July 18 Petty history: Beginnings and victories

1971 - The King wins the Northern 300 at Trenton Speedway in New Jersey. Sadly, the Schaefer race sponsorship from a year earlier did not continue to the 1971 NASCAR race. But those Indy fellers at the new Pocono track, well they got to enjoy the Schaefer 500 throughout the 70s. But I digress...

http://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2012/07/july-18-this-day-in-petty-history-part-1.html

And July 18 was a memorable date for Richard Petty in back-to-back years.

1958 - RP made his first career NASCAR Grand National start in Toronto, Ontario.
1959 - He wins his first career race - a convertible event at Columbia, South Carolina.

http://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2012/07/july-18-this-day-in-petty-history-part-2.html

Quite a historic date, to be sure.

A brief writeup from an article at CanadianRacer.com suggests that the Canadian press thought the NASCAR Grand National racing was boring as opposed to the Modifieds:

1958 Grand National Race
The next visit for the NASCAR Grand National division was on July 18, 1958. The track was the 1/3 mile oval at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto. Over 9,700 fans were in attendance for the evening which also included the regular CNE modified stock car division (early version of a super modified). There were three heat races with the winners being Shorty Rollins, Lee Petty and Cotton Owens. In the 100 lap feature Lee Petty took over the lead on lap 72 and held on for the victory. The event was fairly incident-free except for some minor spins due to the track still being somewhat wet from a heavy rain earlier in the evening. The purse for this race was $4200.

Of interest, is that this was Richard Petty's first Grand National race. He had previously competed in a few NASCAR Convertible Division races. In an event that is now famous in Petty lore, Richard crashed out of the race after being bumped by his father.

Another interesting note on this race was the attitude that the local Toronto papers took toward it. More coverage was given to the regular CNE Speedway Modified Division races and the papers took the view that the NASCAR race was boring.

So I guess this "boring" label started way back then. I had never heard that the King got bumped by his own father. now thats not keeping it in the family.

A King-sized Bump