August 4, 1963: Paschal's Music City Three-Peat

On August 3, Tim Leeming featured a race at Oklahoma State Fairgrounds Speedway. The [ August 3, 1956 race ] was won by Jim Paschal. Billy Biscoe had a poignant reply to it about his friendship with Paschal and included a picture of the trophy Jim won at the "OK corral".

Today's Petty blog post covers another Paschal win. A day later (plus 7 years), Paschal won his third consecutive race at Nashville's fairgrounds speedway. Driving a #42 Petty Plymouth, Paschal won and teammate Richard finished 4th.

Tiny Lund created a bigger headline than Paschal's triple play. After getting out of shape, he was drilled by David Pearson. Lund's car jumped the fence, tore down a section of the billboards ringing the track, and burst into flames.

Fortunately, Lund was uninjured - and a laughable moment resulted after he exited the car.

Read on for more:

http://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2013/08/august-4-1963-music-city-triple-play.html

My apologies, Chase. I picked the same race to the Minute today. I should have realized you would post it because Paschal won. I guess I was rushing to get things done before church. I am sorry and I'll try not to let it happen again.

That was quite a photo sequence of the Lund-Pearson crash.

I was surprised to see from the first newspaper clip that Nashville in 1963 was already a multi-day show.

Our fairgrounds GN races in Richmond at the time were strictly one day events. Cars were not allowed to crank engines until noon on Sunday, when church services were theoretically over... then practice, then qualifying, then the race itself... all on Sunday afternoon.

Do you know when Nashville added lights? I can remember sometime from around 1964 or so sitting outside in the car and listening to the Nashville races on the AM car radio as the signal faded in and out. Our local racing station at the time was WXGI in Richmond and it was daylight only before later reducing power at night.

1st GN race under the lights was June 3, 1965. Here is link to Tim's post about it.

http://racersreunion.com/community/forum/stock-car-racing-history/24216/racing-history-minute-june-3-1965

Thanks.

A few other photos became available just today when The Tennessee published a "Nashville Then" gallery of August 1963.

Oh my. David Pearson and Johnny Bruner in a promo pic for the race shot at the Mercury Motel.

King, Jim Estes, and Paschal pre-race.

Paschal accepts the winner's trophy. Jim Paschal is wearing the same Rebel 300 shirt in this photo as he is in the victory lane photo form 1963. Guess its possible he wore the same shirt 2 years in a row - and a uniform in neither!

Thanks to Russ Thompson, here is a photo of a shiny Tiny car racing Joe Weatherly before Lund's car earthquaked Nashville's billboards.

And looks like Little Joe is racing in his Rebel 300 shirt.