Happy Valentine’s Day! What better way to celebrate than with Hall of Famer Junior Johnson, winner of the 2nd ever Daytona 500 held on Valentine’s Day, 1960. There have been eight Daytona 500’s held on Valentine’s day. I’ll get to those in just a bit, but first let’s take a deeper look into the first one.
The starting grid that day consisted of 68 cars. 68! As it turns out, they needed a lot of cars that day because there was a wreck in turn 4 that involved 37 cars (no major injuries). That’s almost equal to the entire field of this year’s Daytona 500. Junior Johnson took the lead with 9 laps to go after Bobby Johns spun and just barely held on to win. By 23 seconds. The pole speed that day was 149.892mph and the attendance was 38,775. For comparison, this year’s pole winning speed set by Alex Bowman was 195.644 and Daytona International Speedway now has a seating capactiy of 167,785.
Other Valentine’s Day Daytona 500 Winners:
1965 Fred Lorenzen – Lorenzen held off Marvin Panch as the rain started and shortened the race to 133 laps.
1971 Richard Petty – Top 5 that day was Petty, Buddy Baker, A.J. Foyt, David Pearson and Fred Lorenzen. Quite a group.
1982 Bobby Allison – The first Daytona 500 to kick off the season.
1988 Bobby Allison – At age 50 Bobby Allison became the oldest person to ever win the Daytona 500 and beat his son Davey Allison who finished 2nd.
1993 Dale Jarrett – Held off Dale Earnhardt in the Dale and Dale Show.
1999 Jeff Gordon – Won from the pole, and stayed in front of Dale Earnhardt who was trying to make a move on the last lap.
2010 Jamie McMurray – Beat Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the finish line in a race that had 52 lead changes.
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