December 9th racing history

1961 -With a team including Fireball Roberts, Bud Moore and Marvin Panch, Pontiac set a 24-hour average speed record at Darlington. From Spartanburg Herald .

1970 - R.J. Reynolds formally announces its association with NASCAR with the $100,000 prize fund for the renamed Winston Cup Series beginning in 1971. From Spartanburg Herald .

1972 - NASCAR announced its Most Popular Drivers for each of its series. From Spartanburg Herald .

1974 - Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty finish 2nd and 3rd respectively to winner Bobby Unser for the Martini & Rossi Driver of the Year Award.

Quite a list of impressive historical moments! Way to go Chase.

Original Winston Cup logo used in 1971.

Decal can be seen on the 43 Plymouth. However, its use wasn't consistent. In most 1971 photos I'm looking through, its been rare to find that first WCS decal. Perhaps NASCAR didn't require it until 1972 or after. Anyone have any insights?

I do know that T. Wayne (a good friend of a good friend of mine) gave me a case of those stickers. Must about been 300 or more in that box. I had those stickers on EVERYTHING. I was single and living in a mobile home at the time and had the stickers on each kitchen cabinet, the refrigerator, and used a a border along the ceiling of the hall. I am wondering if I have any of those left and am digging through my filing cabinet now to see. Thanks for the memories.

Tim, I bet you and Dick May were quite a pair when STP came on board Petty Enterprises and there were STP stickers to accompany the Winston stickers!

Just this past weekend, on December 7, columnist, Sharon Schlegel in The Times of Trenton (as in Trenton, NJ - onetime home to the Schaefer 300) posed a couple of questions in the same paragraph involving both Winston and NASCAR that had nothing to do with racing:

Whatever happened to as? In 1954, the William Esty ad agency for Winston cigarettes decided on the deliberate use of like rather than as, airing the jingle Winston Tastes Good, Like a Cigarette Should. Faster than smoke curls from a cig, as began to disappear. It has never returned. Last week NASCAR ran a big ad in New York Magazine under the headline We End How We Began. Shouldnt it be as we began?

As for STP stickers, I had thousands of them. The STP guy, his name I can't recall, gave me several cases of those. I used STP in everything and had STP stickers ON everything.