Forum Activity for @dave-fulton

What was your favorite track growing up and why?

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I didn't attend my first race until 1964 at age 15. It was a GN(Cup) race at the Richmond 1/2-mile dirt track. As soon as my buddy, Frank and I got driver's licenses, though, we spent EVERY Friday night of the racing season at Richmond's Southside Speedway - the rugged 1/3-mile weekly NASCAR asphalt oval that began life as the dirt Royall Speedway for midget racing. Those Friday nights at Southside remain my favorite racing memories.

Because it ran on Friday night, Southside drew the really good modifieds from the Saturday night tracks and later the good Late Model Sportsman drivers. The great Bowman-Gray Stadium drivers, South Boston Speedway drivers, Langley Speedway drivers, Old Dominion, Beltsville (when it ran on Wednesday nights) and the eastern bandits from Stafford and Thompson, Connecticut all came together at Southside on Friday nights.

Southside Speedwaywas known as the "Toughest Track in the South" and if you could beat local drivers Ray Hendrick, Sonny Hutchins, Ted Hairfield, Runt Harris, Eddie Crouse, Bill Dennis, Al Grinnan,Lennie Pond and Tommy Ellis you could win anywhere. Bobby Allison and Donnie used to stay at the home of track promoter J.M. Wilkinson to race at Southside and had good success in the Virginia 400 races. Perk Brown, Carl Burris, Hank Thomas, Eddie Roysterand company came from North Carolina to run Southside on Friday night. From western Virginia came Paul Radford, the Hensley cousins Jimmy and Billy, and Joe Henry Thurman. The northern modified stars Denny Zimmerman, "Steady" Eddie Flemke, and Red Foote prepped their cars at Junie Donlavey's shop. From Tidewater Virginia came Gene Lovelace, Butch Torrie, Randy Hutchinsonand a host of others.

One year the first eight finishers, including winner Ray Hendrick,in the big NASCAR Modified Champions race at Trenton broadcast live on MRN Radio were all Friday night Southside Speedway regulars.

If you could win at Southside, you could win anywhere. When Southside added the Late Model Sportsman class, drivers like Darrell Waltrip, Harry Gant, Morgan Shepherd and Tommy Houston would show up. They all looked like monkeys trying to climb a flagpole at Ray and Sonny's house.

I have really fond memories, too, of Saturday nights in my 20s at Wilson County Speedway, but nothing will ever compare to seeing Friday night racing at Southside. Seeing our Friday night Southside drivers win really big races at Langhorne, Martinsville, Daytona, Charlotte, Talladega and even with regularity on the dirt at Wilson in the the cases of Al Grinnan and Bud Elliott was a special time that I shall always cherish.

Devastating News-The Passing of Wanda Lund

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Sad news, indeed.

SOME DONT KNOW WHEN THEY HAVE IT MADE

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Jim, May 19 will mark 13 years for me without a drink. I never preach about it, but I know what it can do. For 5 years after my last drink I kept two Budweiser longnecks in the fridge as a reminder. I did things and made promises I'd never have made. If I'd had a few drinks, I could get you all the race tix and pit passes and sponsorships you wanted. By the way, I NEVER drank alone and I never drank at home, always in bars and at dances and at racing related events. For me, there was no such thing as 1 drink. I drank until I was obnoxious and often picked fights.

One of my "duties" with the Wrangler racing program was to be certain no media member EVER paid for a drink. Heck, other sponsors, crew members and car owners started hanging around me for the free booze and meals. Richard Childress always looked around a bar when he walked in. If he saw me, he hollared in a loud voice, "When Dave Fulton drinks, everybody drinks!"

Richard hollaring that phrase seemed funny at the time. Then, over the years he started hollaring it at me on pit road and in the garage. It had long ago stopped being funny, but RC never let up and I quit speaking to him many years ago. He's a millionnaire and I'm not. But he has to get someone else to buy his free drinks these days.

