Racing History Minute - July 23, 1950

Today we return to Charlotte, NC. No, not to the mile and half facility near Concord, but the 3/4 mile dirt track first known as Charlotte Speedway. This is the track where, just over a year before today's minute NASCAR would run its first Strickly Stock Race. We are going to the 17th Grand National (or Strickly Stock) race for NASCAR, the 9th race of the 1950 season.

Twenty-six drivers entered the event but my resource only indicates the pole winner, who was Curtis Turner driving the Eanes Motor Company Oldsmobile. He would lead the field to the green flag for 150 miles/200 laps of competition. In fact, when the green flag fell, so did Turner's right foot as he stormed into the lead he would hold for the entire 200 laps. This was the second consecutive race in which Turner led EVERY lap. Only two drivers, Bill Blair and Bill Rexford, were able to put the pressure on Turner in the early going, but Blair suffered a broken spindle in his Cadillac and had to park it to finish 16th in the final rundown. Rexford experienced engine failure in his Oldsmobile and was done for the day.

Lee Petty and Glenn Dunnaway, both driving Plymouths, were both running in the top five in the late stages of the race when both lost wheels and were done. Lee would be credited with 11th finishing position and Dunnaway with 12th.

Turner left the race with the lead in the National Championship points race for the year.

Top five finishers were:

1. Curtis Turner, Eanes Motor Company Oldsmobile, winniing $1,500.00

2. Chuck Mahoney, Brooks Motors Mercury, winning $750.00

3. Herb Thomas, Thomas Plymouth, winning $500.00

4. Jimmie Lewallen, Mercury, winning $400.00

5. Dick Burns, Oldsmobile, winning $300.00

Sixth through tenth were George Hartley, Donald Thomas, Frank Mundy, Tim Flock, and BillSnowden.Buck Baker finished 14th, Bill Blair 16th, Jim Paschal 20th and Gayle Warren in 26th and last position.

Makes of cars in this race included, Oldsmobile, Mercury, Plymouth, Ford, Lincoln, Nash, Chevrolet, Pontiac and Hudson.

One more historic note about this date, July 23, 1950. Jim Roper, who was declared the winner of NASCAR's first Strictly Stock Race after Glenn Dunnaway (12th place in today's rundown) was disqualified for beefed up springs in his car at that first race, was racing in a 20 lap event. The twenty lap "Strickly Stock" event was in Pratt, Kansas and was an "outlaw" event. In Kansas, Jim Roper would win the 20 lape event on the 1.6 mile paved oval at an average speed of 67.659 mph.

Oh, and one more "historical note" for today. It is my younger brother, Richard's birthday. Richard competed in NASCAR's Late Model Sportsman Division in the 70s throughout South Carolina and Georgia. Happy Birthday little brother.

Honor the past, embrace the present, dream for the future

Lee Petty suffered a penalty worse than Roper. The GN series raced its previous event about 3 weeks earlier - July 2nd - in Rochester NY. With 3 weeks of downtime, Petty apparently decided he still needed and wanted to race. But Bill France Sr took issue with Lee taking part in races not sanctioned by NASCAR. When the GN cars raced at Charlotte in late July, Lee was stripped of 809 points - the entire amount he'd earned to that point of the 1950 season. Red Byron, the defending series champion from 1949, was also stripped of his accumulated points for the same reason. So Petty started the Charlotte race with zero points.

In the final race of the season, the championship came down to Bill Rexford and Fireball Roberts. Rexford prevailed and won the championship. Lee rallied from zero points on July 23rd to finish 3rd in the series standings. Had France not stripped him of all his points he could have easily won the championship over Rexford and Fireball.

Interestingly, Byron didn't learn his lesson - for flat didn't care (probably the latter). He continued to race in non-NASCAR races. At the end of the season, France again stripped Red of his points. Yes, the 1949 champion and the man who coined NASCAR's name and acronym finished the 1950 season with a goose egg in the points column.

I'm still trying to find an article from July 1950 announcing the points penalty.

Wasn't the first time Big Bill France - then known as "Wild Bill" - had shown his arse end, so to speak, to Red Byron, as evidenced in this pre-NASCAR story in the January 2, 1946 Sarasota Herald-Tribune :

Talk about coincidental timing! This story was told from Richard's perspective in today's [ Part 2 ] of Ed Hinton's ESPN.com feature on the France family.

Richard Petty, still NASCAR's winningest driver with 200 victories and seven championships, recalls the first time France came down on his father, pioneer stock car racer Lee Petty.

In 1950, "Daddy was leading the [NASCAR] point standings," Richard, who was 13 at the time, remembers. "Bruton Smith put on a race over there somewhere around Charlotte."

It was an off weekend for NASCAR, so the Petty family loaded up Lee's car and went to compete in the NSCRA race.

When France found out about it, "He took all of Daddy's points," Richard says. "And Daddy started all over again [with zero points in midseason]

"Daddy would have won the championship real easy, and he still wound up second in the point standings.

"But Bill just wanted to show all the people that he had the power to do that."

Ed Hinton married the late journalist Joe Whitlock's late wife Sno (she really was born Sno White.)

Whitlock used to call Hinton his husband-in-law!

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