Found this view of Bristol from 1961 on National Speed Sport News' website tonight. Check out the relatively flat banking and just a simple guard rail in the turns.
And to Dave Fulton and your comment re: getting rid of the headlight decals, preach it my man!
Jack Walker shared a scan of that pic not quite a year ago at this [ Russ Thompson post ].
How about this one RR's Tommy Clinard added a few days ago? A neat shot of Lee from 1953.
Photo of the STP decals being applied to the 43 at Riverside on January 19, 1972 - shortly after the sponsorship announcement at the Sheraton West hotel in Los Angeles the same day.
And though I came along as a Petty fan well after STP and The King were joined at the hip, I always enjoy reading about the passionate fans who felt it was blasphemous for the 43 to be painted anything other than 100% Petty blue.
The Pettys didn't want to bend on losing Petty blue. And Granatelli didn't want to bend on day-glo red. They compromised as you said Tim. For years, I thought the day-glo red may have been introduced about the time of STP's sponsorship of Petty Enterprises. But I recently found this photo of Jim Hurtubise from way back in 1963 at Indy with a full day-glo STP roadster. I bet this car glowed all around the track kind of like FOX's 'glowing' hockey puck about a decade or so ago.
Also, I understand Maurice had some heartburn about hitching their wagon to STP. I've read comments supposedly attributed to them that he wasn't going to wear any sort of clownish looking pit uniforms. Turns out they never did - just for the most part blue pants and shirts with STP on their back. But this picture I also found recently at Randy Ayers board convinced me of why Maurice was so concerned.
January 19, 1972 - Andy Granatelli announces STP's sponsorship of Richard's 43 team. (The sponsorship also extended to a limited schedule 2nd Petty Enterprises Dodge for Buddy Baker for 1972.) Note the erroneous phrasing of STP's 'purchase' of Petty Enterprises. If worded that way today, we'd all be going crazy on messages boards, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, and Racers Reunion.
I posted a new entry today at my blog, Bench Racing from the Volunteer State, about Ohio native Woody Fisher. Woody had a limited but apparently an enjoyable racing career from the mid to late 1970s. The pinnacle of his racing was a win in the 1977 ARCA 200 at Daytona in a Petty Enterprises' built, maintained, and crewed Dodge Charger.
I'm hardly a hard-core professional blogger. But I am a hard-core junkie for Petty related trivia. I really enjoyed researching and writing this entry as much as any I've written previously.
http://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2011/01/woody-fisher.html
Big thanks to Racers Reunion members Chris Hussey, Don Smyle, Russ Thompson, and Mike Beam for their help with anecdotes, referrals, photos, etc.