SOME DONT KNOW WHEN THEY HAVE IT MADE

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My wife currently has a sister in ICU on a ventilator in Greenville, NC. Liver gone, kidneys gone. Whole body gone. All systems shutting down. Alcohol abuse. We made the roundtrip drive from CharlotteMonday for what we expect to be the final visit. Not a pretty sight. My wife expects to next see her at the funeral. One year we were allowed to visit one of our daughters for thirty minutes at noon on Christmas Day at the detox unit of a Charlotte hospital. I can relate.

He was racing before racing was cool; he was there BEFORE the beginning

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By the way, since the story was written ten years ago, the brothers Glen & Leonard Wood as well as Ricky Rudd have been added to the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame from the motorsports sector. Still, however, no induction for Clay Earles, Ray Hendrick, Sonny Hutchins or Junie Donlavey. I sure hope their day comes soon. They are all past due for inclusion. Ironic, The North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame happened to announce its 2012 class of 8 yesterday. None are motorsports related, but I did applaud the inclusion of a former Wilson - Fike High School football coach who led those barbecue fed boys to the North Carolina State 4-A Football Championship three consecutive years, 1967-1969. Let's hope in the future that more of our motorsports founders and trailblazers make it into their various states' sports halls of fame.

He was racing before racing was cool; he was there BEFORE the beginning

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This is a ten year old story, published in 2002 on the occassion of my former employer and friend, the late Paul Sawyer being inducted in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, the fifth inductee with a tie to motorsports. I never tire of reading accounts about one of the two men I most admire that I ever met in racing (the other being Bud Moore). What fascinates me is reading how it was done back in the day. Paul was always opinionated, also, and he doesn't hesitate to nominate his "best driver" list. I hope you enjoy a brief look at how one of the few racing folk in Virginia cracked the entry list of an institution populated with stick & ball athletes.

Sawyer: Man Ahead Of His Time

April 26, 2002

By AL PEARCE

Daily Press

Paul Sawyer was there before the beginning. Before there was a NASCAR, he was promoting stock car races by schlepping around, nailing signs to trees and telephone poles.

"I'd drive in on Sunday, sell tickets from a suitcase, pay the purse and my expenses, and put any leftover money in the suitcase and hit the road,'' he said Thursday. "It went like that for years. When racing started getting bigger, it got bigger a little at a time. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would get this big.''

Sawyer predates radio and TV. He was there before message boards, NASCAR.com and Winston Cup Scene. He was there before luxury coaches, private jets and PR flunkies. He was racing before racing was cool.

Friday night in Portsmouth, he gets his due for a job well and truly done. His induction into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame is the latest lifetime achievement award he's received in recent years. "These things come out of nowhere when you're old enough to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel,'' the 85-year-old great-grandfather said.

"The Buddy Shuman award; the Meyers Brothers award; the NASCAR Founders award; the RPM Award; an honorary doctorate from the University of Richmond. But this one really floored me. How it happened to me, I don't know.''

Sawyer is the Hall's fifth motorsports-related inductee. Deceased drivers Joe Weatherly, Curtis Turner and Wendell Scott are in, along with 83-year-old powerboat legend Henry Lauterbach. Sawyer hopes the late Clay Earles of Martinsville Speedway, owner/driver Glen Wood and drivers Sonny Hutchins, Tommy Ellis and the late Ray Hendrick eventually make it, too.

The honor comes a week before 100,000+ fans gather at Richmond International Raceway for the Pontiac 400. When Sawyer became involved in the late '40s, he was happy with 100,000 fingers and toes at his races. But times changed, and he was smart enough to change with them.

"One thing about me was that I could see the handwriting on the wall,'' he said. "I knew how to keep up. I hated to pave Richmond (in 1968), but I saw the end of dirt-track racing. And that's why I spent all that money to rebuild the track in 1988. Once I did that, I knew it would always have a date.''

Sawyer helped guide racing through its '50s infancy and '60s adolescence. He was a player in the '70s, when racing reached beyond its grasp. He became a force in the '80s by turning the half-mile State Fairgrounds Raceway into a three- quarter-mile showplace. He rode the wave that carried NASCAR to unprecedented growth in the '90s.

