How Daytona International Speedway was created (cont'd)

Originally, the plan was to sell $3 million in bonds to finance the project, but an economic downturn shelved that idea. By 1957, the commission agreed to lease the 447-acre parcel to France's corporation for $10,000 a year over a 50-year period.

Armed with blueprints and land, France needed working capital to begin the project, which was rapidly becoming known as "France's Folly." However, a Texas oil millionaire stepped in.

Clint Murchison inherited his father's sizeable investment portfolio, which included real estate, railroads and oil. When France called, Murchison was willing to loan him $600,000 and provide the construction equipment necessary to build the track.

That, coupled with additional funding from Pepsi-Cola president Donald Kendall and General Motors auto designer Harley Earl, a second mortgage on his home and the selling of 300,000 shares of stock to local residents, France was able to begin clearing the land in late 1957.

Construction on the speedway began in April of 1958 and Moneypenny began to run into challenges.

The plan was to build the track with 50-foot wide straightaways and a 20-foot apron, with a 3,000-foot long concrete safety wall on the backstretch and 2,700-foot long walls in the turns.

In order to create the footings for the banking, Moneypenny had construction crews excavate millions of tons of soil from the track's infield, creating a 44-acre lake that was named Lake Lloyd. In addition, Moneypenny had 22 tons of lime rock trucked in from Ocala to use as the track's binding base.

No one had tried to pave at that degree of incline, so Moneypenny came up with an ingenious solution. He connected the paving equipment to bulldozers anchored to the top of the banking. In addition, very fine iron fillings were mixed with the asphalt to help with the track's adhesion.

By December, all of the stock shares had been sold and France was using money from ticket purchases to complete the final construction phase.

Practice runs began on Feb. 6, 1959, and on Feb. 22, nearly 42,000 fans were in attendance as 59 cars took the green flag in the inaugural Daytona 500.

Moneypenny would patent his construction plans for bank, radius and transition for superspeedways, then go on to design Talladega and Michigan, and at age 90, supervise the renovation of Richmond from a half-mile oval to a .75-mile tri-oval.

In case you're wondering, Lake Lloyd was named after Sax Lloyd, one of the original six members of the speedway authority. According to NASCAR historian Buz McKim, when the France family relocated to Daytona Beach, France found work as a brake specialist in Lloyd's General Motors dealership.