1979 Daytona 500

The 1979 Daytona 500, the 21st annual running of the event, was the second race of the 1979 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season. It was held on February 18, 1979 at Daytona International Speedway, in Daytona Beach, Florida. It has been called the most important race in stock car history.

The race was televised live "flag-to-flag", a rarity in the era, and the first for a 500-mile race in the United States. Camera angles such as the "in-car" view were introduced to viewers from all over the United States.

On the final lap, race leaders Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison collided with each other on the backstretch. Both drivers' races ended in the grass infield. The wreck allowed Richard Petty, at the time of the crash over one-half lap behind the leaders, to claim his sixth Daytona 500 win.

As Petty made his way to Victory Lane to celebrate, a fight erupted between Yarborough, Donnie Allison and his brother, Bobby, at the site of the backstretch wreck. Both events were caught by television cameras and broadcast live.

The race brought national publicity to NASCAR. Due to a large winter storm, parts of the Midwest and most of the Northeastern United States were snowed in, leaving a very sizable audience to watch the race who were not traditionally part of NASCAR's demographic, which largely drew from Southeastern states. Motorsports announcer and editor Dick Berggren said, "Nobody knew it then, but that was the race that got everything going. It was the first 'water cooler' race, the first time people had stood around water coolers on Monday and talked about seeing a race on TV the day before. It took a while – years, maybe – to realize how important it was."

The 1979 Daytona 500 was the first 500-mile race to be broadcast in its entirety live on national television in the United States. Races were shown on television, but the Indianapolis 500, for example, was broadcast on tape delay later in the evening on the day it was run in this era and usually in edited form. Most races aired during this period were only broadcast starting with the final quarter to half of the race, as was the procedure for ABC's IndyCar broadcasts on their Wide World of Sports program.

CBS signed a new contract with NASCAR to telecast the race. Ken Squier and David Hobbs were the booth announcers with Ned Jarrett and Brock Yates in the pits for that race, while other angles, such as an interview with race grand marshall Ben Gazzara and NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr., were handled by Marianne Bunch-Phelps. The day was fortunate for CBS as a major snowstorm known as the Presidents Day Snowstorm of 1979 bogged down most of the Northeast and parts of the Midwestern United States, increasing the viewership of the event. The race introduced two new innovative uses of TV cameras, the "in-car" camera and the low angle "speed shot", which are now considered standard in all telecasts of auto racing.

The race attracted a TV rating of 10.5 and attracted 16 million viewers. It held the highest television rating for a Daytona 500 until the 2002 Daytona 500.