Finally Found It! DALE EARNHARDT - ONE TOUGH CUSTOMER - 1981 Wrangler TV Show
Stock Car Racing History
Forum Activity for @tmc-chase
NASCAR.com article - Timmy Petty
Current NASCAR
If you are like me, you rarely visit NASCAR.com site anymore. Its just too tough to navigate and rarely has stories I care about. But there are exceptions. And here is one. A couple of weeks ago, David Caraviello wrote a pretty cool article about Timmy Petty - one of Maurice's sons.
http://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/articles/2013/06/13/nascar-timmy-petty.html
updated by @tmc-chase: 12/05/16 04:04:08PM
Kurt Busch - Days of Thunder retro scheme
Current NASCAR
Phoenix Racing and Kurt Busch will race a retro City Chevrolet Days of Thunder scheme inFriday's Nationwide race at Daytona.
We know Kurt has had anger management issues. I hope he doesn't lose his mind when the effects of his Monster Energy Crunchy Punchy drinks kick in.
updated by @tmc-chase: 12/05/16 04:04:08PM
July 4, 1953 - Lee Petty hits Piedmont Payday
Stock Car Racing History
After finishing 3rd at Monroe County Fairgrounds in Rochester, NY on July 3rd, Lee Petty DROVE approximately 860 miles overnight from New York to Spartanburg SC. The long haul was worth it because Lee Petty won the inaugural NASCAR Grand National race at Piedmont Interstate Fairground track in Spartanburg.
Rochester's winner Herb Thomas, second place Dick Rathman, and Tim Flock also made the trek - though they flew vs. driving.
But with two races in two days separated by nearly a thousand miles, those drivers needed a bit of rest. Flock's catnap was nearly his undoing. While sleeping in the grass, a Champion Spark Plug rep charged with hanging some race day signage unknowingly backed his truck OVER TIM'S HEAD. How he wasn't killed is beyond me.
Buck Baker won the pole after having skipped the Rochester race. The rest of the starting line-up is unknown. But NASCAR claimed Baker made his qualifying run too late in the session and kicked him back to the end of the field for the start. Wait. Umm. Doesn't NASCAR provide the flagman and the official timing? And officials would have been able to tell Buck and his team how much time was left? Well, I guess that makes too sense so forget it. Back to the end of the line for you pal!
Buck recovered nicely though and finished 2nd. And after some pre-race antics by Fonty Flock perhaps brought on by the near death experience of his brother and another qualifying DQ penalty handed down to him by NASCAR, he saddled up and finished 4th.
Herb Thomas backed up his July 3rd Rochester win with a third at Spartanburg. Along with Lee, he had a pretty good 36 hours stint.
Read on for more:
http://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-4-1953-lee-petty-hits-piedmont.html
updated by @tmc-chase: 07/04/18 11:49:45AM
Racing History Minute - July 4, 1956
Stock Car Racing History
While the GN drivers were busy at Raleigh, Darlington was a hive of activity too. The track hosted its 4th overall and 3rd in a row AAA/USAC Indy "big car" race - the Pee Dee 200.
Here are links to several stories about that race:
Racing History Minute - July 4, 1956
Stock Car Racing History
And before the track was renamed Raleigh Speedway and became the host to three NASCAR GN races, it was known as Southland Speedway. In 1952, the track hosted an Indy car race won by Troy Ruttman.
More info in a [ 2011 blog post ] on the Raleigh News & Observer's site.
Raleigh's race track
Submitted by tleonard on 05/27/2011 - 14:39
This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500.
As it turns out, Raleigh saw its first and only Indy-style race on July 4, 1952 at the Southland Speedway, later named the Raleigh Speedway. The record crowd of 16,000 was there to see California's Troy Ruttman, who had won the Indianapolis 500 just two weeks before.
Many years later, Ruttman's youngest brother Joe (only seven years old on the day of the race) recalled the family's memories.
"I remember Troy and Dad talking about Raleigh and winning a race there, " he said. "They talked about the track being big and fast. At that time, except for the Speedway, Troy had primarily raced on quarter-mile and half-mile tracks, and he raced four, sometimes five nights a week, anywhere from San Diego to Bakersfield and Fresno, all short tracks.
"But that [Raleigh] trophy had a replica of the car on it. That's one of the things that I can remember, that they were impressed with the trophy that was presented to them. It must have been a standout, far nicer than anything they had won to that point."
[...]
