• TrackPass
• Downloads
• Wireless
• NASCAR Home Tracks

It's considered to be the most pivotal race in NASCAR history, and the events that took place on Feb. 18, 1979 still resonate through the sport today.

The first live flag-to-flag television broadcast on CBS. Record ratings as a result of a snowstorm that blanketed the entire northeast portion of the country. A last-lap accident that resulted in a surprise winner -- and an even more surprising post-race altercation.

And except for a few highlights, I didn't see the live TV broadcast, and I've never watched an entire play of the race. That's because my father and I were there, sitting in Row 12 of the DePalma grandstands.

In 1979, your experience was completely predicated on what you could see from your seat, and perhaps ascertain from the public address system during lulls in the action.

There were no video boards, no race scanners, no live timing and scoring links. There were a few people at the track who wore huge radio headsets -- but the success of hearing the race broadcast depended solely on whether you could pick up the local AM station over the din of the race.

50th Daytona 500

• Most memorable
• Winning drivers
• Winning crew chiefs
• History of the 500
• How DIS came to be
• Flashback: Daytona '79

It was almost impossible to get up-to-date information without being there in person. This was before the Internet, cell-phone messaging, satellite radio or 24-hour cable sports channels. (ESPN wasn't launched until September of that year.) If you were lucky, the local television sports anchor might give a quick recap of the race in his five-minute segment. If not, perhaps the newspaper might have a short recap and results.

And yet for the estimated 130,000 fans who did their best to stay warm and dry at Daytona International Speedway that day, most never had any idea of exactly what transpired until they read the paper the next morning.

I recently asked my father what he remembered about that race. Our memories are somewhat fuzzy about the exact specifics, but both of us remember certain things very vividly. At the time, I was a junior at the University of Florida in Gainesville. My dad was working at IBM in Boca Raton.

The year before, I went by myself to my first Daytona 500 and was mesmerized by the sheer speed and power of the cars as they flashed by at 190 mph. So I called my father -- who had attended the 1961 race -- and asked if he wanted to join me the next time. I bought the tickets no more than a month in advance -- $20 apiece, more than it cost to see the Dolphins play in those days -- and we agreed to meet at the track.

It began raining the afternoon before and quickly turned into a steady downpour. Unfortunately, it was still raining when I woke up for the three-hour drive to Daytona Beach. And it continued to rain all the way there. How I could have used the Weather Channel back then.

One thing we still agree on: It was miserably cold and damp. Florida may be the Sunshine State, but there was a definite lack of it that day. The temperature may have been in the low 50s, but coupled with the wind and rain, it was a raw February day for central Florida.

I know I wore a winter jacket and had my cap pulled down as low as it would go in an attempt to keep my face warm. My dad had on a wool overcoat -- goodness knows where he had stored it, since it would have been unnecessary in south Florida.

I also made a major miscalculation. The year before, I got to the track way too early and sat around the parking lot for four hours, so I decided to sleep in an extra hour. Big mistake.

• Send Mark your thoughts
• Mark's Community page

By the time I reached the Highway 92 exit on Interstate 95, the Florida Highway Patrol had closed the ramp, forcing me to travel to the next exit -- Port Orange -- and double-back on city streets. Unknown to me at the time, it turns out my father had the same problem going the other way, and was well north of the track.

With the rain, the detours and the race traffic, it took me nearly three hours to get back to Mainland High School -- just outside of Turn 4 -- where I went ahead and parked by the football field. In those days, there was nothing between the school and the track except the two-lane road that connected the airport to International Speedway Boulevard.

So it was a good half-mile hike to the meeting point, although the rain had tapered off by then. Dad wound up parking somewhere near the present location of the Bob Evans restaurant on ISB.

One thing he remembered that I didn't was seeing several heavily damaged racecars on open flatbed haulers sitting in the track parking lot that morning, all involved in the Sportsman 300 race from the day before. There had been a huge accident in that race involving driver Don Williams, who would remain in a coma for 10 years before eventually succumbing to his injuries.

We went inside, found our seats, and Dad had been smart enough to bring a couple of seat cushions with him, so we didn't have to sit on the soaked wood bleachers. Track drying was under way -- no jet dryers in those days -- so I don't remember a pre-race parade.

One thing I found unusual was that NASCAR officials then let Darrell Waltrip get in his No. 88 Oldsmobile and take a couple of hot laps to determine if the track was dry to enough to start the race. To this day, I don't know why he was chosen (or volunteered) and what would have happened had he wrecked the car.

In an effort to speed up track drying, the race was started under caution and remained that way for the first 16 laps. From that point on, the rain stayed away and the race unfolded very much like most of that era, with the field breaking into smaller packs of four or five cars.

Our seats allowed us to see most of the banking in Turns 3 and 4, then the straight directly in front of us all the way down to the start-finish line. Because of the retaining wall and the old Goodyear building, we were unable to see any of the pit lane -- and only the section of Turns 1 and 2 where the cars were up on the banking.

So much of the early action occurred out of our field of view. The first accident involving Donnie Allison, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison was on the backstretch -- and all we could see from our vantage point was smoke and water spray over the top of the RVs parked in the infield. It wasn't until the cars rolled slowly by us that we could determine the extent of the damage.

That was the same with the five-car wreck that took out David Pearson a few laps later. The only accident that happened right in front of us involved Neil Bonnett, Terry Labonte and Harry Gant. Gant's car wound up blocking the track directly in front of us -- and I still wonder how everyone avoided drilling him as he sat helpless in the middle of the racing groove.

In addition, we were unable to see the scoring pylon, so we had no idea how many cars were on the lead lap except when they were packed up under caution. We were unaware that Yarborough had been several laps down, but had worked his way back onto the lead lap.

The final green came out with more than 50 laps to go -- and from that point on, it was obvious that the two best cars remaining on the lead lap were those of Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough. They built a huge lead over A.J. Foyt, Richard Petty and Waltrip, running nose to tail a full half-lap behind.

There had been a tremendous amount of attrition, and less than half of the cars were still running, spread out all over the track.

I had been a fan of Foyt since I was a little kid -- he had barrel-rolled in front of me the year before -- so I was hoping he'd at least wind up with a good finish, and maybe even more if something happened to the two cars in front.

With the laps winding down and tension building, Dad turned to me at some point and said, "Keep an eye on those other three cars, because I don't think the first two are going to make it to the finish."

Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison were at odds both on and off the track at the 1979 Daytona 500.

Truer words were never spoken.

The leaders took the white flag and were in Turns 1 and 2 as the other three passed in front of us. I followed them to the start-finish line, then looked back the other direction just in time to see the most unreal sight -- the white and green No. 11 of Yarborough and the red No. 1 of Allison climbing up the banking in Turn 3, smacking the wall and skidding back down, out of sight.

As the fans around us began to realize the magnitude of what had happened, I quickly looked back to the opposite portion of the track. The crowd roared when Petty's No. 43 came into view, followed by Waltrip's No. 88 and then A.J.

I've never heard anyone ever ask Foyt about it, but I've always wondered if perhaps when the yellow came out, if instincts didn't cause him to lift for a split-second instead of racing back to the line, as per NASCAR rules of the day.

And that was the running order when they flashed beneath us for the final time. Like many of the people in our section, we hurriedly grabbed our belongings and headed for the parking lots once Petty made a slow victory lap. The thought of getting warm in the car precluded any long goodbyes.

I took U.S. 1 North to avoid the bulk of the race traffic and Dad did the same in the other direction. On the way, I passed the Hawaiian Tropic plant in Ormond Beach, and wondered to myself how big a celebration they might have had if Allison had been able to hold off Yarborough for the victory.

And neither of us knew anything about NASCAR's post-race mud-wrestling match. I cut out the photos from the paper the next morning and posted them on my bulletin board. They're still somewhere in a box in the basement.

Looking back, the one thing that stands out now from that race is that how it turned out to be the beginning of the changing of the guard. I remember watching a blue and yellow No. 2 that day and being impressed by the relative skill of the driver -- a kid named Earnhardt. He would win the first of his seven Cup championships the next season and usher in a new era.

Terry Labonte, Geoffrey Bodine and Ricky Rudd were also in that race, and would make their mark on the sport in the coming years.

My parents have since retired to Brevard County, and now live only a few hundred yards from the house where I stood in the front yard and watched men like Alan Shepard and John Glenn rocket into space during the Mercury program.

My mother has kept a record of our daily lives on her calendars for more than three decades. In the box for Feb. 18, 1979, it simply says "Daytona 500, 12:15; Duane soccer; Scott dishes." I don't know if Duane's team won -- or whether Scott completed his chores.

But I know how that particular Daytona 500 turned out.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.