Motorsport · 1979 · Daytona Beach, USA
The Fight That Launched NASCAR
Broadcast live from flag to flag on national television for the first time, the Daytona 500 delivers a last-lap crash between the two leaders and a three-man fistfight in the infield grass.
Richard Petty
Race winner
First flag-to-flag live national NASCAR TV
Broadcast
Final lap
Crash + fight
The 1979 Daytona 500 was the first 500-mile NASCAR race broadcast live from start to finish on national television, a gamble by CBS on a regional sport with an uncertain audience beyond the American South. Much of the East Coast was snowed in that weekend, which left an unusually large captive television audience indoors.
Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison were racing for the lead on the final lap when the two cars made contact and crashed together into the infield grass, handing the win to Richard Petty, who had been running well behind them. The two started arguing where the cars came to rest, and when Donnie's brother Bobby Allison stopped to check on them, all three ended up in a fistfight, caught live by CBS's cameras.
The largest television audience the sport had ever reached watched a chaotic, entirely unscripted finish at the precise moment it was best placed to notice. NASCAR stopped being a regional curiosity from roughly that afternoon.
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