Each week of the racing season produces new excitement for the drivers and fans of NASCAR. Some weeks have produced the kind of heart-stopping moments that etch a race into the hearts and minds of fans. Those are the great races. The races featured in this book are stops along a time line that has spanned five decades of an American tradition. From the formative days on the hard-packed dirt tracks to the modern era of the superspeedway, every race has unfolded with its own unique story. NASCAR polled drivers, members of the media, and fans to select the twenty-five greatest NASCAR races. The resulting NASCAR Greatest Races is a panorama of the NASCAR experience. There are fabulous finishes, amazing comebacks, classic duels, and transforming milestones. Events such as the Rayson Memorial of 1948, NASCAR's first race, and the 1979 Daytona 500, the first NASCAR race shown live wire-to-wire on network television, helped shape NASCAR's history. The spotlight has fallen on individual drivers such as Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott, and Jeff Gordon, rivalries like that between Richard Petty and David Pearson, or photo finishes like the one that confirmed Lee Petty's victory in the inaugural Daytona 500 of 1959. NASCAR Greatest Races pairs more than one hundred full-color and black-and-white action-packed, historic shots with eyewitness accounts and personal reflections from the actors in this revved-up arena. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing begins its second half-century as the fastest growing major spectator sport in the United States. Nearly six million people attended NASCAR Winston Cup Series races in 1998 and more than 150 million watched the action on television. NASCAR also sanctions twelve other touring series as well as races at more than 130 tracks throughout the nation.