DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The 2009 edition of the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England will feature a NASCAR element that will celebrate a half-century of racing at Daytona International Speedway.

"We're very keen to celebrate 50 years of Daytona speedway, and looking hopefully to bringing over a number of cars," event founder Charles Gordon-Lennox, the Earl of March, said Sunday. "We've been talking to the teams this weekend, and we're looking forward to hopefully bringing over a lot of very important 500 winners to illustrate that. We hope to be able to give NASCAR and Daytona speedway real credit."

The Festival of Speed, held on Gordon-Lennox's Goodwood Estate in West Sussex, England, is an annual hill climb bringing together various cars of historic significance. Each vehicle makes a timed ascent of the 1.1-mile route, with finishing speeds varying from 15 minutes for steam-powered automobiles to 41 seconds for a McLaren Formula One machine. The festival typically draws crowds of more than 100,000 during the course of its multi-day run.

Gordon-Lennox started the festival in 1993 when he was unable to reopen an old race track at Goodwood that his grandfather had built after World War II. "I would like to think it's the greatest celebration of the internal combustion engine and all its forms that takes place anywhere in the world," he said of the event.

NASCAR drivers are nothing new to the festival, Gordon-Lennox said. English racing fans love American cars, he added, because they so rarely see them in person. Each year about 30 cars are shipped from the United States to England for the event.

"We've had lots of American content," he said. "We've had Bobby Allison, Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, David Pearson, Richard Petty, so many great drivers, and we're looking at such a rich heritage there that we'd love to be able to bring over more. And there's such an appetite in Europe to see the American racing machine, really, that makes it just fabulous."

All of which brings him to Daytona, where he's meeting with NASCAR team owners in an attempt to bring more recent American race cars to the 2009 event. He said he had already spoken with Sprint Cup team owners Rick Hendrick and Richard Childress, and received a commitment from Allison to return to the festival. Gordon-Lennox said his intention is to feature NASCAR vehicles from different eras, although he likely won't be able to lure any active drivers since the date of the 2009 event -- July 3-5 -- conflicts with the summer race weekend at Daytona.

Of course, Gordon-Lennox's first trip to Daytona hasn't been all business. The noted racing enthusiast took some hot laps with NASCAR pace-car driver Brett Bodine on Sunday morning, reaching speeds of 140 mph. He came away amazed at how narrow the race track is. He also had an opportunity to take a Rolls Royce Phantom out on Daytona's famous beach.

"That caused quite a stir," he said.