Arena: Daytona International Speedway

Location: Daytona Beach, Florida

Date: February 25, 2012

NASCAR Betting Odds: The race originates back to the Daytona Beach & Road Course during the 1948 NASCAR Modified series season, the first sanctioned races held by the organization. In 1950-1958, the race was held as part of the Modified/Sportsman Series, at the Beach Course. It was held the Saturday or Friday before the Grand National Series race also at the Beach course.

In 1956-1959, a race in the short-lived NASCAR Convertible Division was also held.

The race moved to the new 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway for 1959. It was scheduled the day before the Daytona 500, and ran a distance of either 200 or 250 miles. In 1966, the race became known as the Permatex 300, making it only the second race on the NASCAR schedule to be named for a corporate sponsor (the Motor Trend 500 atRiverside being the first). In 1968 the Permatex 300 was shifted from the Modifieds division to the newly organized NASCAR Late Model Sportsman Division. In 1982, the Late Model Sportsman Division was reorganized into the modern day NASCAR Busch Grand National Series, and the race was sponsored by Goody's for several years. For 2008, the series becomes known as the NASCAR Nationwide Series, but its organizational structure remains the same.

Daytona International Speedway

Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959, but daring men have tested the limits of man and machine in Daytona Beach, Fla., for more than a century. A ticket to the Daytona 500 is more than a ticket to the world’s most important stock car race. Daytona 500 tickets are passports to history, tangible links to the pioneers in American automotive performance. When Sir Malcolm Campbell ran 276.82 mph in March 1935, it marked the 15th time the world’s land speed record had been set on the Daytona Beach sands. And when the speed-record trials moved to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, Daytona kept on racing. In 1936, the precursor to today’s Daytona 500 was born on a course that went down 1.5 miles of highway, then turned and came the same distance back up the beach.

William H.G. France, a mechanic and racer who’d moved south from Washington, D.C., eventually took over the job of running the beach races on the second of two courses used for those events. In 1947, he presided over a meeting at Daytona’s Streamline Hotel where NASCAR was born. A decade later, France began working on his showplace. Daytona International Speedway would be a race track like no one had ever seen - big and fast on scale that’s as grand today as it was when it was only France’s dream. Why are the turns at Daytona International Speedway banked at 31 degrees? Because when "Big Bill" France was building it, that’s as steep as he could make the turns and still keep the machines putting down the asphalt from tipping over.

When drivers gathered for the first Daytona 500, it was an eye-popping experience. Drivers were more accustomed to half-mile dirt tracks and saw the 1.366-mile paved track at Darlington as vast. A trip around Daytona International Speedway was 2.5 miles. From Turn 1, Turn 3 looked like it was in a different county. Bob Welborn ran 140.121 mph to win the pole for the first Daytona 500, and Lee Petty won in a photo finish over Johnny Beauchamp. It was at Daytona International Speedway where Junior Johnson discovered that if he tucked his car right behind another one, he could go faster than he could run by himself. And "drafting" became a part of the sport’s lexicon. It was at Daytona International Speedway where Cale Yarborough topped 200 mph on his first qualifying lap in 1983 and then, as he went even faster on a second lap, his car took off and flew, turning upside down before crashing. Bill Elliott set the Daytona International Speedway track record in 1987, running 210.364 mph, just before restrictor plates were introduced to the sport.

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2012 Drive4COPD 300 Results

James Buescher happened to be at the right place at the right time to win Saturday’s wreck-plagued DRIVE4COPD 300 Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway.

Buescher avoided a big wreck on the frontstretch and then miraculously pulled ahead of the field on the final lap before NASCAR displayed the caution flag to end the race.

Kurt Busch was leading coming out of final turn on the second-to-last lap, but Busch and several of the other frontrunners were caught up in an 11-car accident along the frontstretch.

Buescher was in 11th place as he rounded the final turn and made his way through a massive pack of spinning race cars.

Pole-sitter Danica Patrick exited the race on Lap 49, after a hard tap from Cole Whitt, her teammate at JR Motorsports, knocked Patrick’s No. 7 Chevrolet out of control and into the Turn 3 wall.

Patrick’s team pushed the car to the garage for extensive repairs, losing 48 laps in the process. She returned to the track on Lap 98 and finished 38th, an inauspicious start to a championship campaign.

2011 Drive4COPD 300 at Daytona - Race Results

Tony Stewart is almost money in the bank when it comes to the February NASCAR Nationwide race at Daytona International Speedway.

Stewart continued his dominance in today’s DRIVE4COPD 300, holding off Carl Edwards and Justin Allgaier in the closing laps to win this race for the third straight time.

In a race widely trumpeted as Danica Patrick’s NASCAR debut, Stewart took the checkered flag .309 seconds ahead of 2008 series champion Carl Edwards.

Stewart led the final 20 laps under green after a restart on Lap 101.

Kevin Harvick, who owns the No. 4 Chevrolet that Stewart was driving in his only scheduled Nationwide appearance of the year, finished third in his own No. 33 Chevy. Justin Allgaier came home fourth and Brian Vickers fifth.