February 18: Today in Racing

A sad day in motorsport history, 49-year old seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt lost his life in a tragic last-lap crash at the Daytona 500 on 18 February 2001.  

The Daytona 500 is dominant in mid-February race history with the 18th instant notable for Fireball Roberts’ win in the 1962 edition, while Richard Petty took the 1973 race in front of a record 103 000 raceday crowd. Richard 'The King' Petty was back to his winning ways six years later as he took a lucky 1979 victory after race leaders Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough took each other out before a fisticuffs broke out late in the first Daytona 500 to enjoy flag-to-flag live national television coverage. 

That race is widely regarded as the spur to NASCAR’s huge popularity as a leading US sport.

Poor Dale Earnhardt always struggled at Daytona — Derrike Cope took the 1990 500 win after the luckless Earnhardt cut a tire while leading on the final lap, while Dale Jarrett beat Earnhardt to second in ’96. Eleven years after that, Kevin Harvick edged Mark Martin for the 2007 Daytona 500 win on the day that Toyota became the 'foreign name plate' car to race in the Daytona 500.

The 18th of February is also a red-letter day for all circuit racing. It was on this day in 1900 when Léonce Girardot powered his Panhard to victory in the first-ever first circuit car race over two laps of a 45 mile triangular track at the Course du Catalogue near Melun in France. Nineteen years later, Ralph de Palma was in the process of driving his monster Packard ‘905’ to every US land speed record from one to twenty miles during February 1919.

In an odd day in Formula 1 history, the sport was sill reeling after Ayrton Senna’s tragic accident at Imola in 1994 and fully focussed on safety against the backdrop of the Italian the inquest into Senna's untimely death. The FIA announced it was to fit black boxes to all cars with effect from the start of the 1998 season, three weeks later.  

Ten years anon in 2008, Lewis Hamilton won a prestigious Laureus Award following his 2007 debut season with McLaren, when he came within a point of winning the championship as he equalled disgruntled double world champion teammate Fernando Alonso’s points tally for the season.

In other racing history, Alfa Romeo’s Autodelta racing arm unleashed it's glorious little GTA (the A for 'alleggerita’ - Italian for lightened) at the 1964 Amsterdam Motor Show. The potent 170bhp 1600cc Twin Spark-powered light-alloy bodied Alfa Romeo GT would go on to countless race wins and championships around the world.