Daytona 200 winner Gene Romero (3) leads Barry Sheene (7), who would become 500cc world champion that very season, Steve McLaughlin (83), who earlier in the weekend won the first AMA Superbike Championship Series race, and Skip Aksland (27), who was starting his second full season as a pro and was considered the up-and-coming young road racer of that era, in the 1976 Daytona 200. (AMA press kit photo)

I love this AMA press kit photo because it features four great racers and really tells a story. The shot shows defending Daytona 200 winner Gene Romero (3) leading Barry Sheene (7), who would become 500cc world champion that very season, Steve McLaughlin (83), who earlier in the weekend won the first AMA Superbike Championship Series race, and Skip Aksland (27), who was starting his second full season as a pro and was considered the up-and-coming young road racer of that era.

This was Sheene’s first race back at Daytona after his career was nearly ended there in a 170-mph crash on the banking in testing the year before. The nerve it took for him to get back on the track and hitting that banking at full throttle again had to be tremendous.

By the photo you can tell that the riders are 12 laps into the 52-lap race. The scoreboard in the background tells you that Kenny Roberts was leading the race over Johnny Cecotto, Pat Evans, Gary Fisher and Gary Nixon.

Venezuelan hero Cecotto went on to win the race. Of the group in the photo Romero finished the best. The former national champ scored fourth.

Also notable in this photo is the massive crowd, one of the biggest ever to see the Daytona 200, estimated at 70,000.