Daytona International Speedway
Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959, conceived by NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. and engineered by Charles Moneypenny as a 2.5-mile tri-oval with 31-degree banked turns. The sports-car road course threads a tight infield section into most of that oval: 3.56 mi (5.729 km) across twelve turns, run counterclockwise and essentially unchanged since the infield was revised in 1985. Endurance racing arrived with the Daytona Continental in 1962, a race that grew into the Rolex 24 At Daytona, run around the clock since 1966.
The banking
What separates Daytona from every other stop on the sports-car calendar is the banking. From the exit of Turn 6 the cars run flat-out around the NASCAR oval’s Turns 1 and 2, down the backstretch, and through Turns 3 and 4 (long stretches held at 31 degrees, interrupted only by the Le Mans Chicane) before the 18-degree tri-oval completes the lap past the start/finish line.
The Le Mans Chicane
The backstretch chicane, known for decades as the Bus Stop, is the road course’s signature complex: a left-right entry and right-left exit reached at near-maximum speed. It was widened in 2003 and lost its third leg in 2010, and in January 2022 it was renamed the Le Mans Chicane in a reciprocal gesture with Circuit de la Sarthe, whose first chicane on the Mulsanne Straight became the Daytona Chicane.
The infield
The infield opens with an ever-tightening left-hander at Turn 1, the lap’s prime overtaking spot, and is anchored by two 180-degree right-hand hairpins: the Rodríguez International Horseshoe (Turn 3), which carries the name of Mexican sports-car great Pedro Rodríguez, and the West Horseshoe (Turn 5), linked by the fast left-hand Dogleg. Motorcycles use a modified infield with a tighter hairpin, but the cars’ twelve-turn course is the layout recorded here.