DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When he raced at Daytona in 1960, Tiger Tom Pistone used to drive with a complete set of scuba gear in his car. Why? Because he was afraid of drowning in Lake Lloyd, of course.

Laugh if you want, but hey, Pistone didn’t drown. Of course, he never got anywhere close to the lake, but that's beside the point.

Nestled amid the high-banked turns, soaring grandstands, blur-fast cars, and occasionally soused patrons of Daytona International Speedway sits the 29-acre Lake Lloyd, one of NASCAR’s iconic-slash-peculiar landmarks.

Construction crews created the lake in 1958 by excavating dirt to form the banks in turns 1-2 and 3-4. The lake, named for J. Saxton Lloyd, a local Daytona notable, served as a retention pond to prevent flooding in all but the most extreme circumstances. NASCAR founder Bill France ordered the lake stocked with 65,000 fish, and that’s where the legend of Lake Lloyd began.

View photos Stocking Lake Lloyd with fish. (Courtesy DIS) More

If there’s a stationary object anywhere near a race track, eventually a driver will run into it, and the lake is no exception. Tommy Irwin was the first to put a car in the lake, the year after the track opened in 1960.

View photos Tommy Irwin's car pulled from Lake Lloyd. More

Irwin’s trip to Daytona’s briny not-so-deep inspired Pistone to race with the breathing apparatus in his car, since Pistone couldn’t swim.

Fortunately, Pistone never made Lake Lloyd’s acquaintance. The same can’t be said for Bay Darnell in 1964 or Dave Stacy in 1994, who leaped an entire embankment to end up in the water:

Reinforced walls now ensure that no driver will put a car into the lake again unless they're trying really, really hard.

Oh, but it's not just cars that make their way into Lake Lloyd. One day in 1968, driver Jim Hurtubuise landed his seaplane in the lake and walked over to the garage to run that year's Daytona 500. Fellow racer Tiny Lund, who at 320 pounds was definitely not "tiny," jumped aboard for a ride home ... but the overloaded plane couldn't take off with Lund aboard.

Much more often, Lake Lloyd has hosted vehicles that are actually supposed to be there. The lake briefly hosted powerboat events until Byrne E. Taylor, a physician, was ejected from his boat during a wreck and struck by a fellow competitor's boat. Taylor died of a broken neck, and speedboat races at Daytona were no more.

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