Nice recaps. I don't know the official length of the downtime in 1966, but I thought that race would never restart. Walked down that way and took movies of guardrail before it got replaced.
The 1,000th race in the history of what is now NASCAR's Nationwide Series is set for this Friday night at Richmond International Raceway.
In 1982, NASCAR took its ever more expensive Late Model Sportsman Series off the weekly tracks as a local weekly division and turned it into the touring Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series. I still call it the Busch Series, its longtime name.
Race #1 in the new touring series was the Goodys 300 on February 13, 1982 at Daytona. I was fortunate to stand in victory lane at the conclusion of race #1 as Manager of Wrangler NASCAR Special Events. My driver, Dale Earnhardt, brought the blue & yellow #15 Robert Gee owned and built Wrangler Jeans Pontiac home first in the inaugural event.
Russell photo of winning Daytona car driven by Dale Earnhardt in Nationwide Race #1
The late Tom Chambers stands next to Dale Earnhardt in front of the Robert Gee Pontiac - ISC photo
When I blew up the victory lane photo, I saw my head (replete with its annual "winter" mustache) in the background, just below Dale's upraised elbow, framed by two Pepsi cans on the roof of the car prepared by the incomparable Robert Gee, the "Guvnor".
Teresa Earnhardt's uncle, Tommy Houston would win race #2 in the series the following Saturday, appropriately at Richmond, site of the 1,000th race in the series.
1982 Goody's 300
NASCAR Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series race number 1 of 29
Saturday, February 13, 1982 at Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, FL
120 laps on a 2.500 mile paved track (300.0 miles)
Time of race: 1:56:29
Average Speed: 154.529 mph
Pole Speed: 184.569 mph Cautions: 5 for 21 laps
Margin of Victory: 1 cl
Attendance: 75,000
Lead changes: 31
Fin St # Driver Sponsor / Owner Car Laps Money Status Led Points
1 5 15 Dale Earnhardt Wrangler Jeans (Robert Gee) Pontiac 120 14,700 running 180 2 3 98 Jody Ridley Cumberland Mills Pontiac 120 15,950 running 170
3 4 00 Sam Ard Thomas Brothers Country Ham (Howard Thomas) Oldsmobile 120 13,470 running 165
4 33 75 Gary Balough Rahmoc Racing (Butch Mock) Pontiac 120 6,740 running 160
5 2 99 Geoffrey Bodine Hagerstown Speedway (Frank Plessinger) Pontiac 120 9,365 running 155
6 9 77 Harry Gant Skoal Bandit (Harry Gant) Pontiac 119 4,890 running 150
7 1 3 Mike Porter Associated Construction Pontiac 119 4,090 running 146
8 7 28 Phil Parsons Skoal Bandit (Johnny Hayes) Pontiac 118 3,540 running 142
9 23 27 Tommy Houston Kings Inn Daytona (Mike Day) Chevrolet 116 5,140 running 138
10 20 24 Dale Jarrett Komfort Koach (Marvin Thackston) Ford 116 3,975 running 134
11 19 04 Rick Hanley Go-Jo Industrial Pontiac 116 2,520 running 130
12 13 29 Joe Thurman Longwood Restaurant (Buddy Arrington) Dodge 116 2,320 running 127
13 24 35 Bill Venturini Prototype Racing Engineering (Bill Venturini) Buick 115 2,220 running 124
14 14 22 David Rogers Rogers Racing Pontiac 115 2,120 running 121
15 16 32 Mike Riley TGR Enterprises Pontiac 115 2,120 running 118
16 34 02 Dennis Crowder CAM 2 Pontiac 114 1,895 running 115
17 27 37 Delma Cowart Grooms Construction Chevrolet 113 1,845 running 112
18 26 16 Mark Beard Beard Oil (Mark Beard) Pontiac 113 1,795 running 109
19 22 50 John Anderson Kirk Ford Co. Mercury 110 1,770 plug wire 106
20 24 62 John Linville Automotive Specialist (John Linville) Pontiac 110 1,695 running 103
21 18 33 George Dalton Ghant Racing Pontiac 103 1,695 running 100
22 10 12 Tommy Ellis Industrial Boiler Pontiac 96 3,195 engine 97
23 25 90 Mark Gibson Kokomo Kit Kar (Mark Gibson) Pontiac 70 1,545 ignition 94
24 17 19 Darryl Sage American Performance Pontiac 61 1,570 crash 91
25 21 7 Stuart Huffman Huffman Racing (Dwight Huffman) Pontiac 56 1,495 clutch 88
26 6 9 Gene Morgan Stuart Developers Pontiac 55 1,345 clutch 85
27 28 18 Roy McGraw McGraw's Used Auto Parts Pontiac 55 1,295 piston 82
28 15 40 Dennis Bennett Bennett Brothers Pontiac 51 1,245 crash 79
29 8 4 Connie Saylor CMT Pontiac 47 1,195 engine 76
30 11 25 Mickey Gibbs Gibbs Racing Pontiac 29 1,145 vibration 73
31 12 11 Jack Ingram Oak Stove (Jack Ingram) Pontiac 24 2,620 engine 70
32 30 07 Mike Potter Seivers Pontiac 16 1,095 engine 67
33 32 82 John McFadden Broadway Motors Pontiac 14 1,070 transmission 64
