Racing History Minute - Darlington

Someone asked me, via e-mail a couple days ago, why all my History Minutes are about NASCAR when there is so much racing history in other divisions of racing. I am well aware of the rich history of all of racing, but I add these posts to the STOCK car racing page here, so for me that means stock car racing. And as for why it's all about NASCAR, that too is somewhat simple to explain. It was always NASCAR for me. Always has been and always will be even when I have issues with NASCAR I would like to discuss. Anyone who is a member of RR and wants to post racing history of any other series, such as ARCA, PASS, K&N, or whatever, is more than welcomed, and encouraged, to do so. We want a record of stock car racing and just because NASCAR happens to be my home doesn't, by any means, indicate it is the only history welcome here.

When the end of August rolls around, there is little other NASCAR history that doesn't involve Darlington, SC and the Southern 500. Starting September 1st, this Minute will feature a Southern 500 for each date. The 1967 Southern 500 will, of course, be up to TMC Chase to write up as he issource of all things Petty here and does a most outstanding job in that role.

So, for today, we are going to talk about how and why Darlington Raceway came to be. Most know the story of how Harold Brasington, a hometown boy of Darlington, attended the 1949 Indy 500 and decided that stock cars could run a 500 mile race as well if they had a track on which to do it. Harold had been a fan of stock car racing for quite sometime and traveled around the southeast watching dirt track events as often as he could. After the 1949 Indy 500 he returned home and decided Darlington, South Carolina would be the perfect place for an asphalt track on which stock cars could compete for 500 miles.

Brasington went about convincing some friends, also stock car fans, that such a track would work and two such individuals, Barney Wallace and Sherman Ramsey were as excited as Harold when Harold told him what he was planning. Barney ran a small grocey store in a small neighborhood in Darlington County and Sherman owned 70 acres of land just outside the city limits of Darlington which he considered, for the most part, worthless except for his minnow pond. Barney went to the Savings and Loan where he had his savings account and withdrew funds to buy stock in Harold's venture. When the branch manager of the S&L found out the reason for the withdrawal he had major heart contractions and reactions more severe than Milburn Drysdale in the Beverly Hillbillies when Jed Clampett would want to make a withdrawal. Nevertheless, Barney took the money and bought stock. Sherman deeded Harold the property in return for stock and a promise that the minnow pond would not be disturbed.

On December 13, 1949, Harold Brasington "officially" broke ground on Darlington Raceway and it wasn't with a gold painted shovel. Harold drove the tractor! In fact, the locals would see Harold on the tractor or otherwise working as long as the sun was shining everytime they drove past. Harold was building a race track! Maybe not many in Darlington understood why, and even fewer believed in his dream or his efforts, but Harold believed.

The story goes, told to me by Harold Brasington himself in 1994, that he parked his car on Main Street and sold stock from the trunk of the car. He convinced many people to buy stock and invest in his dream. I neglected to ask him the going price for the stock then but I know most bought thinking they would help Harold pay his bills at the Insane Asylum to which he was surely headed.

By the spring of 1950, Darlington Raceway was beginning to look like a 1.25 mile race track. Harold began to search for a sanctioning body to sanction the first race. Not too many folks believed a stock car could run 500 miles in a race and there weren't many takers ready to jump in a sanction a fiasco in a small Southern town. Finally, however, the Central States Racing Association agreed to sanction the first "Southern 500" to be run on Labor Day. It was then that Harold constructed a 9,000 seat grandstand and let the word circulate that the total purse would be $25,000.00.

It wasn't long before Harold realized the CSRA would not be able to provide a sufficient number of racers for the 500 miles so Harold sought out Bill France to talk about his relatively new Grand National Division competing. France told Brasinton, initially, that he didn't think a 500 mile race is some small town in South Carolina would ever go, but he agreed to come look at the track. Upon seeing the track Harold build, France agreed to sanction the race. France stayed in Darlington for three weeks and made several suggestions to Brasington which included "fence off the entire track" and "start 75 cars rather than the 30 you planned on starting". Brasington was a little shocked at the suggestion of 75 entries as the CSRA had only ONE driver commit, but Big Bill said he would guarantee 75 entries. So, 75 became the target number of starters.

