24 HOURS OF DAYTONA
Late January · Daytona International Speedway · Twenty-Four Hours · Since 1962
The Rolex 24 is a day and a night of sports car racing at Daytona at the end of January, and the first major motor race of the American year. Cars cover more than two thousand miles. Many of them do not finish.
Eighty thousand people watch, and most of them are inside the circuit rather than in the grandstands.
The Race
Bill France built the speedway in 1959 and wanted European endurance racing on it. The race he devised for that purpose was first run in 1962 over three hours. It became a twenty-four hour race in 1966.
The course is a hybrid. Three and a half miles made from part of the NASCAR tri-oval and a twisting infield section, twelve turns in all. Cars come off banking of thirty-one degrees at very high speed and immediately have to brake for a corner, which is what makes the place hard on machinery.
In that first race Dan Gurney led comfortably until his engine failed with minutes remaining. The rules then required a car to cross the line after the full duration to be classified. Gurney stopped at the top of the banking, waited, and let gravity roll him down and over the line to win.
The Watch
The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona is named after this place, and not the other way round.
The connection goes back to February 1933, when Sir Malcolm Campbell set a land speed record of two hundred and seventy-two miles an hour on the sand at Daytona Beach wearing a Rolex. The company has been attached to the town ever since, and took the title sponsorship of the race in the early nineties.
Every winning driver in every class receives a steel Daytona, engraved. Drivers who have won say the watch matters more to them than the trophy, and they are not being polite when they say it.
What to Know
The race starts in the early afternoon and finishes at the same hour the following day. The interesting part is between two and six in the morning, when the crowd has thinned, the cars are on their third set of drivers, and the track has cooled enough to change how they behave.
Most people watch from the infield. There is a campsite in the middle of the circuit with a culture of its own. The grandstands are quieter and the view is worse.
The paddock is open in a way no other major motor race allows. You can stand a few feet from the cars and the crews between stints.
Bring something warm. Florida is cold at four in the morning and nobody expects it to be.
The mistake is watching the start and going to bed. The race is decided in the dark, and everyone who tells you about it afterward will be telling you about the night.
The Court
The Rolex 24 is not the Court’s own. Paddock access, suites above the start line and places in the infield are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterward. Rooms are scarce because the race falls inside Speedweeks and the town stays busy for a fortnight.
