Daytona Track Map Poster

Before there was a speedway, Daytona raced on the sand. World land speed records were set on its hard-packed beach, and later stock cars ran half a lap on the beach and half on the coast road; in 1952, one race even had to be stopped because the tide was coming in. The speedway that replaced them opened in 1959; its road course, the one on the poster, runs 5.729 km (3.56 miles) counterclockwise through twelve turns.

When hotels filled the beachfront, racing moved inland, to a speedway with the highest banking its promoter could get. The earth for it was dug out of the infield, and the hole filled with water to become the lake that still sits inside the oval. The banking is 31 degrees, about as steep as a staircase: the paving machines had to be tied to bulldozers anchored at the top to keep them from sliding down.

Its 24-hour race runs in late January, in winter and closer to the equator than its June counterpart at Le Mans, so more than half of it is raced in the dark. In 1962, at the end of a three-hour sports car race, the leader’s engine failed on the last lap; he stopped at the top of the banking just short of the line, waited for the checkered flag and rolled down across it to win. Since then, a car must cross the line under its own power.

The poster draws the contrast: a flat, twisting infield wrapped inside the oval, twelve numbered turns, the International Horseshoe, the Dogleg and the West Horseshoe lettered in, and the Le Mans Chicane, named in 2022 in a swap with Le Mans, which has a Daytona Chicane of its own. Midnight, the black edition, suits a race that is mostly run at night. Somewhere on that banking, gravity once won a race.