Biggest NASCAR Fire Not Involving Jet Dryer? Richmond 1973 - Thanks to TMC Collection / Brian John Hauck Photos

Thanks to our RR member TooMuchCountry / TMC-Chase and his outstanding collection of articles describing wins by Richard Petty through the years, I have found in his collection of posts an article in Southern MotoRacing so accurately describing the huge fire I witnessed at Richmond Fairgrounds on September 9, 1973 at the beginning of the Capital City 500 (won by Richard Petty, of course).

I am happy to note that my memory did not fail me and that according to the article, " Many drivers, officials and others connected with the sport described the scene as the most awesome they had witnessed in any auto racing mishap."

Our own Raytona / Ray Lamm was most likely at this Richmond race. Perhaps he has a photo he could post.

Jim Reep ... were you there? Rick Newsome finished 13th.

Bud Moore told me that he was screaming at DW on the radio all the way down the Richmond backstretch to stop. He always said that DW driving into Baxter Price's car was the stupidest thing he ever saw at a racetrack. Guess that's why DW didn't bring it up on the telecast during the Juan/jet dryer incident at Daytona..

Thank you TMC for your outstanding collection of Richard Petty History posts. This is the article from the TMC collection of posts:

SEPTEMBER 9, 1973 CAPITAL CITY 500 - Richmond, Virginia

I missed in the first reading of the above story the use by NASCAR of E.I.R.I. (except in rare instances) whereby they never displayed the red flag to stop the Richmond race for the 1 hour, 25 minute period it was halted.

NASCAR "contended" there was no reason to use the red flag, since the track was already blocked and the race had already stopped. That was outstanding NASCAR logic which allowed cars to be worked on during the lengthy halt and cleanup and return some of the field to the race which was only 3 laps old.

As described, Junior Johnson was not a happy camper. Our current crop of NASCAR officials obviously have nothing on the old crop for creative use of rules, lol!

Yep, Bud tuned DW loose and NASCAR's panel "voted" Lennie Pond Rookie of the Year over DW. DW alwys claimed Bud was more concerned with saving his new radio out of the fire than with saving DW!

Thanks for the comment Dave. Very nice of you. I've had a ball so far with the 200 Wins series and learned a lot of info, met a lot of people, and received a lot of assistance. But I'm merely the blogger and messenger. Even as a 35+ year Petty fan, I never got to see any of them win.

Most of the content of the blog entries have been provided by others. I've tried to include attribution where I can for anything that wasn't in my collection (or poached from ebay ads). For the articles, the overwhelming majority of them have been graciously provided by RR member [ Jerry Bushmire ].

Here is 1 of 5 photos, I took of the fire at Richmond. The field wadded up in turn 4 and a fuel fire started. Cars were wedged into the armco guard rail. Everyone got out ok, but the fire raged for about 3 min. Other pix are on photobucket under 200winz. The BIG difference here was, at Richmond, they battled the blaze with fire extinguishers. Back in the day, there was no such thing as a jet dryer AND fire engines only pumped WATER. That chemical pumper at Daytona made all the difference in putting outTHATfire AND saving the racing surface! Oh yeah, if you heard Mike Joy tell the story of Cale Yarbrough hitting the fire engine at Richmond, Yup, I was there for that too! Have pix of the car, but sorry, not the fire engine!!

http://http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh224/200WINZ/Richmond%201973/

Thanks WINZ. I knew you were there. Was hoping you'd have photos to offer.Helping out with corrected link.

http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh224/200WINZ/Richmond%201973/

Thank you both, fellas.

How many of you remember Bosco Lowe in the spring 1985 Busch race at Charlotte driving the entire length of the grass infield then suddenly deciding to drive back up on the track right in front of oncoming traffic?

The result could have been a whole lot worse, but the resulting fireball was pretty spectacular. Bosco was not a real popular fellow that day.

Yes, that one flat out stunned me. Couldn't believe Frasson's fireball. And had no idea how badly hurt Williams was until much later.

It was the 79 Daytona LMS race. Some sadness bracketed by the good times of wins by Kyle and Richard Petty. I didn't realize (or had forgotten) until watching this clip again that it was Delma Cowart who plowed Frasson.

Mike Cox photos:

Straight from DW's mouth.... his account of the worst fire in NASCAR history:

DARRELL WALTRIP - DO YOU HAVE ANY GOOD RICHMOND STORIES?

"I caused the biggest wreck in the history of NASCAR, bigger than the ones at Talladega, at Richmond driving for Bud Moore. Have you never noticed that Bud never mentions me. All of these drivers will get on stage and he'll talk about all the great drivers he's had and he never mentions my name and I drove seven races for him in 1973. But we were in Richmond and he was running a 351 against everybody else's, they said they were 427s but they were more like 494s -- whatever they were they were big motors. He thought he could win with a 351 and I'm a rookie so I believe he can too. Anyway, we're at Richmond on the old race track. I qualified on the outside pole, Bobby (Allison) was on the pole and I was on the outside pole. They dropped the green flag and a guy named Baxter Price started dead last. He didn't even try to qualify, they just started him at the back of the field. On the third lap we were lapping him. He spun coming off of turn four and, of course, that race track was real narrow. He spun coming off of turn four and I'm all over the back of Bobby and all of a sudden Bobby dives down pit lane. Well, I wondered why and it didn't take very long for me to find out because Baxter Price was sitting sideways on the race track. I hit him right in the fuel cell and when I did it exploded. I mean, it was full of fuel and it just exploded. Of course, the track is blocked and everybody was just piling in -- there must have been probably 20 cars. Well, the gas is running all down underneath of them and everything is catching on fire. I'm sitting there and, of course, every driver is scared to death of fire and the last thing I heard is, 'Get that radio. Cut that radio off that roll bar and bring that radio in. Don't let that radio burn up.' The car burned up, but he didn't want that radio to burn up."

That's the best photo I've ever seen of the Richmond fire. Thanks. I guess that's Benny Parsons' L.G. DeWitt ride in the foreground.