The Daytona 500 - the Great American Race - is the centerpiece of Speedweeks, the two-week long celebration of NASCAR Nextel Cup racing at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. Daytona 500 tickets are the perfect gift for a stock car racing enthusiast; the Daytona experience is one that any fan will remember long after roar of the engines has faded. Besides the marquee event, Daytona tickets are available for the Budweiser Shootout, the twin Gatorade Duel races (formerly the Gatorade Twin 125's), the Busch Series, Craftsman Truck Series, and the IROC Series events, as well as Daytona USA, with its IMAX Theater and extensive interactive motorsports exhibits. Travel packages are geared towards maximum involvement in everything that happens around the World's Center of Speed and the Super Bowl of stock car racing.

Jeff Gordon is no stranger to the most coveted Victory Lane in NASCAR Nextel Cup Racing, and he added another Daytona 500 trophy to his already impressive collection after an exciting green/white/checkers finish. Last year's series champion Kurt Busch finished second, with crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt, Jr. third, Scott Riggs fourth and Jimmie Johnson in fifth.

Gordon's third Daytona 500 win was no easy drive, as Nextel Cup fans come to expect from the close restrictor plate racing at Daytona, with four lead changes in the final nine laps. Although the first 350 miles saw relatively little action, the closing laps had a huge crowd of 200,000 on their feet. After the record tying eleventh caution flag flew on lap 198, Gordon held off Busch, defending race winner Earnhardt and the rest of the field to bring his Dupont Chevrolet home for the big money (nearly $1.5 million) and the notoriety associated with winning the biggest race of the year.

Former Cup Champion Tony Stewart was the car to beat for most of the race, leading 107 laps, but his Home Depot Monte Carlo did not have enough to hold the top spot when it really counted. Bud Pole winner Dale Jarrett, himself a three-time winner of the event, finished fifteenth, overcoming a potentially disastrous black flag for speeding on pit road, while Earnhardt's DEI teammate and two-time winner of the event Michael Waltrip suffered a blown engine and hit the wall, putting him out on lap 161. It was not a good day for former Cup Champions Matt Kenseth and Bobby Labonte who finished in the last two spots.

The much anticipated so-called 'Big One' came on lap 184, a familiar scene on restrictor plate tracks - a multi-car pileup that left a number of cars damaged and out of contention. Greg Biffle's car broke loose and tagged Riggs, sending Scott Wimmer's car into a series of flips, with Kevin Harvick, Jamie McMurray, Jeremy Mayfield and others heading back to the garage are for repairs. Smaller fuel cells mandated by NASCAR at Daytona and Talladega seem to be having the desired effect - spreading the field out in an attempt to reduce the number of cars caught up in multi-car wrecks.

Gordon joined Jarrett and Bobby Allison as three-time winners; only Richard Petty (7) and Cale Yarborough (4) have won the race more times.