Tonight on Fox Sports 1 - 7:30 ET / 6:30 CT / etc.
A look back to arguably the most memorable NASCAR race of all time - the 1979 Daytona 500.
http://www.foxsports.com/nascar/video/a-perfect-storm-fox-sports-1-remembers-the-epic-1979-daytona-500-021215
Thanks for the heads up on this, Chase.
I am no fan of Fox Sports and usually detest everything they produce. HOWEVER, "Perfect Storm" was a masterful production to fit into an hour time slot. It was definitely the best piece of television I've EVER seen Fox do.
I particularly enjoyed seeing an old PR buddy - Alexis Leras, who I hadn't seen in 17-18 years. Alexis was the lady being interviewed in her kitchen. She was NASCAR News Bureau Director at the time of the 1979 race and I really enjoyed her behind the scenes looks at what was going on in the tower when the green was waved (with the yellow) on the wet track to accommodate CBS. I really enjoyed hearing the late Bill Gazaway give the order to my former Wrangler & 7-Eleven show car driver, Chip Warren to throw that green.
Alexis was a real pioneer for women in motorsports, being one of the first to be allowed in a NASCAR garage. Harry Melling later hired Alexis and moved her to Dawsonville, Georgia to protect a very media shy Bill Elliott and orchestrate the PR effort that led to his being named Most Popular Driver year after year. Bob Bahre later hired her to go up to New Hampshire and give some professional direction to that track's PR effort in the wake of several tragedies. The New Hampshire winters were not to her liking and Alexis retired back to her Daytona home. That was a loss for both auto racing and the role of women in auto racing.
If you missed "Perfect Storm" try to catch a rerun. You will not be disappointed.
really enjoyed the TV re-run of that great race. I also like all the first hand notes of the blizzard of 79....The blizzard is what convinced me to accept the offer to move to Tampa in 1980... sure didn't want to go thru that again...
By the way, if you never heard the late P.A. announcer, Ray Melton give the "Command," there's a clip very early in the show of Ray doing just that at Darlington very late in his career. It was worth watching just to hear Ray one more time intone the drivers to start engines.
Ray Melton giving his classic start engines command is at the 3:29 mark:
