I'm Watching The 1980 Daytona 500

[442MUCH]

I taped the entire race off of Speed channel. Man those cars are movin,! The Oldsmobile's are domination the Fords, Buicks, Monte Carlo. That siid, Waltrip is out after 20 laps. Buddy Baker's car was clocked at 194.805 mph. The announcer said that Baker's car can run 196 because of the cars shape where as Neil Bonnet's Ford can do about 190. Still not to bad.

Race is over: Fastest 500 mile race ever, faster than Indy, faster than Talladega the fastest ever. And it was done in an Oldsmobile (Average of 177.602 mph).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v417/vttedrm/buddy-baker-1.jpg

[ragz442]

I've caught a couple of those old races on speed channel, pretty cool! They had the aerodynamics figured out pretty well for the times.

[GT73]

Great race! Buddy Baker (my favorite stock car driver of all time) stills holds the record for the fastest Daytona 500 ever run (average speed).

This of course was due primarily to the low number of caution flags that day. But Buddy was really flying, still remember watching that race on TV live. Wish I had the entire race on tape.

It was noted that the Olds were very fast on the super speedways (bodystyle was that of a '77 442) due to its superior aerodynamics compared to the other cars. Cale Yarborough won the Winston Cup (Nascar championship) in 1978 running an Olds for the entire season (rare back in the day, it was common for drivers to switch between Chevy's, Olds, Buicks, depending on the track).

Olds had some success back in the late 70's and early 80's in NASCAR, due primarily to Olds overall success in car sales, thus they had the money to spend. The Cutlass was the number 1 selling car in North America from 1976-1987. Doubt that record will ever be broken.

[NOTDADS442]

it leads me back to my original question... were these noses developed for stock car racing, or just a sales gig?.. which came first? the chicken or the egg?

[sledhead2]

I would put money nose was all about going fast on track, sales gig later.

[sumrof75]

it leads me back to my original question... were these noses developed for stock car racing, or just a sales gig?.. which came first? the chicken or the egg?

Also see Dodge Daytona, Plymouth superbird of the winged era, Ford Torino Talledaga, Chevy Laguna, The Caprice and Impala bent windows of 77 and up, the GM aerocoupes of the 80's. To qualify to run a body style in NASCAR a manufacturer must sell a certain number of models to the public. In the 69 and 70 model years Dodge and Plymouth had a terrible time selling the great winged wonders, oh to be able to go back in time.

Note to NOTDADS442, if I have not mentioned it earlier, I dig the color combo on your 442. Great look.

[GT73]

Good question, was the more aerodynamic front-end design of the '77 442 done for Nascar? Considering Olds re-entered Nascar in 1978, perhaps this is so? Granted the '77 model year design came out in the fall of '76, about a year and a half before the '78 Nascar season in which Cale Yarborough won the Winston Cup Championship (equivalent to today's Nextel Cup).

Never the less, Oldsmobiles were quite competitive on the super speedways. After proving their point (winning quite a few races in Nascar and the Winston Cup), Olds then went on to dominate NHRA (National Hot Rod Assoc.) by winning 7 Manufacturer Cups in a row in the late '80's, early 90's with guys like John Force and Warren Johnson.

Then Olds put their efforts into winning 3 Indy 500's and the majority of Indy Car races in the mid 90's. I always thought they should have gone back to Nascar considering its increased popularity to that of the Indy Racing League cars.

Oh well, Olds usually did quite well whenever they participated. A testimony to their engineering efforts and funds.

[jimrockford]

When's this going to be on again?