1969 Northern Tour
From the Irish Hills of Michigan on Saturday at a 2 mile superspeedway to Holland New York on Tuesday at a 3/8 mile paved oval the Grand Touring cars made a quick start to the 1969 Northern Tour. A 5 race tour over 12 days in 4 states with a special $10,000 point fund.
Randy Hutchison of Newport News, Virginia, also a NASCAR Late Model Sportsman competitor around Virginia, was a 20 year old student in Boone, NC at Appalachian State University where he was a wrestling team member at the time of this Holland GT win in 1969. Randy turns 66 this coming Monday, August 25, 2014.
Here's where Randy has been hanging his hat for the past several decades in Newport News:
http://www.thebrakeking.com/About-Us
At the link above there's a short video on the page with Randy's son, "Bubba" who now runs the Hutchison family business. In the video is a still b&w photo of an old NASCAR modified the family once ran at Langley Field Speedway in Hampton, Va.
Dave,
Thanks for the small photo and race information.
I enlarged the small photo into an brakeking car enlarged photo.
Thanks for any information or photos posted.
Dennis Garrett
Richmond,Va.USA
Here's a 1997 story in the Newport News Daily Press by nationally recognized racing writer, Al Pearce about Randy Hutchison and how NASCAR later recognized that his win at Holland, New York was by the youngest driver in NASCAR Touring Series history.
NEWPORT NEWS Randy Hutchison recalls with startling clarity the times he almost got over the hump and made it in NASCAR racing.
There was the Grand American race he was about to win in Michigan until the harmonic balancer broke. There was the cinch top-five finish at Talladega until a rookie crewman let him run out of gas, and the night he would have been top-three at South Boston if a relief driver hadn't spun in the final laps.
Then there was the Grand American race at Daytona that would have led to bigger and better things - if the engine hadn't blown. And the night he became too hot to finish a race in Macon, Ga., and the race when...
``I was so close to getting there so many times,'' said Hutchison, a former wrestling and football star at Warwick High School who owns and operates the Brake King on Jefferson Avenue in Newport News. ``Things never seemed to fall quite right at just the right times. Man, I was right there so many times.''
Hutchison began go-kart racing as a kid, then moved into Modifieds in the 10th grade. ``But even before that, I'd practice at Langley and run a heat, then my father would get somebody else for the feature,'' he said. ``When he felt I was ready, I ran the features.
``He'd taken a '63 Corvette frame, put an engine almost in the front seat, put my seat where the trunk would have been, and put the steering wheel in the middle. It was so far ahead of its time that NASCAR sent us a letter saying we couldn't race it unless we changed some stuff.''
Hutchison spent almost six years in NASCAR's Grand American and Grand National East divisions. All the while, he was going through Hargrave Military Academy, Lees-McRae Junior College and Appalachian State University.
After a Grand American victory in Holland, N.Y., in July 1969, NASCAR realized he was the youngest major-division feature winner in its history . Later that year, he ran fourth in the Paul Revere 250 night race in Daytona Beach, Fla.
He made a handful of Winston Cup starts in the mid- to late-'70s, then turned to Late Model Sportsman racing at tracks across the Carolinas and Virginia. He retired six years ago after several Late Model Stock Car seasons at Langley with crew chief Skipper Jutras.