On Labor Day,1950, after South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond and his wife had cut the ribbon the first Southern 500 was underway. While the stands could seat 9,000, between 20,000 and 30,000 folks showed up that hot and sunny day. Traffic jams on the two lane highways leading into Darlington became the norm and the situation was one from which legendary stories arise. When the day was over, it was known that stock cars COULD and DID race for 500 miles, but that's a story for next week.

Darlington Raceway was the catalyst that set the NASCAR wheels in motion for the future, although it would be 1959 before the next "Super" track would open. Harold Brasington's dream turned out not only to be a benefit to the small, sleepy town of Darlington, but also to the sport itself. Without Darlington Raceway, stock car racing may not have gained the momentum to birth Daytona, then Charlotte, Atlanta, and all the other super speedways of today. NASCAR, and all of us who love NASCAR stock car racing owe a debt of graditute to Mr. Harold Brasington.

I will admit my special love for Darlington Raceway as it was there, at the spring convertible race in 1957, that I saw my first big time asphalt stock car race. The Southern 500 on Labor Day, then Labor Day weekend, was my family destination every year untilmy father was too sick to go in 1993 and passed away in October, 1993. I continued to go to cover the race for my radio show on the all-sports 24/7 FM station out of Lexington, South Carolina until I stopped that in 1996. It was then through tickets from a friend who worked for Ford that I continued to go until the last Southern 500 was run there. It still bothers me that Labor Day weekend does NOT include the Southern 500 in Darlington. That is a part of NASCAR's tradition that, in my opinion, should have never been allowed to disappear. Even though the race Labor Day weekend is in Atlanta now, I often daydream while watching the Atlanta event, that I am in the infield at Darlington and the hot sun of a South Carolina September afternoon is turning me beet red.

I would like to thank the late Jim Hunter for writing the book "A History of Darlington Raceway" which I read from time to time and enjoy each time. That small book has a huge history and many, many historic pictures. I had many an opportunity to be around Jim Hunter and we had several conversations about racing. Anytime Darlington was mentioned around Jim, his facial expression seemed to change to one of peace and contentment. Jim Hunter loved that place! He is a part of the Darlington legacy as well.

So, folks, hang on as we get ready to start a Southern 500 roll in these Racing History Minutes. I encourage any of you to post your memories and comments to any of the Southern 500 stories you wish. After all, we are all a part of this history.

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

It is interesting to reflect on just how much the Southern 500 dominated the stock car racing world for decades. The luster of it is all but gone now with the loss of the Labor Day weekend race and the rise of the Daytona 500 since 1979. But clearly Darlington was The Show for many, many years. In looking through racing history for August 30th, a Cup race wasn't held on this date until 1998 (Loudon). And even the Busch/NW series didn't race on August 30 until 1987 (Gresham Park).

I did find a few other races on this date in case anyone would like to post about them:

• 1958 - DuQuoin - USAC/ARCA
• 1959 - Dayton OH - ARCA
• 1964 - Winchester - ARCA
• 1964 - Illinois State Fairgrounds - USAC stock cars
• 1969 - Flat Rock Michigan - ARCA
• 1980 - Darlington - NASCAR Dash series
• 1980 - IRP - USAC stock cars
• 1980 - Hickory - NASCAR LMS
• 1980 - Quebec - NASCAR GN North
• 1981 - Minnesota State Fairgrounds - ASA
• 1981 - Riverside - NASCAR Winston West
• 1981 - Quebec - NASCAR GN North

Very interesting to learn of Brasington's plans to have the CSRA (Central States Racing Association) sanction his first Southern 500.

Very ironic that just this week our RR member, Jim Wilmore posted the news clip of black driver, Charley Stewart who began racing in the CsRA in 1949, the year before Darlington opened.

Link below to Jim Wilmore's post on CSRA driver, Charley Stewart:

http://stockcar.racersreunion.com/forum/topics/charlie-stewart-brea...

A couple of construction pics.

Alvin Hawkins - NASCAR starter/flagman - co-owner with Bill France Sr of Mantz's car in the 1st Southern 500.

Pace car for the 1st Southern 500

Think the Carolina crowd was ready for some big time, Southern racing?