34 31 79 Bob Park Walther's Auto Wrecking Pontiac 2 1,060 engine 61
The view from my Kodak Brownie box camera from the stands on September 5, 1966:
A Rerun:
Riding the Hound to Darlington on Labor Day
Posted by Dave Fulton on August 19, 2011 at 1:41pm in -GENERAL
The calendar is fast approaching Labor Day, a sacrosanct date once synonymous with what was termed "The Granddady of Them All" - the Southern 500 stock car race at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. The temperature is now dropping out of the nineties at night occassionally, the days are getting shorter, the ground is covered with heavy dewfall in early morning. All signs that the good ole boys should be getting ready for the one they all wanted to win.
The Southern 500 was the one race my buddy, Frank and I most wanted to see. More than Daytona, more than Charlotte, more than Atlanta. It was the race we had listened to Bob Montgomery announce on radio after the strains of "Dixie" faded.
On Labor Day 1965 I was enlisted to help my Dad with the repainting of our Richmond home. We had big extension ladders propped against the back of the house. Much to my mother's consternation, I mounted a radio in an upstairs dormer window, cranked to full volume with the Southern 500 broadcast and listened as Ned Jarrett won. There wasn't much said on the broadcast of the death of Buren Skeen, but a lot made of Cale flying over the guardrail in Banjo's #27. I was so impressed with stories I read afterwards about Ned speaking to church groups about winning the Southern 500, that I incorporated that into my sermon when I was named the "Youth Week Minister" at my Southern Baptist church the following spring - 1966 - my senior year in high school.
Although one gentleman in the church congregatation worked on Al Grinnan's modified, I guarantee I was the first (and probably the last) to preach stock car racing from the church pulpit of Monument Heights Baptist Church!
I have recounted on these pages the adventure Frank and I took in March 1966 when we took the race train from Richmond to Rockingham for that track's first spring race - the first, last and only Peach Blossom 500. Well, we knew we were ready for Darlington - but, our parents didn't share our readiness. Although we were both 17 and had graduated from high school in June and would head to college right after the Southern 500, both sets of parents forbid we two 17 year olds driving from Richmond to Darlington and back on Labor Day. However, we weren't to be stopped. We finally convinced our folks to let us take a bus to Darlington, an idea that seems pretty stupid in 2011, but one we thought was outstanding in 1966!
Around 8 or 9 pm on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, my father dropped us off at the downtown Richmond Greyhound bus terminal, not a very nice place, even in 1966. We already had our Darlington race tickets and we had previously bought two round trip bus tickets to Darlington. We were the only two caucasians on the "Hound" and the rest of the bus was filled with folks going to Labor Day family reunions in South Carolina. Everybody but us had fried chicken to eat on that long bus ride. We rode through the night, departing out of Richmond on Interstate 95 South, which still hadn't been completed between Gold Rock, north of Rocky Mount, NC and Kenly, south of Wilson, NC. At Gold Rock the bus cut over to U.S. 301 and sometime after that Frank awakened me full of excitement. To our left we were passing the brightly lit, now long gone Southern 500 Truck Stop, which in the 70s I learned was in Elm City, NC and frequented by the racers after Saturday night shows at Wilson County Speedway.
We still had a long ways to go, but sometime around 7:00 a.m. on Labor Day Monday that Greyhound let the two of us off at a little Pure Gas station in what I guess was downtown Darlington. It had one of those little rectangle signs you used to see at country stores, etc. that read, "bus." The place was closed, of course. In fact, everything was closed and we were totally lost without a clue how to get to the track.
I only remember that we walked for a long ways until we came upon a big open field with hundreds of cars and tents. There were campfires everywhere and a local church had erected a big tent and was serving breakfast to race fans. We thought we'd died and gone to heaven.
