July 18, 1954 - Jack Harrison Beats Bob Welborn in Richmond, Va. SAFE Stock Car Race (Must Reading for RTA)

While the new Race Team Alliance is puffing its chest with its self proclaimed importance, it might want to take in a little stock car racing history.

NASCAR wasn't the only stock car racing series in town back in the early days. It wasn't even the first. However, it did survive to become the biggest, sometimes by simply digesting its competition.

On this very date 60 years ago, a midwest rival of NASCAR made one of its infrequent forays into the Southland.

The date was July 18, 1954 and the venue was Richmond, Virginia's eight year old Atlantic Rural Exposition half-mile dirt track - site of today's Richmond International Raceway.

The event was the Mid Atlantic 100 stock car race sanctioned by SAFE - the S ociety of A uto Sports, F ellowship and E ducation.

On this day, Jack Harrison of West Newton, Indiana and an Indianapolis resident - a frequent winner on the MARC stock car circuit (predecessor of ARCA) - would top southern stock car star, Bob Welborn of Denton, North Carolina and Pat Kirkwood of Fort Worth, Texas.

According to a very brief recap on the Ultimate Racing History site, the Richmond SAFE Stock Car Series event was contested for 200 laps - 100 miles - before a crowd of 3,500 spectators.

I have been unable to find a writeup of the event.

Harrison evidently enjoyed his southern trips. He also won a SAFE Convertible Series race at Winston-Salem, North Carolina's Forsyth County Fairgrounds as well as MARC races at South Carolina's Greenville-Pickens Speedway and Atlanta's Lakewood.

By now you RTA owners must be asking whatever happened to the SAFE Stock Car Racing Series ? Well, NASCAR evidently saw SAFE as competition. The January 7, 1956 edition of Billboard Magazine carried the short obituary of the SAFE Stock Car Serie s:

That was the last anybody ever heard of SAFE and Mr. Scharf and Mr. Redkey.

Are you listening Mr. Kauffman? You're pretty familiar with that Richmond track venue, I believe. Seems one of your drivers needed to scratch an itch there last year in the final race to set the Chase field and stirred the NASCAR pot more than intended. Maybe that's why the owners elected you as their spokesman.

Brian France may not be the big gorilla in the room like his father and grandfather, but I'm not sure I'd want to take on sister, Lesa lurking in the background ready to protect her millions.

Anybody with more information about the SAFE Stock Car Series please chime in.

With Scharf working with SAFE, perhaps they only needed Schaefer to put them over the top and on the road to success.

But yes, points well taken Dave. History hasn't been favorable to those who tried to operate an alternative national stock car series.

SAFE -Circuit of Champions All Stars

Bowman-Gray Safe Circuit of Champions All Stars race held June 10th, 1955

Cool, they even ran at my hometown Royall Speedway weekly track in Richmond, today's Southside Speedway.

Thanks for the enlightening articles and photos, Jack.

Recap of 1954 Circuit of Champions SAFE season from Chicagolandautoracing.com:

The November 7, 1955 edition of Sports Illustrated carried news of Jack Harrison winning at Atlanta's Lakewook in a SAFE New Car Convertible race on the same weekend as Fireball Roberts winning the Lee Kirby Memorial Modified race in Charlotte that Tim Leeming has featured previously in our Racing History Minutes:

AUTO RACING

Glenn (Fireball) Roberts, Daytona Beach, Fla., 125-m. Lee Kirby Memorial, in 1:25:40, in Cadillac-powered car, Charlotte, N.C.
Jack Harrison, W. Newton, Ind., 100-m. new car race, in 1955 Ford convertible, Atlanta.

Was able to extract this brief race report from the July 19, 1954 edition of The Progress-Index from Petersburg, VA.

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/105569769/

JACK HARRISON WINS 100-MILE STOCK CAR RACE IN RICHMOND

Pit stops, racing's great leveler, played a major factor yesterday in the victory scored by Jack Harrison, of Indianapolis, in the Circuit of Champions 100-mile Mid-Atlantic championship race.

Before a crowd estimated at 3,500, Harrison, called "Farmer Jack" by the trade, beat Pat Kirkwood, of Fort Worth, Texas, to the wire in the 200-lap race by half-a-lap with Bob Welborn of Winston-Salem, N. C., third. Kirkwood drove a 1954 Oldsmobile, Welborn a blunt-nosed, stubby '52 Plymouth coupe.

Twenty-two cars started the stock car race, and all but two had to make emergency calls at the pits at least once. Only eight finished.

Harrison, driving a 54 Ford, profited from three pit stops - two made by drivers who were leading at the time they had to make for first aid and one he had the lead.

Thanks, Chase