2026 Daytona 500 preview: Your cheat sheet to the Great American Race - ESPN
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — For 68 years, the world's greatest stock car racers have descended upon the white sands of eastern Florida to compete for the most coveted checkered flag their sport has to offer. Actually, they have come here for much longer than that — high-horsepower machinery first started barreling down the actual sands of the actual beach all the way back in 1902. But in 1959, when Big Bill France rounded up every bulldozer he could find and constructed a 2.5-mile D-shaped oval with 31 degrees of banking, stacked 40 feet wide and 20 feet tall, the racing moved inland and the Daytona 500 was born.
