The Daytona 500: The Thrill and Thunder of the Great American Race

By Nancy Roe Pimm

Who won the first Daytona 500? What do teams do to prepare their cars for 500 miles of hard, high-speed racing? Who gave the Daytona 500 the nickname the "Great American Race"? Learn all about stock car racing's biggest event and the drivers and crew who make it possible in this fascinating, fact-filled book. You will join in the excitement of forty-three cars running nose-to-tail and side-by-side at almost 200 miles per hour. You'll also discover the rich history of stock car racing and find out why it's one of the most popular sports around.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lerner Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781467737470

Nancy Roe Pimm

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Nancy Roe-Pimm spent a lot of time reading books and fantasizing about living on a horse farm in Montana. She married a rodeo cowboy who soon became a professional race car driver. After working in the pits for ten years on the Indy and NASCAR circuits, Nancy wrote children's books on the Indy 500 and the Daytona 500. Due to her love of animals and her affiliation with the Columbus Zoo, she has two nonfiction books about gorillas, The Heart of the Beast: Eight Great Gorilla Stories and Colo's Story: The Life Of One Grand Gorilla.

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Reviews for The Daytona 500

[karenball_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Review copy from Lerner PublishingA combination of a history of the Daytona 500 race, and the history of NASCAR, this is a high-octane read for all the racing fans out there! I liked this for two reasons: the design of the book, which breaks the chapters into stories of races and events with lots of well-placed sidebars packed with interesting facts, and the pictures: images of races, crashes, photo finishes, pit crews, racecars, equipment and tools. The race stories were sometimes funny, sometimes wild and crazy, and sometimes tragic. Racing is a risky sport after all, and Pimm follows the development of better safety equipment, especially the Cars Inside and Out chapter. I now know more than I ever thought I would about racecar design and safety features, including how the driver's seat is custom-molded to his or her own behind! There are famous names in racing: Mario Andretti, Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt, as well as many names in history who are no longer well known, but are still important to racing history. The stories were well chosen for showing how and why racing has changed over these many years, and the writing was engaging. Bonus points for anyone who finds the part that was an important scene in the Disney movie Cars! 6th grade and up.