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For modern day NASCAR fans night racing at the Daytona International Speedway is as American as eating apple pie. It’s just right. But for the majority of NASCAR history every race at Daytona would take place during the daytime. This all changed in the 1998 NASCAR Cup Series season, the 50th anniversary season. This is the story of the first Pepsi 400 to be run under the lights and how it almost didn’t happen. This is the first Daytona Night Race.
Video Credits:
FOX Sports
Full NASCAR Races
Motorsports on NBC
NASCAR
NASCAR Classics
NASCAR on FOX
NASCAR Productions
NascarAllOut
NBC Sports
News4JAX The Local Station
Skewcar
SMIFF TV
Turner Sports
White Bat Audio
Thumbnail Credits:
Getty Images
NASCAR Images
Outro Song:
Strange Animal (Crowder Remix) by Gowan
Songs:
80s Retrowave / Synthwave Music – Hackers by Karl Casey // Royalty Free Copyright Safe Music uploaded by White Bat Audio
35 comments
What is your favorite Daytona summer race ever?
1998
2020
The 2022 race was insane
What races and how many races should they have at night? I think they should have a bit more night races
Jeff Gordon winning the Pepsi 400 at night shows his raw talent in 1998
I rmember that race and being so disappointed that it was posponed because of the wildfire. It was worth the wait though to see them run at Daytona at night. It was amazing to see such a big track under the lights
That was Jeff Gordon’s 11th out of a staggering 13 wins that season
Under the playoff format he aint winning the title thats how bad the system is
@EnjoyerNascarAverage he would’ve still won in 1998 with the playoffs, though.
@Kevin Harvick is not happy he had 17 consecutive top 5s and 20 consecutive top 10s in that 1998 season, there’s no scenario where he wouldn’t have advanced to the championship 4 at Atlanta (a race he dominated and won)
@Ed Kell okay maybe a very rare scenario where the playoffs gave a deserving champion jeff gordon 1998 but harvick had a similar season but he never dnfed but unfortunately had 2 bad races and didnt make it to the final 4
Q: What is your favorite Daytona summer race?
A: The ones I saw live, 2021. In general, 2001, or 2005.
Glad that NASCAR decided to have a night race at Daytona. It just feels right.
I love the old x pipe sounds on superspeedways! Best era of superspeedway racing in my opinion (despite the lacking of safety).
Despite the “tiregate controversy” kind of overshadowing Gordon’s dominant performance towards the ends of the season, this Gordon win shows off just how good he was in his prime, and why he was kind of underappreciated at the time. Enjoyed watching this race.
It’ll never be better than 2001 though. That was awesome in every single way possible.
I still love those x pipes sounds when they used them at Daytona and Talladega.
At least “tiregate” wasn’t as bad as “Crashgate” in F1 during their first night race in Singapore in 2008 where Nelson Piquet was told by Renault to crash on purpose so that teammate Fernando Alonso could win. It is one of the most disgraceful & infamous moments in not just F1 history but motorsports in general.
@Chris Guardiano absolutely true. That was disgraceful, disgusting, and despicable.
I also remember where Ferrari screwed Barrichello out of a win in 2002 by ordering him to move out of the way for Michael Schumacher, his own teammate, to win instead. Ferrari was punished heavily.
And of course there was everything that went on before and during the weekend of the infamous 2005 US Grand Prix at Indy, the WORST race in F1 history, and what ultimately killed F1 in the USA.
@Chris Guardiano Nelsinho Piquet , to be exact.
All those flash bulbs just added a certain magic to night racing.
Yuppp. Ugh
Underrated comment right there.
Duuuuuuude, you’re taking me so far back, I remember watching it on tv and one of the announcers talking about how far they could light up a highway with the amount of the lights they installed and my 13 year old head almost exploding
I believe this was the first and only time Talladega & Daytona were back to back on the schedule
Honestly my favorite was the 2004 Pepsi 400. I love that Pepsi scheme that Gordon had
The paint schemes of the late 90s and early 00s were so iconic
2007 July race, McMurray vs Busch was a pretty good one. I’m pretty sure that was McMurray’s first win with Roush and first since winning in Sterlin Marlin’s 40 car at Charlotte in 2002.
All the flashes going off looked awesome at the start
2020 William Byron’s first win, I’ve followed him ever since
As a Jeff Gordon fan, I knew that he was gonna be a major threat for many race wins to come after this Daytona night race.
2003 Race was great with Greg Biffle getting his First career win. My 2nd favorite was the 2005 Race where Tony Stewart Dominated the field.
I remember watching this race at 14 years old. It was so amazing seeing Daytona run at night, and having my favorite driver win it was even more special!
I grew up in North east Florida in St. Augustine, which is just 40 or minutes north of the Daytona area, and that summer was hellish. I can still see the reddish smoke filled sky outside my house to this day. It was so scary and I was so grateful that the fires didn’t get to my town. The race in October was finally when things felt like they were going back to normal.
I got to go with my dad to the 99 Pepsi 400. We were on the backstretch grandstands. My memory of that one isn’t so positive. It rained a ton, DJ won easily, and the walk to our car in a barely lit parking lot behind the track that was full of water filled holes and ditches was awful.
When you talk about underrated announcers, Eli gold and buddy baker are right there. Their energy during this race was awesome, baker especially.
Eli Gold was horribly boring to listen to when the race was just your average race at tracks like Pocono, Loudon, Rockingham etc…. However, Eli Gold was the voice of MRN radio. Some reason, listening to Eli Gold on MRN and never never had a dull moment but not so on TV broadcast
I have such good memories watching this race! Sitting and drawing the cars and watching the race at the same time. The commentary crew for TNN from that time was my favorite. I was a new nascar fan and this race and the Winston from the same year is just pure Nostalgia for me. I can’t remember how I actually got into nascar but 97/98 was the perfect time to start watching cuz they were doing some cool stuff