Ribbon cutting ceremony ( Dargan Watts collection)

If anybody asks you... the answer to the trivia question of what year did the Southern 500 move from Labor Day Monday to Sunday is 1984 .

I used to rent one poolside motel room at the Sheraton Swamp Fox motel in Florence to dispense frozen daiquiris to the many racers and media who stayed there. With Sunday being a down day, everybody hung out at the pool and I had a number of blenders in that poolside room with several young ladies preparing refreshments.

For those who don't remember, moving the Southern 500 from Monday to Sunday was a HUGE change. It was such a big deal that Red Tyler asked the media to be sure to remind folks the race had been moved, as noted in the Spartanburg Herald of August 26, 1984.

Darlington track president Red Tyler was one of the real characters I had the opportunity to meet in stock car racing. In a meeting in Myrtle Beach in January 1981, Tyler talked then Darlington track president Barney Wallace into selling me 5,000 Southern 500 infield tickets at $3 each that I gave away to Wrangler Jeans retailers to give to their customers buying a pair of Wranglers. In 1981, $3 was the gross margin on a pair of our jeans, so the ticket purchase was a wash for me. It also required the purchase of 3 pair. Tyler was outgoing and vivacious, while Wallace was very quiet and reserved.

Tying Darlington and August 30th together, here is a concise race report for the 150 mile Dash series race won by Larry Hoopaugh at Darlington on August 30, 1980.

Source: News And Courier

I should have added that Barney Wallace passed in 1983 and Red Tyler suffered a fatal heart attack in 1994.

2nd place finisher Dean Combs of North Wilkesboro was a 5-time champion in the series that went by a variety of names, including Baby Grand, International Sedans, Darlington Dash, Daytona Dash, Goody's Dash among others.

Combs' car owner was Richmond Datsun dealer Irv Sanderson, who owned Boulevard Datsun just down the street from the old Richmond mile dirt track.

The "Ought Not" Datsun set a record for wins in the series.

Perhaps it is very appropriate, Chase, that you'd post an article today mentioning Combs, what with the big celebration this weekend at Middle Georgia - the track with a moonshine still.

Last I read, Combs had a run-in with the moonshine busters up around Junior Johnson's old neck of the woods. Dean claimed he was making "medicine."

By By Monte Mitchell Media General News Service

NORTH WILKESBORO N.C. -- Dean Combs -- who drove NASCAR races for a Richmond-based owner and with a Richmond-based sponsor -- has been charged in a North Carolina moonshine bust.

On Friday, Combs, 57, was charged with operating a still that authorities had blown up the night before.

Combs was a five-time champion of NASCAR's compact-car touring series in the 1970s and '80s and his 60 wins remain the series' all-time high. He won the 1980 and '81 titles driving a Datsun owned by Irv Sanderson, then a Richmond car dealer -- making Combs the first driver to win a NASCAR series championship in a foreign make.

Sanderson also owned cars that Combs drove in two dozen races in what is now the Sprint Cup Series. Best Products, a now-defunct Richmond-based retailer, was Combs' sponsor at times.

Combs and the authorities who blew up the still seemed entirely cordial with each other on Friday.

As rain fell that morning, Combs used his cell-phone camera to snap photos of the remains of a moonshine still that lay broken and blown apart on a hill behind his home and just a couple of hundred yards from the North Wilkesboro Speedway -- one of NASCAR's first tracks and one that Combs' father had once co-owned.

Combs said he used the still to make cold medicine or brandy.

"I'd drink it for a cold," he said. "It was mostly for cold medicine. There's not been any good apple brandy out here for years. It's better than what you buy at a store."

The Wilkes County Sheriff's Office destroyed the still in two explosions. Residents as far as four miles away reported hearing the loud booms.

Authorities said they seized about 200 gallons of corn liquor, said Shon Tally, an agent with N.C. Alcohol Law Enforcement. Twenty-four gallons were in plastic gallon jugs, and the rest was in glass jars. They also seized 3,000 pounds of sugar.

Combs was charged with manufacturing non-tax-paid liquor, possessing non-tax-paid liquor, possessing ingredients to manufacture non-tax-paid liquor and possessing equipment to manufacture non-tax-paid liquor.

