Dave Owens is an up-and-coming west coast stock car racer based out of Fresno, he admitting the female adulation as much of a rush as the driving itself. After winning the Riverside 500, he is making a swing of the American south on his way to his first ever Daytona 500. His current stop takes him to a small town dirt race track, where Sonny Leander Fox is the local "Dave Owens", Leander who is undefeated at the track. Leander is constantly followed by his adoring female groupies, which his girlfriend, straight-laced Jane Harris, doesn't mind in knowing that he needs to get such out of his system as he grows up. Leander too is heading to Daytona for the first time, Jane refusing to go with him until he does that growing up. It's dislike at first sight between Dave and Leander in their competition and Dave not liking the way Leander treats Jane. In his stay in town, Dave unwittingly gets caught up in the moonshine operation of the race promoter Charlie Bigg and the wealthy race track owner, young widowed Martha Bryan, who want Dave to be one of their runners in being able to outrun the revenuers. Falling squarely on the legal side but not being a fink, Dave gets caught in the middle when IRS agents Jack Hastings and Fred Bronson inform him that they know about him making a run for Charlie and Martha, even if he didn't know he was doing so at the time, and want him to help them shut down the operation or else send him to jail which would threaten his career, while, conversely, he starts to fall for Martha. Things get even more complicated when it looks as if a competitor is trying to corner the moonshine market and will do whatever required, including kill, to achieve that goal. Dave suspects the culprit is Leander, which if so would mean that Jane too is in potential danger.—Huggo