Indy cars are expected to be limited to about 185 mph today during their first visit to Daytona International Speedway in nearly 50 years. That's fine with former driver Len Sutton.

Sutton, 81 and living in Portland, Ore., was among the last to drive an Indy car at what was then the nation's fastest track. He remembers the open-wheel cars of 1959 being unable to handle the incredible forces generated on the high-banked track that was then NASCAR's new shrine.

Two drivers were killed, the second in what was described as the most gruesome Indy-car accident to that point. Tony Bettenhausen withdrew, saying the track "was too fast for me."

Afterward, the drivers vowed never to race there again, and series officials agreed with them, canceling the race that was to occur on the Fourth of July weekend.

Ironically, stock cars substituted for them, starting a holiday tradition that continues.

"The surface had undulation that didn't like you," Sutton said of Daytona's oval. "You'd come flying off turn two and the transition off the (31-degree) banking to the flat backstretch was way too sharp.

"Instead of rolling into (the backstretch), you'd bottom out, get airborne, and it would just throw you around. It was scary."

That's where and possibly how George Amick was killed on the last lap of the track's only day of Indy-car racing, April 4, 1959. Sutton remembers Amick chasing Bob Christie off the banking in a heated battle for third place in the first race of the doubleheader.

"He went across that transition at full throttle and just lost it," Sutton said of Amick, who was the 1958 runner-up for both the Indianapolis 500 and the series championship. "You could get away with that in a stock car because it was slower, but not in an Indy car."

Pole speed for that Indy-car race was 173.210 mph, but Amick ended up going faster in a later qualifying session. He went 176.887, which made him America's fastest automobile driver. (Johnny Thomson won the '59 Indy pole at 145.908.)

Two months earlier, Bob Welborn won the track's first NASCAR pole at 140.581.

The Indy Racing League wants no part of the traditional oval, which has been repaved and smoothed in recent years. Instead, the two-day test will be on a 10-turn, 2.73-mile course that winds through the infield, meanders down the backstretch and uses two of the oval's high-speed corners: the third and the fourth.

A speed-slowing chicane on the backstretch will make the third turn less dangerous, but the quick acceleration of Indy cars will allow the five drivers -- Sam Hornish Jr., Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Vitor Meira -- to reach maximum speed somewhere in the middle of the fourth turn.

Ordinarily, Indy cars could reach 230 mph on such an oval track, but in this case the cars will be equipped with larger wings that will reduce speeds in the faster sections but increase them in the slower infield section. Wings act much like cars pulling parachutes, adding air drag. In this case, the extra resistance equates to about 2,500 pounds.

Hence, the 185 mph limit.

"They'll be flat (on the accelerator), easy, coming off the fourth corner," Ganassi Racing engineer Mitch Davis said of the drivers. "With those wings, the IRL can make the cars as fast or as slow as they want them.

"This should be just about right, but that's what the test is for."

The 31-degree banking will be the steepest Indy cars have faced since 1959, seven degrees more than Texas Motor Speedway and 11 degrees more than Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway's corners are banked at nine degrees.

IRL officials will use the next two days as a precursor to at least a winter testing program in the future. But if all goes well and track officials agree, Indy cars could have a road course race at the facility as early as the 2008 season.

The other items being tested are Honda's new 3.5-liter engines and 100 percent ethanol fuel.

Marshall Teague was the other Indy-car driver killed at Daytona in 1959. He lost control of his car and flipped in testing a week prior to the inaugural Daytona 500.

According to Indy-car historian Donald Davidson, track builder Bill France had offered $10,000 to any driver who could turn a lap of at least 180 mph. That didn't happen then, and with some 45-mph corners in the infield, it won't happen today, either.