIES

•Daytona Beach was an eerie ghost town on July 4, 1998, when the race then known as the Pepsi 400 was set to be run at night for the first time. Wildfires throughout central Florida forced postponement of the race to Oct. 17.

•Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the 2001 Pepsi 400, less than five months after his father was killed in a crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500. Earnhardt's victory, his first on a restrictor-plate track, also came 11 years to the day after Dale Sr. got his first win at Daytona.

•In 2005, Tony Stewart got the first of consecutive Pepsi 400 victories. Because of rain delays, the race didn't start until 10:38 p.m., and it ended at 1:41 a.m. Stewart started his victory celebration tradition of climbing the fence in front of the flag stand.

•Last year, rain forced postponement of the Nationwide Series race until the next day, creating the first Sprint Cup/Nationwide double at Daytona. Kyle Busch won the Nationwide race and nearly pulled off a sweep. Jamie McMurray beat him in the Pepsi 400 victory by .005 seconds, the closest Sprint Cup finish since the advent of computer scoring.