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Over the past couple of weeks, the state of Florida was at the mercy of Hurricane Ian. This meant that the Daytona International Speedway was also adversely affected. Or so it seemed. In light of Ian, many NASCAR fans began to share supposed images of the race track, half submerged in the water. At first glance, the image did look a bit grim and people wondered how the track would recover from this.

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However, it is worth mentioning that the viral images were from 2009 when heavy rains lashed the iconic track. On that day in 2009, the superspeedway witnessed more than 17 inches of rain, leading to the water level rising alarmingly. Some of the photographs even showed parts of the racing surface flooded. It got to a stage where the water level was halfway up the SAFER barrier.

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How did the NASCAR track look, compared to 2009?

In all honesty, although the 2022 images were pretty grizzly, it was not at bad as people feared. Of course, the area still had to deal with 80 mph wind gusts and around 10 inches of rain. This was obviously a lot less than what the Daytona International Speedway experienced all the way back in 2009. It is pretty fortunate that the NASCAR paddock will not be visiting the track for the rest of the year.

USA Today via Reuters

So, the venue will have plenty of time to recover from the hurricane and fix the superspeedway. In fact, they will have a good five months to get the track back in ship shape condition. Bubba Wallace’s spotter Freddie Kraft shared the viral images of the Daytona circuit from 2009 and declared that if people were fooled by the Daytona International Speedway images, they would top his ‘What an Idiot’ list. For now, the NASCAR Cup Series paddock is at the Talladega Superspeedway for the next Playoff race.

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