Beadle helped Evergreen earn its reputation

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Monroe — It took just a few laps for two-time NASCAR Cup series champion David Pearson to realize Evergreen Speedway was something special. The year was 1980 and Pearson had been invited by Evergreen’s promoter, Bob Beadle, to drive in a NASCAR Winston West Series race. Beadle was also a car owner in the West Series and he had met Pearson through a fellow owner. “He didn’t race for very long,” Mickey Beadle, Bob’s son and successor as promoter at the Monroe track, said. “But it was cool. He was the first superstar to come out here for us.” Pearson liked the way the track was laid out, and when he said it “raced like a superspeedway,” the slogan still used by Evergreen Speedway — The Superspeedway of the West — was born. After spending most of the past 30 years overseeing Evergreen Speedway, Mickey Beadle recently decided to sell the company his father and uncle helped start in 1978 to manage operations at the speedway. “Evergreen was one of the first tracks I was associated with,” said NASCAR chief executive Brian France, who served as the West Series director early in his career. “The Beadles were dominant players in racing for many years … they were good for NASCAR.” Sitting in his speedway office surrounded by racing memorabilia and photos, Beadle reflected on the connection between NASCAR and the track in Monroe.
At the time of Pearson’s visit, the National Stock Car Racing Association oversaw what was still very much a regional sport, born of moonshine runners in the Deep South. A year earlier, at the 1979 Daytona 500, the infield fight between Cale Yarborough and the Allison Brothers, David and Bobby, was televised live to a national audience — an event many consider to be the launch point of NASCAR’s steady rise in popularity throughout the 1980s and ’90s. “(The Beadles) were very helpful in NASCAR getting a presence in a market away from the South,” France said. “They played a role in getting the Northwest Tour started … we couldn’t operate a major NASCAR regional series without Evergreen on the schedule.” Evergreen Speedway hosted the inaugural race on the Northwest Tour in 1985, and that same year Bob and Mickey Beadle approached France with an ambitious plan. “They were pioneers,” France said of the Beadles’ proposal to put on a 500-lap race at Evergreen. “That long an event, that kind of money — they took a big leap of faith.” The first Washington 500, which Mickey Beadle called his favorite memory of the Monroe track, included three days of racing with both NASCAR touring series ­and Evergreen’s local drivers. “People said we couldn’t do it … it’d never been done.” Beadle said. “I went to Daytona and a couple other Cup tracks, saw what they did and how they did it, and put it all together here.” West Series driver Derrike Cope took the checkered flag in the first Washington 500. Cope, who would later win the 1990 Daytona 500, earned $17,305 — quite a sum at the time. The Washington 500 became a much-anticipated annual event, even more so after the purse climbed to $50,000 and the Beadles convinced some big NASCAR names to make the trip to Monroe. Legendary team owner Junior Johnson and superstar drivers like Bill Elliott — who Beadle called “the most amazing” racer he ever saw — Geoff Bodine, Sterling Marlin, Kenny Schrader and Davey Allison took time off from the Cup schedule to race at Evergreen in the late 1980s and early ’90s. “One year we followed the Firecracker 400 (in Daytona) and out of the top five drivers, three came to Evergreen the next week,” Beadle said. “You can’t ask for better than that — we had the best of the best.” In 1995, NASCAR contacted Mickey Beadle and offered to put Evergreen on the schedule for the inaugural season of its newest national series, the Craftsman Trucks. Beadle was given five minutes to decide. “There was no choice of dates or anything, just ‘Do you want one?’” Beadle said. “I couldn’t call anyone, get any advice or anything. So I said ‘yes.’” The truck series raced at Evergreen for five years, bringing more NASCAR notables to Monroe, including seven-time Daytona 500 winner Richard Petty, before the relationship ended after the race in 1999. Today, as the only NASCAR home track in the state of Washington, Evergreen Speedway’s local late-model drivers compete in the Whelen All-American Series. Local drivers compete for points on a standard scale, allowing for track, state and national champions to be crowned. Although NASCAR ended sponsorship of the Northwest Tour in 2006 for monetary reasons, France acknowledged the importance of local racing programs like Evergreen’s. “It’s the grass roots of what we do,” he said. “(Local racing) will always be important. It’s where our drivers come from and where our fans come from.”