The first Daytona 500 was a photo finish, too
The wait for newsreel footage delayed ‘Big’ Bill France’s call
By Tim Townsend
“2016 Daytona 500: Denny Hamlin wins in photo finish.”
The headline in Monday’s USA Today is similar to a Daytona Beach Morning Journal headline after the first Daytona 500 in 1959: “Beauchamp Winds Up Second: France Announces His Decision After Studying Photos.”
Yep — the very first Daytona 500 also ended up in a photo finish, but that was before before NASCAR officially used such technology.
Drivers had been racing stock cars in 500-mile contests for nearly a decade when NASCAR founder “Big” Bill France opened the Daytona International Speedway on a swamp in 1959. In the first Daytona 500, seven drivers swapped the lead 32 times during the race. During the final 50 laps, two drivers — Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp — traded the lead 11 times.
NASCAR didn’t employ a finish-line camera, but several photographers shot the end of the race, according to Autoweek. None of them caught the exact moment of the finish, or had quite the right angle, and France declared Beauchamp the winner.
None of those in the press box agreed. Most had seen Petty cross the line first, and convinced France to rule the race “unofficial.” That night, after developing, processing and printing his film, T. Taylor Warren, an official Daytona International Speedway photographer, went to France with the evidence.
“I don’t know if I had the absolute best shot, but mine was good enough to convince Mr. France that Lee had won,” Warren said later.
Even with Warren’s photographic evidence, France waited three days — after he was finally able to see newsreel footage of the race — to reverse his original call.
