TMC Chase
June 23, 1971 Space City 300
June 23, 1971
Meyer Speedway
Houston TX
300 laps on 1/2 mile paved track
Pole and race winner: Bobby Allison
Richard Petty qualified 2nd and led early. But he had distributor problems. The repair cost him over 10 minutes and 28 laps. Amazingly, he gained back 7 of his lost laps and salvaged a top 10 finish.
Meyer Speedway got the GN race when Texas International Speedway (later Texas World Speedway) had its mess of financial and operational problems in 1970-71. The article below claims the event was the first short-track race west of the Mississippi River since 1956. Though I haven't reviewed every season, I'm hard pressed to think of other short-tracks that the series ran other than those in the south and on the Northern tour.
Took a quick look at RacingReference.info and found the last west-of-the-Mississippi short-track race prior to Houston 1971 to have been at Ascot Park/Stadium in 1961. Ascot also ran in '59, and it was one of several tracks (Portland, Sacramento - not the mile - and Eureka) to run in '57. However, nearly all of these races drew fields solely of West Coast cars - a couple of the events had other GN races scheduled for the same day in the South, as NASCAR did in the early days. So while they were officially GN races, they might have that Roger Maris asterisk somewhere. (Actually, Jim Reed ventured west to run at Ascot in '59.) Anyway, Houston only had a dozen GN cars plus two locals. A PR guy could probably have spun that "first since 1956" claim a little, but in truth, it wasn't so.