It had been about a year-and-a-half since the last time authorities found a still in Wilkes County, Tally said. Officials often make purchases of non-tax-paid liquor, he said, "but to actually find a still, they're few and far between." Authorities acted on a tip.

"He had just finished running that morning," Tally said. "When he was draining the water out of it so we could move it, the steam was rolling off it."

Coincidentally, when a production company recently needed film footage to tell the story of NASCAR legend Junior Johnson running from revenuers back in the day, former champion driver Dean Combs got behind the wheel of a 1940 Ford and made a bootleg turn -- a sliding, high-speed 180-degree turn -- for the camera crew.

In addition to his driving, Combs had been a crew chief for a NASCAR team once owned by Johnson.

Combs owns a defunct go-cart track near the Wilkesboro track, and he said that the still was in one of the buildings there. When Tally and other agents came to his door Thursday afternoon, he took them to the still, he said. "The ALE man -- he was very nice and very helpful," Combs said.

The still was made of stainless steel. The boiler alone weighed about 1,000 pounds. Agents were trying to figure out how to get it out to destroy it.

"He [Dean] got his tractor, he pulled it up there for us," Tally said. "That's how accommodating he was. You couldn't ask for a nicer fellow."

Combs said that authorities were complimentary of the quality of his moonshine.

"They even bragged on it, said they'd never seen spring water that clear," he said. "I said, 'You need to put a label on it and stick it in the store."

Combs said that his interest in moonshine reflects part of Wilkes County's heritage.

"It's something I was always interested in," he said. "I wanted to see if I could make something drinkable. I guess I gave someone a quart I shouldn't have."

Monte Mitchell is a staff writer for the Winston-Salem Journal.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Deputy Sports Editor Randy Hallman contributed to this report.

In 2009, Stock Car Racing Magazine did an article on the troubled Baby Grand/International Sedan/DASH Series:

