September 14, 1958: Welborn Stakes Claim in Salisbury

NASCAR scheduled races for two of its major series on September 14, 1958. The Grand National drivers were at Atlantic Rural Fairgrounds for the Richmond 200. Speedy Thompson won the race, and Lee Petty was second.

About 250 miles southwest of Richmond, Salisbury Super Speedway hosted its first major NASCAR event - a convertible series race. The track hosted one other major race - a Grand National event - on October 5, 1958. I'll blog about that race in a few weeks so you likely have a pretty good idea the winner of that race.

The convertible race had an odd race distance - 155 laps, 96.9 miles. Twenty-six cars started the race with Larry Frank on the pole. The Petty teams were quite busy that day. Papa Lee was racing in Richmond, and he had two more cars in the convertible race. His brother, Julian, fielded three cars at Salisbury.

Julian's 3 cars were driven by the race winner, Bob Welborn as well as Tiny Lund and Ken Rush.

Petty Engineering's two Oldsmobiles were driven by Richard in car #2 and Fireball Roberts in Lee's traditional #42. From what I can tell, the race was the one and only time Roberts raced in a car fielded by the Pettys.

Most of the Petty cars qualified well. Lund started on the front row alongside pole winner Frank. Fireball qualified the #42 third. Eventual race winner qualified 6th, and Julian's 3rd driver Ken Rush started 7th. Richard had to start from way back in 17th - but his night did improve as he eventually finished 5th in the race.

I haven't been able to find a race report for a September 15th paper. But I did find a preview of the event in the Spartanburg Herald. Perhaps Tim Leeming or others can flip through Greg Fielden's Rumblin' Ragtops book to see if much was written about the race.

Source: Spartanburg Herald

Turned my RR post into a blog post with a little bit more info. Enjoy.

https://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2015/09/september-14-1958-welborn-stakes.html

Monday's September 15, 1958 papers carried sad news of the Sunday death of Norfolk, Virginia midget driver, Archie Coats of injuries sustained on Saturday night at Virginia Beach:

The track at Richmond's Atlantic Rural Exposition was going to be a really busy place just 5 days after the NASCAR Grand National race. The State Fair of Virginia started on September 19 and co-promoters Paul Sawyer and Joe Weatherly had the half-mile Richmond dirt venue booked for the NASCAR Mid-Atlantic National Championship Double Point Modified races on consecutive Saturday nights, as well as AMA National Championship motorcycle races and IndyCar races. In addition, the State Fair folks were presenting the Jack Kochman Hell Drivers daily and nightly on the half-mile during the fair's run. The Richmond track got a real workout starting with that September 14, 1958 GN race.

The Fredericksburg newspaper was reporting on thrilling automobile and aviation exhibitions (some involving pretty ladies ) each fall at the State Fair of Virginia as far back as 1916. That would have been at the old one-mile Richmond dirt track on The Boulevard (current site of The Diamond baseball park) where Big Bill France came down from Washington and raced his "Big Car."

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