Goodwood to celebrate Daytona

Festival organiser Lord March is in attendance at this weekend's Daytona 500 as a guest of NASCAR's Jim France and has held talks with a number of teams in the hope of having a complete sample of the men and machines that have made history at the series' most emblematic track.

"Well we're very keen to celebrate the 50 years of Daytona Speedway and having thought of that a bit we felt that the best way to do that really was with NASCAR and try to focus on the great winners over the last five decades," Lord March told autosport.com.

"So we'd ideally like a car represented from each decade and we've been talking to the teams, talking to the France family and hopefully we can do something pretty decent. They were not sure who the drivers are yet but the first thing is to get the cars sorted out.

"We've talked to Darrell (Waltrip) every year trying to get him to come, I know that Junior Johnson is coming anyway, so I think hopefully we can get a good selection. Some of the drivers have been there before so I hope that they had a good experience and they come back."

The festival will celebrate a number of anniversaries and he is keen to get NASCAR as part of the show after France's visit in 2008.

"We've got lots of great celebrations this year. There's 75 years of Silver Arrows, there's 100 years of Bugatti, 100 years of Audi, 50 years of the Mini, 60 years of bike GPs, 60 years of continued running of Le Mans," he said.

"So there's a lot of great anniversaries we're doing and then obviously there's 50 years of the Daytona Speedway.

"Jim France came over last year to have a look at it and we brought the (Grand-Am) Brumos Porsche which Hurley (Haywood) and Jim (France) Jr were driving and I think there was a great opportunity to expose Daytona to the European audience at Goodwood. So we're very keen to do it."

The Goodwood Festival of Speed takes place between July 3rd and 5th this summer.