On February 22, 1959, Lee Petty defeated Johnny Beauchamp
in a photo finish at the just-opened Daytona International
Speedway in Florida to win the first-ever Daytona 500.

Ralph Dale Earnhardt (April 29, 1951 – February 18, 2001)

Dale Earnhardt is widely regarded as one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history and was named as one of the NASCAR’s 50
Greatest Drivers class in 1998.

The NASCAR world lost one of its legends Saturday when
Bobby Allison died at the age of 86.

NASCAR released a statement from Allison’s family that
said he died at home in Mooresville, North Carolina.

A cause of death wasn’t given, but Allison had been in
declining health for years.

On October 5, 1919, a young Italian car mechanic and engineer
named Enzo Ferrari took part in his first car race, a hill climb in
Parma, Italy. He finished fourth. Ferrari was a good driver, but
not a great one: In all, he won just 13 of the 47 races he entered.

Many people say that this is because he cared too much for the
sports cars he drove: He could never bring himself to ruin an
engine in order to win a race.

In the mid-1920s, Ferrari retired from racing cars in order to
pursue his first love: building them.

      
Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari  (1898 – 1988)        
        
       

On August 19, 1909, the first race was held at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, now the home of the world’s most famous
motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.

Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of
Indianapolis, Indiana, the speedway was started by local
businessmen as a testing facility for Indiana’s growing
automobile industry.         

       
The idea was that occasional races at the track would pit cars
from different manufacturers against each other. After seeing
what these cars could do, spectators would presumably head
down to the showroom of their choice to get a closer look.

In that first five-mile race, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian
engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4
miles per hour. The track’s surface of crushed rock and tar
proved a disaster, breaking up in a number of places and
causing the deaths of two drivers, two mechanics and two
spectators.

William Bourque passes by judges.