For everyone else, especially NASCAR, it had a more far-reaching significance.

Wallace took the lead with five laps remaining in the Kroger 200 and he held off a charge by Brendan Gaughan to become the first African-American to win a national touring race in NASCAR since Wendell Scott in 1963.

The 20-year-old driver from Mobile, Ala., led a race-best 96 laps at the speedway where Scott, who lived 29 miles away in Danville, Va., made 23 career starts.

It means everything, Wallace said with eyes still welled with tears. This is an emotional one for me.

Scott was the first African-American to win a NASCAR race at Jacksonvilles Speedway Park on Dec. 1, 1963. NASCAR waited more than an hour to post the official results, and by then the crowd was gone and Scott never got the race trophy.

Scott died of spinal cancer in 1990 without a trophy. The Jacksonville Stock Car Hall of Fame invited the Scott family to Golden Isles Speedway in Waynesville, Ga., in 2010 and presented them with a trophy that was a replica of other trophies awarded during the 1963 season.

Wallace not only got his trophy Saturday, he got one of the most-prized possessions in motor sports a famous Martinsville grandfather clock.

I want to be a role model and inspiration to the younger kids and just change the sport as a whole and change it for the better, bring in a new face and just new activity into the sport, and winning helps everything, Wallace said. Winning, theres nothing better than winning. And I think thatll help kind of pave its own way there, and hopefully get my name out there even more.

Wallaces victory overshadowed a late-race run-in between Kevin Harvick and Ty Dillon. Harvick drives for car owner Richard Childress in the Sprint Cup Series and Dillon is Childress grandson. The two collided on the track and carried their argument to pit road where the teams had to be separated by NASCAR officials