It’s the weekend that race fans have been waiting for: the Daytona 500.

Since July 2013 when the massive Daytona Rising construction project began, fans have seen their speedway torn down and rise up. It's history in the making and this weekend will mark the first official race since every single finishing touch was completed on the project.

There is one race fan in particular, the longest tenured speedway employee in history, who has seen the speedway evolve every step of the way.

Thousands of tickets are processed every day. It takes precision, accuracy and speed. A demand that 95-year-old “Lightnin'” Juanita Epton knows better than anyone else.

This is her turf. The will call office.

She’s been there since 1958 when the ticket office opened at the Daytona International Speedway. But Lightnin' was here well before she started counting tickets.

“Wanna make sure everybody has plenty of tickets on hand to take care of the customers,” she said.

Her late husband was a scorekeeper for the beach races dating back to 1945. He’s the one who gave her the nickname of Lightnin'.

“He said he never knew when or where I’d strike,” she said.

Just like Lightnin', the races on Daytona Beach were just as unpredictable.

“They would go into the ocean. Some say they weren’t handling it just right and some said they went in to cool the motors so that they could go on. But they’d slip and slide through those turns. It was a hair raising experience.”

She sat at the score stand around the first turn.

“We ate a bucket of sand every time we got up there.”

Since those days a lot has changed; from the track, to the location and the millions of loyal fans.

“This area was scrub grass and sand,” Epton said.

In 1959 the track was complete, proceeded by decades of improvements.

“I’ve seen so much of it change,” she said.

But in 2013, a $400 million reimagining of this American icon dubbed the Daytona Rising changed everything.

“We tore down 90 percent of the grandstands,” said Len Moser, vice president of the Barton Marlow Company. “We’ve put in almost 2 million man hours. The building is almost a mile long and we’ve put almost 41 million pounds of steel in place.”

All of it supports more than 101,000 seats for an epic fan experience.

“It’s unrecognizable from what it was before,” Moser said.  

Final touches kept crews racing to the finish line all to be race ready for the Daytona 500.

“I can hardly wait to see that crowd,” Epton said.

But in all her years logging ticket sales, Lightnin rarely leaves her post to peek at the race action.

“I worked ‘em all, but I have never attended one, because I belong here.”

It’s what makes Lightnin' happy.

“I have work to do,” Epton said.

Gone in a flash, Lightnin' appears at the window where eager fans are ready to claim their treasured tickets.

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