Pappy’s post from the past

And in this corner…

Most of all, I would go back to the Greensboro Agricultural Fairgrounds race track on April 28, 1957.

Given access to a make-believe time machine in order to travel across the decades for the purpose of seeing NASCAR altercations of yore, it’s the destination and date I would chose.

It’s the selection I made to a pal who brought up the idea Thursday as we and others sat before a cozy fireplace on a raw, rainy afternoon at Mallard Head Golf Club in Mooresville, N.C., during what amounts to a weekly bull session.

The discussion had turned quickly to famous NASCAR fights in the wake of the blowup among Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer and their crews last Sunday at Phoenix.

Why this one of 55 years ago?

As far as I know, there is little or no video of the confrontation showing what happened for us to see all over again.  In contrast, since about the mid-1970s, cameras catching all the action have been rolling at NASCAR events.

Although the Greenboro incident is among the most colorful and humorous in NASCAR history, it isn’t widely known.  Nowhere near as famous, for example, as the battle between Cale Yarborough and the Brothers Allison, Bobby and Donnie, at the conclusion of the 1979 Daytona 500.

The Petty versus Lund tale was related to me by the late hall of fame driver Tim Flock, who was a witness to it that day so long ago.

Prior to a 250-lap race on the .333-mile track at Greensboro, driver introductions were being made on the back of a flat-bed trailer.  As they passed on the make-shift stage, NASCAR champion Lee Petty and rival driver Tiny Lund exchanged angry words.

Fists instantly started flying.

The nickname “Tiny” was a misnomer.  Lund stood around 6-6 and weighed 275 pounds.  The 6-2 Petty possibly scaled 170.

Not surprisingly, Lund was lacing Petty with a merciless whipping.

Lee’s teenage sons, Richard and Maurice, then members of their father’s crew, rushed to his rescue.

“Tiny was beating the dickens out of all three of them,” Flock recalled with a laugh.  “It looked like minnows bouncing off a battleship.”

Now, Mrs. Petty came on stage to the aid of her husband and sons.  She pelted Lund’s head with her purse!  Pump knots appeared on Tiny’s noggin and he scrambled to get away.

What made the purse such a weapon?

“There was a .38 pistol inside!” roared Flock.

I didn’t dare write this story as part of a “NASCAR feuds” segment I was doing for The Charlotte Observer in the 1980s until confirming the details with Richard Petty.

“That’s just how it happened,” said Richard.

“Will it embarrass your Momma if I include the part about the pistol? I asked.

King Richard, who followed his father as a driver to become the winner of seven Cup Series championships and 200 races, flashed his famous smile.

“Embarrass her?  Why, she’s right proud of it!”

The race went on that afternoon in ’57 after things calmed down.  Paul Goldsmith won, Lee Petty finished sixth and Tiny Lund was 13th.

However, the pre-race “show” was the hit that day.

What a treat it would be to somehow see it.

Pappy’s Post From The Past

What do Fireball Roberts, Curtis Turner, Glen Wood and Tom Pistone have in common with George Halas, Dick Butkus, Walter Payton, Gale Sayers,  William “The Refrigerator” Perry and Julius Peppers?

They all have “played” at storied Soldier Field in Chicago.

Halas, Butkus, Payton, Sayers, Perry and Peppers, of course, are among the most famous of the NFL’s legendary Chicago Bears, whose home field is the great arena dating to 1926.

Roberts, Turner, Wood and Pistone each won NASCAR events there in the summers of 1956-57.

It’s true.

Over 50 years ago NASCAR leader Big Bill France staged stock car races on a track built around the football field.

Auto racing began at the massive stadium in 1935 on a cinder track. Later a board track was erected, and then pavement was put in. Racing ended at the arena in 1970.

Soldier Field, first proposed in 1919, was dedicated to the nation’s veterans of World War One.

The asphalt oval where NASCAR drivers competed was listed at a half-mile, but Chicago writer Stan Kalwasinski, who authored a fine article tracing the history of motor racing at Soldier field, contends the layout probably was closer to 3/8ths-mile.

Soldier Field in the early 50’s (photo:Bob Sheldon)

NASCAR’s long-ago visits to Soldier Field come to mind because the sanctioning body’s top series is in the Windy City this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway for the Geico 400. The 1.5-mile track opened in 2001. Winners there include Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Ryan Newman, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick , Tony Stewart and David Reutimann..

Chicago native Pistone, who has long lived and operated a racing business in Charlotte, was NASCAR’s first winner at Soldier Field.

Pistone drove his own Chevrolet to victory in a Convertible Division race there in June of 1956, beating Turner to the flag.

On July 21 of ’56 Roberts took a 200-lap triumph at the track, followed by Jim Paschal and Ralph Moody in a Grand National Division event. That circuit was the forerunner  of today’s Sprint Cup Series.

Later in ’56 Turner won a grueling 500-lap convertible race at Soldier Field, topping his buddy Joe Weatherly, the runnerup, and three-time “ragtop” circuit champion Bob Welborn.

Wood, destined to gain his greatest fame as a team owner, won NASCAR’s finale at Soldier Field in June of 1957. This, too, was a race among convertible drivers.

