Joe Weatherly competed in fourteen of the fifteen races in the 1959 Convertible Series with two wins, five top fives, seven top tens, three poles and finished seventh in points.
“The Gold Dust Twins” of Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly, were not the factor in the Convertible Series in 1959 as they were the previous seasons.
Turner took part of the season off, not only resting his bad back, but struggling to get his dream track at Charlotte constructed.
In the first three races of the 1959 Grand National (Cup) season Weatherly drove Chevrolets and was involved in one of the most famous race finishes of the era.
In 1959, the new Daytona Speedway was the biggest, most steeply banked track the NASCAR racers had ever run on.
Ground breaking for the Daytona International Speedway didn't take place until November 25, 1957 with the first Daytona 500 being run on February 22, 1959.
Big Bill France insisted on a track 2.5 miles in length (same as Indianapolis) and after getting a pie-shaped piece of land from the dog track next door, France was able to bend the front straight and get his 2.5 mile racetrack.
The engineers working for Bill France stacked the fill material for the banking as high as it would allow resulting in 31-degree banked turns.
The lake in the Daytona infield, that exists to this day, was a result of the fill material removal to make the banked turns.
A 1959 Oldsmobile street car is used in a test run on the still unfinished Daytona Speedway. The 31-degree banking at Daytona International Speedway was the steepest in the country and it awed many drivers.
Modified driver Jimmy Thompson perhaps summed it up best when he said, "There have been other tracks that separated the men from the boys. This is the track that will separate the brave from the weak after the boys are gone."
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