Our seats at Darlington were in the main grandstand, a place I never sat again, preferring Robert E. Lee's Paddock on the old turn 4. The cars ran right up on the wall out of turn 4 and all we could see on the main straight that day was the roofs of the cars.
Prerace was spectacular, much bigger than anything we'd seen at Richmond or Rockingham. The one similiarity was Ray Melton bellowing on the P.A. system, god bless him. We'd never seen a drag car before and during prerace the gold Hurst Hemi Under Glass Baracudda did wheelies down the main straight. Don't know if Linda Vaughn was riding along or not. Then our hearts really stopped. Coming in a parade down the front stretch were all the cars on exhibit in the Joe Weatherly Stock car Museum. The Johnny Mantz 1950 Plymouth, Buck Baker's Olds, Jim Reed's '59 Chevy, Little Joe's #8 Merc and the lavender #22 Ford of Fireball Roberts. By then we were ourselves steeped in the Darlington tradition and had each purchased a "Darlington Cushion," a seat cushion with the Southern 500 logo that we each carried like a badge of honor for years to come to races all over Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina as proof that we'd been to "The Grandaddy of Them All." Lord, I wish I knew what happened that cushion.
Our hero, JT Putney, had contracted to carry an onboard camera in his #19 that day in order to shoot footage for the annual Southern 500 promotional film. Seemed like he stopped every 20 laps to change film. I remember james Hylton in his pale yellow #48 pitted right across from us. I must have a thousand shots of him on 8mm film leaving his pit that day (or did until NASCAR lost all my film).
The big happening that day was Earl Balmer getting up on the fence in Turn 1. His K&K Dodge chopped off the tops of the guardrail posts and threw them into the open air press box like so many wood chips. The race was stopped for an eternity while the guardrail was rebuilt.
In the closing stages, Richard Petty cut down a tire and gave up the lead to Darel Dieringer who was flagged the winner in his Bud Moore #15 Mercury Comet.
When we left the track it started raining. We tried to thumb a ride back into Darlington and the closed bus station without any takers. We did both get hit in the head with rolls of wet toilet tissue tossed by drunks in a passing pickup. Sometime that evening, the bus enroute to Richmond picked us up at the closed bus station. My dad met us in the wee hours. We had survived our first Southern 500 and there would be many more Labor Day Monday adventures. But that was the the first and last time we rode the "Hound" to Darlington!
I attended my first Southern 500 (and first Darlington race) on this September 5th date in 1966. I have written previously on these pages of riding "The Hound" from Richmond to Darlington on Labor Day 1966.
The station in Richmond on Broad Street where my buddy Frank and I caught the bus to Darlington just past midnight on Labor Day, September 5, 1966. Just as the Labor day Southern 500 passed into history after 1983, the bus station above was closed in 1985.
Thanks for the day's minute, Tim and the great followups, Chase. It was a tragic day. Those guys who serviced the cars back in the day and up to the time of pit road speed limits were sitting ducks. Even today we see injuries.
Remember when you camped at the track and ran out of something important... like hamburger buns? Not a worry at the Richmond track. This year they have a portable Kroger grocery on the premises and you can even order ahead. That's a pretty neat fan friendly deal.
That D.K. accident happened right under my nose coming out of the old turn 2. My wife's cousin's husband was the South Carolina manager for Gate Oil Company which operated large convenience stores / gas stations. He lived in Summerville, SC and had been given 4 box seat tickets by Winston to the old manufacturer boxes atop the old backstretch stands. My brother-in-law, wife's uncle and myself drove down to Summerville from Wilson, NC and spent the night, then drove over to Darlington Labor Day morning.
I vaguely remember Winston supplying beverages and a box lunch. That was the only time I ever sat on the backside, but those boxes had a great view. I remember Jim Foster down in Daytona telling me after ISC bought the track that those backstretch stands and boxes should have been condemned and that it was a wonder they hadn't collapsed one year and killed every spectator in them.
Thoughts and prayers to friends/family.
You can just look all day and find "Bear Grease" references...
Here's a variety of excerpts over the years from many different newspapers:
From the Darlington Raceway web site:
1960
South Carolina native David Pearson talks about the tracks infamous bear grease sealant: I never had seen a race here until I came to run. And, the first time I came across the track, theyd just put down that old bear grease, and it was slick and shiny. I said, Lord, have mercy! I couldnt hardly walk on it, much less race on it.
