Rather than embed all of John Bett's pics from the 1972 Motor State 400 in this post, I'll just provide a link to them.
http://stockcar.racersreunion.com/photo/photo/search?q=1972+motor+state+400
The 72 Motor State 400 was featured in Dale Jr's series Back In The Day series:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Race report. And since I was just in Vegas, I left in the piece about Evel Knievel since arguably his greatest legacy is his near fatal crash while attempting to jump the fountains at Caesar's Palace.
Source: Rome News Tribune
I realize the Silver Fox had his way with the field that day. But as an unabashed Petty fan, I had to include this one shot from John Betts collection of the 43 leading the Wood Brothers' Mercury.
John Betts collection has this shot of David Pearson taking the checkers.
Newspaper ad for the race from The Dispatch
Race report from Spartanburg Herald Journal
While digging through some microfilm archives of The Tennessean newspaper for the June 3, 1965 GN race Tim Leeming posted about here...
http://stockcar.racersreunion.com/forum/topics/racing-history-minute-june-3-1965
...I stumbled across this jewel. It was the original publication date in The Tennessean of Marty kneeling by his 777.
It was recently featured again in an on-line Tennesseean gallery associated their article about Ray Evernham's restoration.
The photo accompanied an article about the local guys racing Saturday and Sunday after the GN cars ran their inaugural Nashville night race on Thursday, June 3.
Found this ad also. Thought it was pretty neat.
A few video clips I uploaded to YouTube late last night.
End to end view of this great, great track.
The line-up for the limited late model race with the mixture of cars AND trucks. Steadman Marlin is on the front row in the silver 40.
Steadman Marlin in the 40 car squeezes under the 3 TRUCK on his way to a win. I didn't catch the name of the driver in the 3 truck - but he wasn't too pleased about Steadman. A lap earlier, Steadman really loosened up the truck in front of him coming through turn 2.
Cars roll off pit road to start pace laps for the 100-lap late model feature.
Pace lap and start of 100-lap late model race. Sterling Marlin (40) started 3rd and Clay Alexander (84) started 7th.
