Bill Nelson: “Indeed, America is mourning another one of her great sons, and that is the past president of NASCAR, the one who built…”

“Indeed, America is mourning another one of her great sons, and that is the past president of NASCAR, the one who built NASCAR into what it is today, the No. 1 motor sport--one of the greatest of all sports now, with 75 million followers--and that is Bill France, Jr., who died just a few days ago. Bill France is one of those great American success stories. He learned from his father, way back in the old days when he was tending to a gasoline station in Daytona Beach, FL, where he got the idea of starting to race stock cars. The first races were rather rudimentary because they went on that beautiful hard-packed sand of Daytona Beach. They would go down the beach for quite a distance, turn, come up on a road that is today called Highway A1A--and back then it was a dirt road--go down that a distance, turn back on to the beach, and continue the circular drive using the beautiful Daytona Beach. Of course, that graduated into the building of the Daytona Speedway, until we now have this NASCAR being America's No. 1 form of motor sports for 75 million fans.”