Forum Activity for @frank-buhrman

CRICKETS, BULLFROGS AND RUMBLING ENGINES

Stock Car Racing History

Tim, this is way off the central focus of your excellent piece, but I want to comment on your statement that something like the old Late Model Sportsman circuit won't ever happen again, because I believe (1) that such a re-birth is very much possible, and (2) that it could rejuvenate asphalt short track racing . . . if NASCAR would just get the hell out of the way.

For a long time NASCAR actively cultivated a local racing scene where everybody used the same rules, and tracks held major races that drew competitors from tracks hundreds of miles away. The NASCAR Newsletter even published a listing of these major events. When NASCAR elevated the LMS division to a "closed" circuit of events (Grand National "Lite"), all that went away, and I'm not sure most NASCAR weekly tracks have ever recovered. Even without the big races, when Dave Fulton and I went to Southside Speedway, South Boston, Manassas or elsewhere 40-50 years ago, part of the excitement was seeing who showed up. That doesn't seem to happen anymore at NASCAR and NASCAR-rules short tracks. It DOES happen elsewhere, though, and to very positive effect for the tracks. Sprint car racing has the World of Outlaws, dirt-track modifieds have DIRT, and there are other regional and national sanctioning bodies like them. When those guys come to town, the locals can race against them, and the fans go crazy for that.

NASCAR plays at doing that sort of thing, but I think they've gotten too big and corporate to ever get it right - there's probably way too much corporate overhead when they're involved, anyway. The others show that it can be done, though, and there's a lot of excitement, and drivers build their fan bases that way. If we could put a "No Suits" fence about asphalt short-track racing, maybe it could recover that kind of excitement, too.

Sunoco 260

Stock Car Racing History

Thanks. That's a good read. I just wish we could have all the results of GA races available in a central location.

Sunoco 260

Stock Car Racing History

Awesome post, Dennis. I wish there was a website devoted to GA, which had the best racing available during its brief existence.

Track Locations-North Carolina

Stock Car Racing History

I noticed several tracks where the Roanoke Rapids/Weldon issue was apparent - Trico in Durham is just one example. That's the Trico in Rougemont that's now known as Orange County, I'm pretty sure. I think the trouble is that, back in the day when most tracks had no human presence on site other than for the races, the "address" was that of the promoter, which might be a good distance away. Also, sometimes the physical location might have been a community without a post office, which meant the postal address was different from the location as referred to by locals. There's a Roaring River in the list, and I remember seeing race results from that one that always identified it as being in the Shepherd's Crossing/Crossroads community (or something like that), but I'm guessing that wasn't its postal address.

Bowman-Gray 250 June 6, 1970

Stock Car Racing History

Aside from loving the racing part of all this, that answer refreshed my memory about Siler City textile mills (and yeah, everybody wrote "Silver" even back when we lived there). Tie-Rite had completely slipped my mind, and I certainly drove past it often enough. Thanks, Dennis.

September 28, 1990 - My Racing Hero Passed

Stock Car Racing History

Couldn't add a thing to what you provided here, Dave, because Ray Hendrick was my hero as well, and we were privileged to see him compete and win many times at Southside, the Richmond Fairgrounds, South Boston, Langley, Martinsville and elsewhere. With the sophistication level of race cars being so much different then, I think the driver mattered more than today, and the fact that Ray could drive just about any other car faster than another driver always proved his greatness to me. He also was a heck of a nice guy. Wish I had somebody I could elevate to that kind of hero status today.

The Original 1-Time Only 1980 Championship Earnhardt/Osterlund Wrangler Jeans Machine at Ontario

Stock Car Racing History

Interesting, Dave. I've recently been looking at a copy of the book, "Earnhardt - A Racing Family Legacy," which essentially is Circle Track/Stock Car Racing reprints. A friend who's a diehard Earnhardt fan found it at a yard sale and loaned it to me. I was ticked off because of the near total exclusion of Wrangler cars: you're nearly 100 pages into the book before the first black-and-white, and the ONLY color shot of a Wrangler car is a publicity photo of Dale posing in street clothes in front of his #2. That shot has the paint scheme we all know, but the b&w shot seems more like the car you've depicted here, although the Wrangler name doesn't seem to be in the same type (I guess that could just be b&w vs. color, plus a different angle). The shot shows Earnhardt following Cale Yarborough in the Junior Johnson Busch #11, but it doesn't identify the track.

The book does have two shots of another pretty rare car, though: the #31 Wrangler Busch car that Dale Jr. drove. I'd forgotten about that one.