By The Commish

In the summer of 1998, a terrible drought ravaged northern Florida. Wildfires raged sporadically throughout the Sunshine State since Memorial Day. A haze of smoke and ash that could be seen from the space shuttle enveloped the atmosphere, and Gov. Lawton Chiles ordered a ban on individual use of fireworks, despite pressure from the powerful pyrotechnics industry. So it wasn’t going to be a Firecracker 400, but it was shaping up to be a big race. A decade has passed, but only by looking back can we understand the historical significance of the event.

Points leader Jeff Gordon had won four races up to that point and came to Daytona looking for a signature victory. The Pepsi 400 was scheduled for the night of Saturday, July 4. It would the first stock car race at Daytona under the lights. CBS, excited about its first scheduled prime time race broadcast, dispatched Mike Joy, Ken Squier, Ned Jarrett and Buddy Baker and more than 60 technicians to the race. The track had installed a $5 million lighting system with lights 20 times brighter than those used to light airports and prisons. “It puts more light on more space than anywhere else in the world," officials of MUSCO lighting said. The scheduled Saturday night race was billed as the largest night sports event ever. All 143,000 grandstand seats were sold out. But Mother Nature had other plans.

More than 18,000 people were evacuated in northeast Florida on July 2 as wildfires whipped by high winds burned dozens of homes and businesses, jumping from mostly rural areas to the midst of population centers. Evacuations took place in the counties of Volusia, Brevard, and Flagler, with 15,000 residents forced out of their homes in the city of Ormond Beach north of Daytona Beach in Volusia County alone. The fires, which charred more than 30,000 acres in the Speedway area, came within one mile of the track itself.

The fire and smoke forced the closing of all major roads leading into Ormond Beach, a city of about 35,000 people, and shut down Interstate 95 from Titusville to Jacksonville, about 125 miles. A 16-mile stretch of U.S. 1, the other major north-south coastal highway, was also closed. Some 112 new fires started when late afternoon winds scattered sparks over several miles in the affected counties. Dozens of firefighters, many of them exhausted from days of battling brush fires, were unable to keep up with the new blazes. Hospitals reported treating 150 people for respiratory problems, asthma and heart ailments.

Race officials decided after an all-night meeting that going ahead with a race that sapped public resources for 160,000 paid spectators would risk public safety, to say nothing of making them look greedy amid the disaster. Faced with a natural disaster, NASCAR had no choice. The race was postponed to October 17, giving the series back-to-back plate races for the first time in history, and putting it up against the first game of the World Series. Track spokesman John Story announced the postponement from his office, where he camped after the fires forced him to evacuate his home on the Halifax River. Hundreds of fans in cars and campers had already lined up for infield slots. And the haulers were ready to enter the garages and go racing. The decision to postpone was announced an hour before the gates were to open.

The first problem was how to get the race teams out of Daytona since the highways were blocked. Teams feared getting stuck inside the ring of fire that was converging on the track, so convoys of huge transporters headed north through the smoke, hoping there was safety in numbers. The hauler parade followed a two-lane oceanfront road, snaked through downtown St. Augustine, and then back onto the beach route to Jacksonville, where northbound I-95 was open.

Meanwhile, the track's caterers fed tired crews roast beef dinners originally intended for high rollers attending the race and installed 132 beds in the air-conditioned Daytona Club to accommodate a planeload of federal firefighters sent to reinforce hundreds of specialists from across the nation. They put showers and 200 more beds in an off-track warehouse for employees who were displaced and others just needing a place to sleep. And they opened the track and the infield for Volusia county residents forced out of their homes. Some 35,000 citizens of Northern Florida waited for three long days until intermittent rains, an off-shore wind, and the tireless efforts of firefighters finally made it safe to go home. The highways reopened, and miraculously, only a few hundred homes were destroyed. The state was declared a disaster area. But a bigger disaster, one that could have been caused by the intrusion of 160,000 plus visitors into the area, was avoided.

The unexpected week off didn’t hurt Gordon’s momentum. He would go on to win the next four races (and 6 out of the next 7, concluding with the Southern 500 at Darlington). Still, there was concern about the rescheduled race. After all, Gordon wasn’t regarded as a late-season racer, having never won in October. But he did have a 288-point lead on Mark Martin as he arrived. When they turned the lights on at the Speedway on a cloudy fall weekend following Talladega, there was still doubt— if not smoke— in the air. "I really want this championship to come down to just pure fighting on the race track with competitiveness," said Gordon.

For the rescheduled Pepsi 400, Gordon and Evernham brought out a new and improved plate-race car that showed its strength early and often. CBS passed the coverage onto TNN, its cable-owned station. Gordon took the lead for good with 37 laps to go and was never seriously challenged afterward, though a late-race red flag for rain made things interesting. Gordon held off Bobby Labonte and the rest of the field to win his 11th race of the season and open up a 358-point margin over second-place Mark Martin. "Awesome! Awesome!" Evernham shouted over the radio as the DuPont Chevrolet took the checkered flag. "Hey, Jeff, it's October, buddy, it's October." To which Gordon replied: "You better believe it. Yes it is. Yes it is." The victory was the 40th in his young career.

"We figured that somebody would say this was actually a July race that was run in October," Gordon joked after the race. "It was an awesome race," he continued. "It wasn't the Fourth of July, but there certainly were a lot of fireworks out there." Gordon would cruise through the remaining three races on his way to his third championship. The postponed night race concluded successfully, and a small measure of healing finally was brought to the beleaguered northern Florida counties. But every July, when I watch those big haulers head south on I-77 towards I-26 and I-95, I remember the day a decade ago when they all turned around and came home. Because at least, that time, when there was smoke...well, you know the rest.

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