US racing category nominee #4: Bill France Sr & Jr

An Amrican banking dynasty

Vol 84 No. 2 – February 2008

This year will mark the 50th running of the Daytona 500, a race that has grown beyond even the ambitions of its founder and promoter ‘Big Bill’ France. By Gordon Kirby

Through most of 1958, ‘Big Bill’ France worked flat-out to build his long-planned dream of a race track called the Daytona International Speedway. France spent more than five years trying to pull together the support and finance to turn his vision of a 2.5-mile high-banked superspeedway into reality, but time and again his hopes of finding the money turned to dust. Most people would have given up, but France stuck to his guns and eventually made it happen in partnership with J Saxton Lloyd, a former president of the USA’s National Automobile Dealers Association.

Read the full story from February 2008