What I remember about Nascar's short lived Speedway Car Division.

One of the first races of the Speedway Cars was held at the old Raleigh Speedway. The track was fairly new and Big Bill knew that Sam Nunis had been promoting AAA Speedway Cars for years at the North Carolina Fairgrounds Race Track .

At the time I was spending as much time as I could around Joe Epton, Track Mgr. ( NASCAR'S Chief Scorer) of the Raleigh Speedway.

Two weeks before the scheduled race they only had 13 entries. The call went out to all the modified car owners for help. They found 5 Speedway Cars that had races back in the 30s and pulled the old Offenhauser enginesand replaced them with Modified Ford Engines.

The one outstanding thing I remember was at the last minute a man showed up with an old Speedway Car powered by a Model T Ford that had been converted with an overhead cam.

60 years later I can still remember the sound of that 4 Banger going down the backstrech during the Time Trials. A sound thet I'll never forget. Beautiful!

That old car with it's poured bearings didn't last long, but it ran with the pack for about 30 LAPS.

I don't remember whowon the race, but I realize now I saw a part of NASCAR History.

Thank you for sharing, Jim. A terrific memory.

Here's a Google News Archive link to the Associated Press coverage in the Charleston, SC paper of the July 4th, 1952 AAA Speedway car race at Raleigh that drew 20,000 spectators:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZglZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JkYNAAAAIBAJ&pg=3271,799543&dq=southern+speedway+raleigh&hl=en

Thanks very much Mr. Streeter!

Jim, thanks for sharing that story. How interesting it must have been to have been a part of that. You are truly a huge part of racing history. Having had the pleasure of listening to some of your memories first hand, I hope you will continue to share memories here. You are a walking, talking example of what is good about the history of this sport.

After making the post about the NASCAR Speedway Division yesterday, I tried to remember more.

Today I went to Google,what little I could find helped me some. The only records Google had ended in June of 53.The Raleigh race happened after that. It was the last gasp. Not well attended. Buck Baker didn't compete with his Cadilac , Ralph Ligouri did, none of the California drivers, a few Yankee Modified Drivers. Big Bill had dig into his pocket to pay the small purse.

The Friday night Races were still well attended. After the bad crash in September on the mile track, it was never used again except for Late Model Cars. Sportsman were very popular on the 1/4 mile flat track.

I'll try to tell more at a later time.

Jim the history of the Speedway Div. is fairly well documented in tha back of Greg Fieldens book Rumblin' Ragtops for any members that may have a copy of this book.There are several photos of some of the cars also.

Laverne, thank you for the comment about "Rumblin Ragtops". It is almost magic that I was doing my Racing History segment today out of that same book. I had forgotten that Greg Fielden had covered that series in the Ragtops book. I really appreciate you pointing that out.

Jim Streeter, and others, I plan to do the Legendtorial on Tuesday show on the Speedway series after I have read the section in Greg's book and see where I can go with it. That should be a real "Racing Through History" adventure.

So, all who may be interested in the Speedway Division, come by Tuesday for the show and see what I come up with. From what I "skimmed" through this morning, it should be interesting but will certainly be enlightening. Was to me.

Started to work on the Legendtorial this afternoon concerning the Speedway Division, which, as you said Jim, was short lived for sure. Not sure how it's going to turn out, but I will be talking about that interesting experiment by Big Bill into a world he should have stayed away from. See you Tuesday for Racing Through History, right here on RacersReunion Radio.

Tim ,I look forward to it!