Racing HIstory Minute - October 12, 1952

A crowd of 12,000 fans turned out to watch 29 drivers compete fora win on the One mile dirt track for 150 laps. The track was Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsboro (Hillsborough) NC. The track always seemed to draw huge crowds for the era and the racing was always exciting.

Bill Blair won the pole in an Oldsmobile with a speed of 75.901 mph. Jimmie Lewallen would start second in a Hudson, Herb Thomas third in another Hudson, Fonty Flock fourth in an Oldsmobile and Tim Flock fifth in yet another Hudson.

Blair would lead the first six laps before giving way to Fonty Flock. Flock would lead the remaining 144 laps to take the win at an average speed of 73.489 mph after two caution flags slowed the race. It was Flock's 11th career win in the Grand National Division. Donald Thomas (brother of Herb) is credited with finishing second although Herb took over in relief early after Herb's Hudson broke a hub and was out of the race. In the 1952 season, a driver in relief would gain a pro-rata share of points for the finishing position of the car based upon the percentage of the race the relief driver was in the car. In this instance, Herb received 200 of the 240 points awarded to the Donald Thomas Hudson. After the race, Tim Flock had a 194 point lead over Herb Thomas.

In reading the report on this race in Greg Fielden's "Forty Years of Stock Car Racing", I noted that Fonty credited the "quick" pit work when he had to stop for gas on lap 110, for enabling him to win. The "quick" pit work, for gas only, was 45 seconds long! Things were so much different 61 years ago!

Top five finishers:

1. Fonty Flock, Air Lift Olds 88, winning $1,200.00

2.Donald Thomas (Herb in relief), FABULOUS Hudson Hornet, winning $700.00

3.Bill Blair, George Hutchins Olds 88, winning $500.00

4.Tim Flock, Ted Chester Hudson, winning $450.00 (1 lap down)

5.Lee Petty, Petty Engineering Plymouth, winning $400.00 (3 laps down)

Sixth through tenth were Bub King, Ray Duhigg, Slick Smith, Fred Dove, and George Bush. Clyde Minter was 11th, Ted Chamberlin 12th, Elton Hildreth 13th, Ewell Weddle 14th, and Chris Martin 15th.

Other notable finishers were Jim Paschal in 17th, Jimmie Lewallen in 20th, Joe Eubanks 21st, Dick Rathman 25th, Herb Thomas (his own car) 27th, and Cotton Owens 29th and final position after parking his Ford on lap 12 with gas tank issues.

Honor the past, embrace the present, dream for the future

I especially enjoy these "older" racing minutes because I continue to be amazed at how many drivers in the fields I've never heard of. This Occoneechee race, like many, had quite a few. One - 19th place finisher, Lucky Sawyer was from Baltimore and seemed to be a competitor at Westport Stadium. He only competed in 10 Cup races between 1952-1958. His first was Langhorne. Don't know how he picked Occoneechee as one of his 3 races in 1952. I guess we'll never know.

Race report from Spartanburg Herald .

I've seen some of the pit stops during those days on old film and 45 seconds is highly impressive for what they had to work with, lol. Heck, anything under a minute is!

One of those History making minutes pit stop occurred just recently at one of the Bell&Bell outings. That flying 300 driven by some character out of Shallotte had someone take the air out of his left rear----------------tire which required one of those fast pit stops using the tried and proven lug wrench that was probably purchased at NAPA. A lightening floor jack and a resourceful pit crew had the car back on track in a flash with a new tire and sufficient air on the left rear to complete the remaining circuits. Now the flash is yet to be timed but it probably has a few versions floating around out there in the southland, and thats not 7/11 Mr Fulton .. ------------------------------------------------------------- memories

It was FAST, Johnny...very fast!! Before Tootie Green could get her watch out'n her...well, I won't say where she kept it, but...they were gone!!

Haven't found many more race reports. But did find a few more items promoting the race. I've concluded that in the early years, France & Co. were far more interested in newspaper awareness to COLLECT the dollars vs. articles with news about a race after the money had been COLLECTED.

One of the pre-race ceremonies mentioned in the race ad and preview articles was the presentation of the Southern 500 winner's trophy to Fonty Flock. The presentation was made by Miss North Carolina 1952, Barbara Anne Harris. How interesting that Fonty collected a trophy before AND after the race.

Barbara Anne is the only Miss NC to come from Salisbury NC.

Miss Harris didn't stay "Miss" for long. In the spring of 1953, she became engaged to become a Mrs.

Somewhere along the way though, the Spencer name disappeared and was replaced by a classic racing name: Richmond.

Bobby Williamson has been busy promoting Glenn Donnelly's synthetic dirt and ole Bill France had a "Dustless" track at Occoneechee all the way back in 1952... at least according to his ad that Chase found!

I see that Miss NC was teaching in Wilson, NC... wonder if she made it over to the speedway there?

She won her title at a pageant in Winston-Salem, home of Bowman-Gray Stadium.