Finally, deep into his 80th year and financially set, he felt the time was right. In December of 1999 -- about 50 years after getting into racing -- he sold RIR to International Speedway Corp. "I don't have to do this,'' he said at the time. "But I don't want to go into debt again. I went into debt to my eyeballs to build this, and I don't want to do it again to add more seats.''

As for his "best-ever'' lists: "Curtis was the best dirt-track racer I ever saw,'' Sawyer said. "Junior Johnson was as good on dirt as he was on asphalt. Fred Lorenzen was great on asphalt, but he looked like a monkey climbing a flagpole on dirt. Joe. Fireball. Richard and Lee. Bob Welborn.

"Man, there's been so many great ones. Today's drivers would be lost on dirt. Those old-timers would run circles around 'em.''

The Tadlock racing family in Norfolk exposed Sawyer to racing in the 1930s. After World War II, Sawyer began his career as a car builder and eventually became a track owner. In 1955, he and driver Joe Weatherly leased the Fairgrounds Raceway in Richmond. In 1968, Sawyer paved the half-mile dirt track. The once-modest 6,000-seat track eventually became the 112,000- seat, three-quarter-mile Richmond International Raceway.

updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM

Almirola in Petty #43

General

Just for fun, here's a little excerpt from a year 2000 Car&Driver Magazine article by a former Chrysler Corp. engineer after the announcement that the Plymouth nameplate would be retired:

I haven't been drawn to Plymouth showrooms lately because nothing there appeals to me; more on this later. Besides, I already have a Plymouth. It's a 1966 Belvedere II hardtop, an unrestored survivor (rather like me) with a 426 Hemi. I've owned it 20 years, and as I look ahead to my geezerhood, if my clutch leg doesn't turn to Jell-O, I reckon I'll still own that old warrior when I finally shuffle off.

Old memories come alive again when I pull that four-speed's tall Hurst lever and hear the threatening rumble of the exhaust. I was a downy-cheeked Chrysler engineer when that car was new and Richard Petty was mopping up NASCAR in his blue Hemi Belvedere and Plymouth was part of the Big Three, third in sales behind Chevy and Ford.

Plymouth or Dodge? We engineers never cared one way or the other. Under their skins the two had exactly the same machinery, and they were built on the same assembly lines. Dodges were supposed to be "more car," which justified the slightly higher prices. But the "more car" was mostly illusory. For example, the Dodge Coronet had a 117-inch wheelbase in 1966, one inch longer than my Belvedere's. We made the Dodge longer with brackets that located the rear axle farther rearward. There was no benefit, just a number that seemed more valuable on the specification page.

Although Plymouths and Dodges were cooked up by the same engineers in the same pot, competing sales departments sold them, and the two fought harder between themselves than they did against Ford and GM. We engineers never understood all the fuss. Why not just combine the lines --call it Plodge --and get everyone on the same team?

But this sibling warfare seemed to pay off for Dodge. Plymouth sales sagged to fifth place in 1973, and as the '70s progressed, Dodge almost always had more models than Plymouth. By the early '90s, Dodge was outselling Plymouth by about two to one, a drastic reversal from the mid-'50s, when Plymouth overwhelmed Dodge by nearly three to one.

Almirola in Petty #43

General

I bet we could raise a substantial sum from race fans if the "King" were to field a car that had "SOUTHEASTERN PLYMOUTH DEALERS" painted on its rear quarter panels.

Almirola in Petty #43

General

Jan 4, 11:32 AM EST

Aric Almirola to drive No. 43 for RPM

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Richard Petty Motorsports has hired Aric Almirola to drive the famed No. 43 in NASCAR's elite Sprint Cup Series.

Almirola is leaving a job driving for JR Motorsports in the Nationwide Series to take over the car seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty made famous.

Almirola replaces AJ Allmendinger. He left the team last month to take a job at Penske Racing.

Almirola has 35 career starts in the Sprint Cup Series but none since he drove the last five races of the 2010 season. He finished a career-high fourth in the 2010 season finale at Homestead.

Almirola finished fourth last season in the Nationwide standings. JR Motorsports did not immediately announce a replacement.

updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM

Elkin Speedway - Opening Race 1947

Historic Speedways and Ghost Tracks

Very nice stuff.