Orlando races Pepsi to the finish

By BILL SPEROS
Deputy Sports Editor, Orlando Sentinel

Story posted on Aug. 12, 2007

The Pepsi 400 roared into Daytona International Speedway on July 7. The race coverage presented us with several challenges – including a night start and the looming possibility of rain. The race has been rain delayed several times in recent years so we had to make contingency plans with several pre-formatted pages and options to trim space and shift it to the next day's paper if the race was delayed a day.

In addition to the routine Page A1 and race story coverage, we offered a column off the race, several sidebars, a fans' page, a breakdown of the race by 100 mile increments and an all-access page with driver Tony Raines, who allowed us to spend the day with him before the race.

The race was decided by 5/1000ths of a second with Jamie McMurray taking the victory in one of the tightest finishes in NASCAR Nextel/Winston Cup history. Having our early pages (fans and Tony Raines) finished allowed the desk and designers time to focus on putting together a comprehensive package built off the thrilling finish.

We led A1 with the photo finish photo and David Whitley's column. That play allowed sports to lead with a reaction photo, Mike Bianchi's column and Ed Hinton's comprehensive race story.

We were able to present a fuller package with the pre-designed re-cap page, adding depth to the event coverage and columns. This also offered, we believe, a quick and easy way to for readers to review the entire 400 miles, see what happened to most of the name drivers in the race and quickly access the key race facts.

View the PDFs from the July 8 edition:

■ A1 | C1 | C8 | C9 | C10 | C11 | C12 | C13

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