"Watching Troy race, all of my ambitions were toward open-wheel stuff, " Ruttman said. "The Indy car guys called stock cars taxi cabs. They had doors, and it wasn't cool to race taxi cabs. If you were a real racer, you raced open-wheel stuff. And my desire was to emulate my brother. He was my hero." -- The News & Observer 7/26/1997
But NASCAR did take off, and the Raleigh Speedway was the first of its kind to have lights for night racing. Despite this promising start, Raleigh did not take the spotlight in motorsports. Former N&O writer Gerald Martin wrote about the glory days of the track and what went wrong.
The roads off the beaten asphalt path had been doused with oil to settle the dust, and even as race time approached, thousands were on the outside looking in, grasping Thermos jugs in one hand, the price of admission -- $6.50 -- in the other.
Troy Ruttman, the favorite, was nestled into his cramped, cream-and-red Agajanian Offy Special, the machine he had driven to victory in the Indianapolis 500 a few weeks earlier.
[...]
Car owner A.J. Agajanian marveled at the disciplined crowd of about 16,000. This new speedway would become known far and wide, he said. "I like the track so much, " he said, "I wish I could move it to California."
The track, a one-mile, high-banked asphalt oval named Southland Speedway, was about two miles north of downtown Raleigh, just northeast of what is now the juncture of Old Wake Forest Road and the Beltline.
But the best was not to come for the speedway after its inaugural event, its first and last Indy-car race. The track, renamed Raleigh Speedway in 1953 when it hosted its first NASCAR race, closed five years later, shortly after the legendary Fireball Roberts won on July 4, 1958.
Why? A city-county ban on Sunday racing. Public sentiment, grumbling by well-heeled neighbors who despised the noisy nuisance, politics and lack of vision buried a track that was ahead of its time. And although A.J. Agajanian couldn't move the track to California, NASCAR President William H.G. France moved the race -- to Florida.
[...]
The Raleigh track, built for $500,000, was not just another dirt bullring. The paved oval featured long straightaways, sweeping, high-banked turns and, in its last few years, a quarter-mile track in the infield for weekly racing. And Raleigh Speedway, not Charlotte Motor Speedway, was the first NASCAR superspeedway with lights for night racing.
Six races in the NASCAR Grand National series -- the forerunner of today's Winston Cup -- were at Raleigh Speedway. The first, on Memorial Day Monday in 1953, was an attempt by France to upstage -- at least in the South -- the Indianapolis 500. It didn't do that, but the race became a springboard for stock car racing in Eastern North Carolina.
NASCAR races in the early and mid-1950s also were held on half-mile dirt tracks at Wilson and at the state fairgrounds in Raleigh and on a one-mile dirt track at Hillsborough. But the big Raleigh track, restricted to non-Sunday holiday dates, never flourished. Attendance grew each year, but the crowds for stock car races -- the largest was about 15,000 -- never matched that at the Indy-car event in '52.
[...]
And now, barely a trace of the old track remains. The site is now part of an industrial park, and the only evidence of the one-time showplace are bits of concrete and a rusty girder protruding from the ground near the tunnel site.
An under-the-track tunnel, incidentally, now is in use at Talladega Superspeedway, and while the memory of the Raleigh Speedway fades, racing goes on and the dollars pour in at Daytona. -- The News & Observer 7/2/1994
Racing History Minute - July 4, 1956
Stock Car Racing History
In the first couple of years of NASCAR, number 22 was associated with Red Byron in Raymond Parks' Red-Vogt prepared cars. Fireball got his 1st GN win in 1950 in car #71. But his second GN win in this Raleigh race was his first win in car #22. The number then became most associated with him until his death in 1964.
Racing History Minute - July 4, 1956
Stock Car Racing History
Sure, a few more won't hurt. Right?
GREEN GREEN GREEN! Lee Petty and Speedy Thompson lead the field to green.
Paul Goldsmith in Smokey's #3.
Buck Baker leads Billy Myers 14 and Goldsmith 3. I think that's Ralph Moody in 12 trailing the 3 of them.
Racing History Minute - July 4, 1956
Stock Car Racing History
How about a couple of other good 'uns.
A nice color version overlooking the field as final preparations were made for the start.
And 4th place finisher Herb Thomas in 92 leads 21st place finisher Arden Mounts in 18.
Racing History Minute - July 4, 1956
Stock Car Racing History
Couple of photos from the race.
2nd place finisher Speedy Thompson making a stop.
And Buck Baker making a stop in his Kiekaefer Chrysler. As was noted in the race report article, Baker struggled to finish the race in 11th.
