Nascar News

The First Daytona Night Race

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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

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35 comments

The Iceberg August 22, 2023 at 9:06 pm

What is your favorite Daytona summer race ever?

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Rainbow Warrior August 22, 2023 at 9:16 pm

1998

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MrChief August 22, 2023 at 9:16 pm

2020

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Tobi Ojo August 22, 2023 at 9:20 pm

The 2022 race was insane

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Cody VanderBeek August 22, 2023 at 9:20 pm

What races and how many races should they have at night? I think they should have a bit more night races

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Rainbow Warrior August 22, 2023 at 9:16 pm

Jeff Gordon winning the Pepsi 400 at night shows his raw talent in 1998

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Jebediah Gentry August 22, 2023 at 9:17 pm

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

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Cito Browne August 22, 2023 at 9:28 pm

That was Jeff Gordon’s 11th out of a staggering 13 wins that season

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Kevin Harvick is not happy August 22, 2023 at 9:48 pm

Under the playoff format he aint winning the title thats how bad the system is

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Striker 31 August 22, 2023 at 11:03 pm

​@EnjoyerNascarAverage he would’ve still won in 1998 with the playoffs, though.

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Ed Kell August 23, 2023 at 2:13 pm

@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)

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Kevin Harvick is not happy August 23, 2023 at 4:49 pm

@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

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IShowMeat August 22, 2023 at 9:32 pm

Q: What is your favorite Daytona summer race?
A: The ones I saw live, 2021. In general, 2001, or 2005.

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SuperNASCARrocks August 22, 2023 at 9:39 pm

Glad that NASCAR decided to have a night race at Daytona. It just feels right.

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cadillacjohn1994 August 22, 2023 at 9:40 pm

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.

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Daniel Block August 22, 2023 at 10:55 pm

I still love those x pipes sounds when they used them at Daytona and Talladega.

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Chris Guardiano August 23, 2023 at 1:33 am

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.

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cadillacjohn1994 August 23, 2023 at 1:58 am

@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.

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Razor August 23, 2023 at 12:22 pm

@Chris Guardiano Nelsinho Piquet , to be exact.

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Chuck's Pulling Videos August 22, 2023 at 9:48 pm

All those flash bulbs just added a certain magic to night racing.

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Nick S August 22, 2023 at 9:53 pm

Yuppp. Ugh

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The Well Rounded Warrior August 23, 2023 at 6:51 am

Underrated comment right there.

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aowbsx August 22, 2023 at 9:50 pm

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

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NASCARFAN93100 August 22, 2023 at 9:54 pm

I believe this was the first and only time Talladega & Daytona were back to back on the schedule

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Adam Bankert August 22, 2023 at 10:11 pm

Honestly my favorite was the 2004 Pepsi 400. I love that Pepsi scheme that Gordon had

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Dave H August 22, 2023 at 10:14 pm

The paint schemes of the late 90s and early 00s were so iconic

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redflashpontiac August 22, 2023 at 10:24 pm

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.

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Adam Patterson August 22, 2023 at 10:24 pm

All the flashes going off looked awesome at the start

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The berk 759 August 22, 2023 at 10:38 pm

2020 William Byron’s first win, I’ve followed him ever since

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HappyKarl095 August 22, 2023 at 11:20 pm

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.

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Joseph Chappell August 22, 2023 at 11:25 pm

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.

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Leahi84 August 23, 2023 at 12:18 am

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.

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MICHAEL JENSEN August 23, 2023 at 3:35 am

When you talk about underrated announcers, Eli gold and buddy baker are right there. Their energy during this race was awesome, baker especially.

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Bailey Canterbury August 23, 2023 at 10:41 am

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

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Anthony And The Machine August 23, 2023 at 2:30 pm

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

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