Humble Beginnings for a Dying Series: NASCAR Touring Series

In this era of NASCAR growth and expansion into new territory, one of the sanctioning body's divisions has struggled to maintain ties to its grassroots beginnings. Although NASCAR has announced it will no longer sanction the Goody's Dash Series after this year, the division leaves the sanctioning body's umbrella with a storied history--including its start at a drag strip, of all places. Monzas, Vegas, and Pintos... The Goody's Dash Series traces its roots to North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1973 when a group of local racers, led by Charlie Triplett, J.V. Reins, and Roger Hamby, began racing on a road course owned by former Grand National (now Winston Cup) team owner Bill Ellis. Ellis, a Wilkes County businessman who fielded a car for Marvin Panch and others in the '60s, was the proprietor of a drag strip and an adjacent road course near North Wilkesboro and is credited with promoting the first unofficial races of the series. "Bill Ellis came up with the idea to start with," recalls Triplett, who still lives in North Wilkesboro. "He wanted to run it in conjunction with his drag strip on a road course deal, and he'd run a couple or three races and then things happened and he decided that he didn't want to do that. Then a lot of the guys around the area, including myself, J.V. Reins, Richard Mash, Dean Combs, Roger Hamby, and Rolen Johnson, along with guys from Taylorsville and Lenoir and surrounding counties, we all got together and started talking and decided to see what we could do. An earlyrulebook touted the... "So we had a meeting at a Goodyear store (in North Wilkesboro), and we decided right then and there that we would organize this Baby Grand thing. We called them Baby Grand National cars ." The Baby Grand National Racing Association, Inc. (BGNRA) was formed June 26, 1973, and Triplett--the first president of the series--says the name stemmed from the cars' resemblance to the Grand National cars of the era, as paint schemes and numbers often matched those from Grand National cars. Although R.J. Reynolds, through its Winston brand, had already begun providing sponsorship for NASCAR's top division, now called Winston Cup, the division was referred to as the Grand National Division until the early '80s. Initially, the Baby Grand series was organized as a small touring series for American-made, four-cylinder, compact sedans , with teams primarily competing in cars they built themselves using parts from salvage yards and backyard garages. The intent was to keep the cost of the series as manageable as possible; hence the series' slogan, "The Poor Man's Way to Race," was at the heart of all decisions. Hamby, who went on to win Winston Cup Rookie of the Year honors as a car owner for Sterling Marlin in 1983, got his start in racing by building Baby Grand cars to sell to fellow competitors. "Back in those days you could get a car ready to race for about $10,000," recalls Hamby, "and we'd sell them complete, or put a rollcage in them or whatever. Some people were building their own, but very few were. I'd say we 'caged about all the cars and that's basically how I got started. Solid, long-term sponsorships... "We built everything: We built Datsuns; we built Opals. About anything that would come across the assembly line with a four-cylinder motor, we'd build it. We'd get them to hull the car and take out the seats and take everything out of it and bring it to us. Then we'd put rollcages and screw jacks in it. We'd go as far as they wanted us to go with it. "It was just a cheap way of racing, and those boys that raced back in those days, they'd go get an old junk car for $100 and we'd put a rollcage in it for--I think I charged $825 for the rollcage and screw jacks--and all he had to do was fix up an old motor. Basically, if they did it themselves, they could go racing for $3,000 to $3,500, and you just can't do that stuff today." NASCAR Sanctioning After a couple of years of racing as an independent organization, Triplett and others realized the series needed a new direction and turned to NASCAR to become the sanctioning body. The Goody's Dash Series "We approached NASCAR because I felt like we needed somebody who could give us a little bit more exposure," says Triplett. "We met with Pete Keller, who was over the Sportsman Division (now Busch Grand National) back then. We met with him at Hickory and then we made the trip, me and J.V. Reins and a couple of other guys, down to Daytona to the main office and verified it and made it official." In 1975, the organization began its inaugural season as a NASCAR-sanctioned touring series, crowning North Wilkesboro native Dean Combs as its first official driving champion at year's end. Combs, who has remained active in the series as a team owner, is considered the "Richard Petty" of Dash racing, winning 60 races and five championships as a driver. "When it first started, we didn't have templates," recalls Combs of that first season under the NASCAR sanction. "We didn't have anything but basically motor-tech, so there wasn't near as much to control as there is today. But (NASCAR) did a good job. We'd have, gosh, 40 cars show up for about every race, and it was competitive--real competitive. There weren't many times that people just ran off and left the field. Most of the time it was a race. It was a good show." Just as organizers had hoped, the series began to blossom under NASCAR's guidance. "In 1976, we really started running a lot of good races," says Combs. "We ran Rockingham, Atlanta, Darlington, and Dover. We've been to Texas (World Speedway), Pocono, and most of your short tracks around, and the series really did well for a while." Combs did quite well himself, winning the series championship in 1975, '76 and '77. As the series progressed into the '80s, racing technology changed, but one of the most significant occurrences to happen in all of NASCAR came in the Dash Series. In 1980, Combs, who began racing in the series driving a Ford Pinto and then a Chevrolet Vega, made the switch to the Datsun 200 SX, marking the first time a foreign make ran a full season in a NASCAR series. Combs went on that season to become the first driver in the history of NASCAR to win a series championship in a foreign-made car. The Iron Duke However, a NASCAR rule change a couple of years later allowed the first production motor--the Pontiac Iron Duke--into the series and brought what Combs and his peers believe to be the first significant rise in costs. The four-cylinder engines prominent in the series up until then were costing