# Daytona Banking

You don’t need another countdown to Daytona, but perhaps a little more information about Daytona will help you appreciate it that much more when it does come. A large part of that is the banking.

## Why Daytona is Fast

Daytona International Speedway gets its speed from two aspects of its configuration:

• High banking

Banking helps a racecar turn. On a flat track, the tires have to do all the work. On a banked track, part of the force the track exerts on the car is to the left, which adds to the turning force of the tires.

You experience this same effect when you exit a highway. Banking (not quite as much as on a race track) helps fit the off ramp into a smaller space.

The banking is so effective that you could take a corner at Daytona at 140 mph even if the track were completely covered in ice. Of course, you would have to get the car moving first…

## The Trigonometry of Daytona Banking

Most tracks will give you the banking and the track width. From there, it’s just a little trig to figure out the rest.

The sine of an angle is just the ratio of the side opposite the angle to the track surface width (aka: the hypotenuse). The cosine is the ratio of the side next to the angle to the track surface width.

$\displaystyle \sin(\theta)= \frac{\text{opposite}}{\text{hypotenuse}}$

$\displaystyle \cos(\theta)= \frac{\text{adjacent}}{\text{hypotenuse}}$

Daytona has a banking of 31 degrees in the corners and a track width of 40 feet. Using opposite side = track width * sin(31), we find that the rise is about 20 feet. The run (adjacent side = track width * cos(31)) is about 34 feet.

In other words, the banking is such that, for every foot you go over, you go up a little more than six inches.

For comparison, the ‘banking’ of a typical stairway is between 30 and 35 degrees.

And just to give you something to compare it to, here’s me standing on the surface at Texas Motor Speedway, which is only 24 degrees.

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