NASCAR officials make right call
Posted: Thursday July 02, 1998 08:36 PM
Ed Hinton phoned in this report from Daytona Beach.
At Daytona, the sky is black, everywhere.
From the west and the south, you can see the circular globe that appears to be the sun, and the ash is falling sometimes as thick as snow. Cars are covered with white and gray ash -- it's like a volcano erupted, Mount St. Helen's.
When I came in Wednesday, it was okay. But a day later, the winds from the west were terrible, almost gale-force, and now the same hotels that were reserved for race fans are welcoming firefighters free of charge. This is the worst it's been.
About 9:30 Wednesday night, there was a conference call. Then NASCAR president Bill France, his brother Jim (NASCAR's executive vice president), Mike Helton (NASCAR's vice president for competition) and John Graham (Daytona Speedway president) met out on the Speedway infield at 1:30 a.m. Thursday and decided to re-convene at 7 a.m. They made the decision about 7:10. Didn't announce it until about 9 a.m. The majority of the rigs hauling the cars were here and ready to go in and start to get ready, and they were told to just turn around and go home.
After the NASCAR folks made the decision to cancel or postpone the race, they turned to their other role -- as residents. Daytona Beach is home to NASCAR. It's where NASCAR was founded, and the majority of the major players live in Daytona Beach. The race became a secondary thing to them. Now they're worried about their homes. John Graham has been evacuated from his home. John Story, the Speedway's spokesman, has been evacuated from his as well. Mike Helton hasn 't been evacuated, but he and his wife are sheltering quite a few NASCAR people who have been evacuated.
In fact, the NASCAR people who haven't been evacuated are helping the ones who have been. There have been 30,000 people evacuated in this area, and most of hotels on the west side of the Speedway have been evacuated. The beach hotels are the only ones open. It's almost a Dunkirk thing; everybody's backing up to the beach. And since Interstate-95 has been closed from Jacksonville to Titusville, the only escape route for people who drove down for the race is the old A1A from here all the way to Georgia.
The Speedway is using one of its buildings as an evacuation shelter and firefighters' barracks. The Speedway itself is a natural fire barrier. You have that huge asphalt track, then you have grandstands that are concrete and steel. It's something of a safe haven.
Most of the drivers very much understand the postponement, and their feelings were mainly for the people who live here. Jeremy Mayfield said it was like having a snow day at school. They have so few days off that they could at least turn around and go back home and have an unexpected weekend with the family. Most of them live in North Carolina; Ted Musgrave and Mark Martin live here. The bad news is that there's an off-week on July 19, the week after New Hampshire. Then they'll go for 15 straight weeks -- the worst grind for the championship that there's ever been.
The postponement is particularly bad for one driver, Wally Dallenbach. This was going to be his last shot in the Budweiser car for Hendrick Motorsports, subbing for Ricky Craven, who's out with post-concussion syndrome. They were going to make a full effort down here and go for the pole, and had he won it, he might have solidified himself as a possible driver for that third Hendrick car. So the postponement might have cost him a deal as far as a ride was concerned. The Hendrick team has been looking for that third team to click and it never has, and it was beginning to with Dallenbach.
The issue of smoke affecting visibility at the track was way down the list of reasons for postponing the race. One official told me that they could have run the race, but the real concern was for the community -- the community's resources are just stretched to the limit and bringing in another 100-200,000 people would have just further drained water and hotel resources.
NASCAR has its hurricane contingency plan in force, that's how bad it is. The town has very much of a pre-hurricane feel about it.
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