teams in the neighborhood of $600; the Iron Duke increased the price of engine development to as much as $22,000, according to Combs. "General Motors came in and gave probably five or six people a motor and everybody else had to buy everything, and it just really hurt the series," says Combs. "They got down to where they wouldn't have but 10 or 12 cars at the racetrack. It went from basically a hobby to a full-time job of maintaining your car, just night and day, trying to keep up with that Iron Duke motor to be competitive." Prior to Pontiac entering the series, part of what made racing in the Dash Series unique in its early days, and set it apart from Winston Cup racing, was the limited amount of factory support, which required teams to become more innovative with their cars and engines. That innovation also seemed to disappear with the allowance of production parts into the series, according to Combs. "I think we were more innovative, because the big boys like Junior Johnson were running a lot of factory stuff and basically not into innovation as much as we were," says Combs. "We were having to make all of our stuff, (because) we didn't have anything. We couldn't buy anything across the counter. I think that really helped us and helped the series and helped me in knowledge of racing." Still, the introduction of Pontiac's Iron Duke engine did what many of the pioneers of the series hoped would never happen: It took the sport away from the salvage yards and put it into the hands of manufacturers, which drove up the cost of racing. "We were hoping to keep everything the same, because we always called it 'Poor Man's Racing,' where you keep everything stock," says Triplett. "What we were doing was trying to keep the cost of racing down. And it did real well for 5, 6 years, maybe 10. I can't remember how long we kept the limit on the stock engines, but then Pontiac decided that they would get in it. Then they started booking races at Daytona and Charlotte and Darlington and Rockingham, and then the cost of everything started rising. Then it just kept escalating, and after a while all the original guys just sort of had to fade out of it." With stable sponsorships basically unheard of in the series, teams were faced with two challenges: They had to compete at a higher level, and they had to pay their own tabs in the process. "We never had that many good sponsors in the Dash Series," says Combs. "We just never picked up the immaculate deals. I had the deal with the Datsun people in Richmond, Virginia, and they basically paid all the bills and paid me a percentage to drive the car. That was probably one of the best deals to come along at that time, but I felt like we had done a lot for the Dash Series through our progress just by racing, because we tried to stay a step ahead of everybody. And we did it with just good ol' country boys who just loved racing. They didn't get a dime for it. Just buy them a bologna sandwich, and have a cooler with drinks in it, and head down the road. That's just the way we did it. We raced back then." A Price Too High The next major blow to hit the Goody's Dash Series came in 1998 when NASCAR made a change from a four-cylinder engine to a V-6, opting not to make the full jump to a V-8 engine, which would have allowed teams to purchase old or used Winston Cup or Busch Series parts. With a V-6 engine, teams were forced to buy all new parts and engines--or leave the series. Dean Combs and son Michael... "It was a lot better racing when it was four-cylinders," recalls Hamby, the former Dash and Winston Cup team owner. "I think if anything, the six-cylinders definitely hurt the series. It put a lot of people out of racing when they did that, because the motors cost so much money it was unreal." With the growth of NASCAR from a regional sport to the mainstream sport it is today, the smaller Dash Series has become an innocent bystander in the sanctioning body's quest to grow the sport. "I don't think NASCAR got behind it (in recent years)," says Combs. "They never really did their job--that's my honest opinion. They just kind of let it do its own thing. Like when we got Goody's for a sponsor, shoot, they didn't give us anything. They might have put about $10,000 in the championship, just nothing. Then they go to Daytona and give the Busch Series more in one race than what they give us all year, just deals like that. "We were just a throw-in for NASCAR for a sponsor. In other words, NASCAR says, 'Well, you come in and we'll give you the Permatex 300 (a Busch race at Daytona) for a $150,000 sponsorship and we're just going to throw the Dash Series in for $10,000 for extended advertisement.' That's the way they did us. And then as NASCAR has progressed in the last, say, 10 years, they just kept shoving it aside. They just didn't have time to mess with it. They had people over it that we called, but it just seemed like when you called NASCAR and talked to the people that are supposed to be over us, they just weren't interested. It was like they were just down there to get their check from NASCAR and to heck with us. I think that was the main fall of the series, is that NASCAR never did its job." "NASCAR is for NASCAR, and if there is a dollar around, they want most of it," says Hamby. "They weren't making any money on the Dash circuit and that's why they're dropping it. It's just money. That's the bottom line, and that's why NASCAR is dropping it." For Triplett, the series' first president, the possible end of the Dash Series is something he doesn't like to think about, but through his experiences with NASCAR over the years and with the demand for the sport on a nationwide level, he says he understands the "changes that have to be made." "It was something else, and it is sad when I stop and look at the souvenirs or collectables that I've got from the past," says Triplett. "It's sad that it's going to happen this way. But it's like NASCAR said, changes have to be made."

I have many a story about the Goodys Dash series. Will Hobgood, who was National Champ in that series in 1994, I think, maybe '95, was my mechanic for my second and third years racing. He then worked on my brother's cars and then started racing himself. The story of how Will came to be my mechanic at age 17 is quite a funny one which I have told at several gatherings with Will. I had the honor of being the Master of Ceremonies at several of his Fan Club banquets over the years. Watched his boys Jake and Dut race in the Dash Division as well. Very close association with that group of guys for me and it was good racing. Thanks for bringing that up Dave.