1979 race provided endless mileage

The first break came with the massive blizzard that wreaked havoc on the East Coast, essentially locking television viewers in their homes. The Daytona 500, meanwhile, was to be broadcast live in its entirety for the first time. The 31⁄ 2- hour event finished in stunning fashion, another fortunate turn that featured a muddy, bloody brawl a few hundred yards from the finish line.

It was NASCAR’s version of a perfect storm.

And it changed the sport forever.

“It was just a storybook day,” Hall of Fame driver Darrell Waltrip said. “It started off almost as a disaster, but it ended up like a big, old soap opera.”

Thanks to a landmark television deal that NASCAR founder Bill France signed with CBS, a winter storm that stranded a large portion of the country and a spectacular ending that involved Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and brothers Bobby and Donnie Allison — the 1979 Daytona 500 was instrumental in broadening racing’s southern roots.

“It was a wild time,” hall of fame driver Bill Elliott said. “It was the talk of the town.”

In Daytona, it had rained overnight and again the morning of the race. The high-banked superspeedway was soaked, and NASCAR had nothing like the drying technology it has today.

The race needed to go off on time to keep the TV contract with CBS intact, so France started it under caution even though the racing surface was far from dry. The belief was 41 cars turning laps at half speed would get it dry enough to race, which it did after 15 laps.

On the last lap, Yarborough went low to pass Donnie Allison coming off Turn 2. Allison blocked him, forcing Yarborough into the backstretch grass. Yarborough’s No. 11 Oldsmobile swerved out of control and into Allison’s No. 1 Oldsmobile. Both cars slammed into each again, turned into the outside wall, slid back across the track and came to a halt in the muddy infield.

Richard Petty held off Darrell Waltrip as they circled the final two turns and won his sixth 500.

Meantime, Bobby Allison had stopped his car near the crashed cars. Yarborough confronted him through his window.

“He ran toward me and started yelling at me,” Bobby said. “And then he hit me in the face with his helmet.

“I’ve either got to get out of the car and handle this or run from him the rest of my life,” he added. “So I got out of my car and he went to beating on my fists with his nose.”

Yarborough and Allison tangled in the mud, with fists, helmets and feet flying all around.

More than 15.1 million people watched the race and all its aftermath. It stood as the highestrated NASCAR race until 2001.

“It couldn’t have been a better footstep for NASCAR at that particular time,” Petty said.

A life-sized colour picture of the fight adorns a wall inside the Turn 1 tunnel at Daytona.

“It’s just part of the history, right, wrong or indifferent,” Elliott said.