Daytona's July weekend no longer a day at the beach

Crewmen would enter the racetrack in darkness, and push their cars through technical inspection as the first rays of sunlight peeked above the Atlantic. By early afternoon, the vehicles would be covered and the garage area locked. By the time the real heat of the day settled over the Florida coastline, the men of NASCAR's premier series would be batting volleyballs and playing with children on Daytona's sparkling, sandy beach.

It was the closest thing to a working vacation the schedule allowed, a weekend that became as much about fun and sun as it was mettle and speed. Teams still worked hard, still prepared hard, still drove hard to win. But the schedule around the annual July race at Daytona International Speedway allowed them some well-earned time to depressurize, and for a little while cease being crewmen and just be fathers, husbands, and friends.

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Those who were there during that time speak of it wistfully, as if they can still vividly see the images in their mind's eye. Beach chairs were packed up along with spare parts. Wives and children made the trip along with mechanics and fabricators. Crewmen held volleyball tournaments on the beach, while drivers taught their kids to swim. On race day -- always July 4, regardless of when it fell -- the green flag flew at 10 a.m., and by mid-afternoon everyone was reliving the action with their toes in the sand.

"I remember, we used to have a little mini-volleyball tournament in the early '90s, with the Pettys and whoever. It was just a lot of fun," said Philippe Lopez, a veteran Nextel Cup crew chief who is now director of competition at Hall of Fame Racing. "Racing is fun, but when you can bring your family and call it a vacation on top of it, it's the best of both worlds. It was so relaxing, because we got our business done in the morning. Obviously, you couldn't get too carried away at night, with having to be in the garage at 5 or 6 [a.m.]. But that was OK. This wasn't a Vegas-style vacation, it was a bring-your-family-style vacation. All that's changed now."

It all changed in 1998, when the event known for decades as the Firecracker 400 moved to Saturday night under the lights. One year later, it became the first NASCAR event to be televised in prime time by a broadcast television network. A threshold had been crossed. The money, exposure, and pressure all increased. And what had been a nice beach weekend squeezed around a Nextel Cup race was transformed forever.

Now Saturday's 8 p.m. Pepsi 400 is a glitzy event that kicks off the stretch run to the Chase, suddenly a mere nine race weekends away. Now it's all about teams trying to maintain position or make up ground. Some crewmen will still manage to get away to the beach on Saturday morning -- but they'll be under strict orders not to overdo it. The days of volleyball tournaments are long past.

"It was a simpler type of racing than it is today," driver Jeff Burton said. "It was easier for car owners to say, 'Hey, just take your family down there.' Now it costs so much, because we have so many different people and so many hotel rooms and everything else, that it's just hard for them to do that. The sport in general has less of a relaxed atmosphere. This weekend for sure, for us, has much less of a relaxed atmosphere compared to what it used to."

Within the convection oven that is Central Florida in the summertime, the schedule once rotated not around television, but around weather. NASCAR wanted to get its people in and out of the speedway before the blistering heat set in, and the resulting afternoon thundershowers popped up. Now every Pepsi 400 weekend is a meteorological fandango, with the schedule-makers shuffling or cutting on-track sessions to make up for what's inevitably been rained out. Crew chiefs have learned to not rely too heavily on the two scheduled hours of practice, because they're unlikely to get all of it.

"The whole schedule is right smack-dab in thunderstorm time, which has really been frustrating since they started this. Back before, when it was all morning operations, we never dealt with the rain. I never remember, to tell you the truth, it raining on us and upsetting anything, whether it being qualifying, practice or the race," Lopez said.

"Now, since they've switched over to this nighttime format, I can't remember a weekend where we haven't been hampered by the rain. Because it's going to rain here at 4 o'clock. With all these outdoor activities set for that time, it's just very frustrating. We think we might get home at 9 or 10 [p.m.] and we don't, because it rains and everything gets delayed. For the crewmen, this weekend has kind of been ruined. We can bring our families, but we don't get to spend any time with them."

Some crewmen still bring their families, trying to wedge something akin to a summer vacation into the unrelenting Nextel Cup schedule. Lopez, who has two young daughters, understands why Daytona went to night racing. But he also wonders if there's room for improvement in a schedule that seems almost designed to produce headaches and delays.

"I understand why we put lights up, and I understand why we thought running the race on Saturday night would be better," he said. "It's obviously better for the fans, because sitting in the stands from 8 to 11 o'clock at night versus 12 to 3 in the afternoon is a big difference. But to do the schedule with most of our track-time activities scheduled between 3 and 7 [p.m.] ... The people who made that schedule, they live here. So while they were typing on their typewriters making this schedule out, it was raining outside. It's a given. The printed schedule for the Fourth of July Daytona race is really, what do they say in Pirates of the Caribbean? It's just guidelines."

But even if NASCAR returned to a morning schedule, even if they started the race earlier in the day, those lazy summer afternoons at Daytona would likely never return. Too much has changed in the decade since the old Firecracker 400 went nationwide. A change in the schedule wouldn't alleviate the pressure that crewmen feel from sponsors and team owners to perform. Yet that doesn't mean the men who turn wrenches wouldn't like a little more down time, and maybe a chance to build sand castles with the kids.

"It's a different time. Obviously, with technical procedures, the amount of money our sponsors are giving us, it's a whole different arena. But if it were a morning schedule, I think you'd see a whole lot more crew guys make arrangements to bring their families here. Because still, no matter how pressure-packed this place is, or any race for that matter, when the garage closes, it closes. You can't do anything else on the car. So it would be nice to head out toward the beach and meet your kids and wife at 1 or 2 o'clock and have fun the rest of the day," Lopez said.

"But the pressure is there. Probably the crew chiefs would enjoy it the least, because they've got to constantly think about what they've got to do to their cars the next morning, and this and that. But the nice thing about restrictor-plate racing is, you've never had to put a whole lot of thought into handling. I know the 400 is the most handling of all the four restrictor-plate races, but still, it's not that hard to get a handle on. It's still the same thing -- what line you pick, how many friends you got, and that's how good you're going to do. You can't worry about that when you're on the beach with your kids."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.