Editor’s note: We’re counting down the days until the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 26, and we’ll feature one of our 10 most memorable 500s each day until the ...

It was February 1959. Petty was only 21 years old. He’d watched his father, Lee, race a bunch at Darlington Raceway, home of NASCAR’s biggest race at the time, but Darlington didn’t have ...

He ran only six more races from 1962-64, until ultimately retiring from NASCAR competition after 1964. Petty's son, Richard Petty, went on to win a record 200 races in his career.

If ever there was a NASCAR race destined to continue to make headlines long into the future, it was the 150-mile event at Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway in June of 1959.

1959. Nearly six decades later, this pivotal NASCAR, NHRA, Indy, Pikes Peak, and March Meet season seems significant for a handful of major events.

NASCAR races were held in several different locations ... The track cost an estimated $3 million to build. On Feb. 22, 1959, ...

NASCAR president and Daytona Speedway builder Bill France Sr., needing a race and the ticket sales it would generate, jostled ...