According to the splendid NASCAR historian, Greg Fielden, Roberts “beat back a stellar field and dodged water puddles left by an intermittent rain” to take the only Grand National show at Soldier Field.

The fabulous Fireball, destined to lose his life in 1964 due to injuries suffered in a World 600 crash at Charlotte Motor Speedway, led a 1-2-3 Ford sweep.

Fielden notes in his five-volume set of books on NASCAR that the race produced a fifth straight loss for the Chrysler operation of Carl Kiekhaefer, which at times in that era was unbeatable. Kiekhaefer drivers Speedy Thompson, Frank Mundy and Buck Baker finished fourth through sixth in Dodges.

Other noted drivers in a field of 25 included Lee Petty, Paul Goldsmith, Billy Myers, Herb Thomas, Pistone and a promising young Illinois driver from Elmhurst named Fred Lorenzen.

The career of “Fearless Freddie” brought him to a factory-backed Ford ride with the legendary Holman-Moody team, based in Charlotte. Winning 26 races and 33 poles from 1961-67, the blond driver was tagged with the nickname “The Golden Boy.”

Roberts’ average speed in taking the checkered flag at Soldier Field was 61.037 mph.

When Harvick scored at Chicagoland in 2002 his winning average speed was 136.832 mph. And Jimmie Johnson qualified for the 2005 race there at 188.147!

How times have changed …

August Memory

I am told that the wreaths are out there on the grassy knoll as always in mid-August, ribbons waving softly in a slight summer breeze.

For 25 years now, the flowers have appeared on Middlebelt Road, just a mile or so from Detroit Metro Airport.

They are in memory of the lives lost on the awful Sunday evening in 1987—August 16–when Northwest Airlines Flight 255 bound for Phoenix went down at that spot, killing 154 of the 155 people on board. Two people on the ground also died.

Dozens of horrified witnesses saw the crash. I was one of them.

Along with two fellow motorsports reporters, my friends Steve Waid and Gary McCredie, I had driven in from the Champion 400 at Michigan International Speedway near Brooklyn.

Just after we checked into a motel near the airport to await an early morning flight to Charlotte the next day, the world exploded 200 yards away.

I thought at the time that my 30 years of covering stock car racing had left me at least  somewhat jaded to the sight of sudden death. I`d seen several drivers, some close acquaintances, die violently on tracks.

I was wrong.

Everything that happened in the tragic twilight of that Sunday haunted me nightly for months. The thick black smoke. The wailing sirens. The long line of ambulances that finally told the worst.

But I also remember to this day the poignant incidents that demonstrated the better aspects of human nature.

There was the fierce-looking, giant of a motel proprietor softly calming a sobbing, distraught young woman. A Northwest flight attendant, she desperately had been wandering the lobby, asking the location of the nearest hospital in order to go there and give blood. He gently took her in his arms and told her that “your donation can`t help anyone on that plane.“

There was a young mother, whose stalled car was struck and incinerated by the aircraft, trying to get a phone call through to let her family know that she and a weeks-old baby had left the vehicle minutes before the crash. They were assisted to the motel by a homeless man.

For years, I dreaded going to Detroit for the August race at MIS.

Each time it continued to make no sense to me that later investigation revealed that somehow the wing flaps on that Northwest Airlines MD80 jet weren`t put down for takeoff, causing the deaths of 156 people.

A day after the airliner`s fatal fall, a radio talk show host called me from Phoenix. “Most of those people on that plane were from Arizona,“ she said. “The pain will endure in The Valley of The Sun for a long time.“

It endures elsewhere, too.

The wreaths on Middlebelt Road are signs of that and something more that’s reassuring…

Love endures, too.

 

Ghosts Are Lurking…

At this time each August I seem to hear the leaves start rustling anew.

The sound is distinct, but at the same time eerily faint, almost ghostly.  It seems to be emanating from afar.

And then, I remember…

In the dimly-lit bar at rustic Seneca Lodge, deep in the woods of southern New York state near the storied Watkins Glen race course, several laurel wreaths hang on the walls, their leaves brown and brittle from the years.

Despite the fragility of their age, those wreaths exude an aura….an emanation that leads me once again to reprise their memory.

Seneca Lodge, Watkins Glen

In another time, the wreaths hung around the necks and graced the shoulders of drivers victorious in the U.S. Grand Prix, a long-ago Formula One race that unfolded for many a year at Watkins Glen.  They were worn by such legendary drivers as Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Ronnie Peterson, Jochen Rindt and Gilles Villeneuve — all of them, now gone.

Their wreaths were left behind as mementoes, and through all these intervening years they have remained in place.

Legend has it that following the wreath-hanging ceremonies in the tavern of Seneca Lodge, the race winners had to stand on the bar while crewmen threw beer on them.

When NASCAR brought its big-time tour back to Watkins Glen in 1986—after being absent there since 1965 — I remember the late Tim Richmond being enthralled with these tales after visiting Seneca Lodge and seeing its treasure trove of memorabilia.

“There’s magic here,” Tim said.  “Ghosts are lurking round.  Getting to race at Watkins Glen gives me goose bumps.”

And then, Tim went out and won the inaugural Bud At The Glen, as the race was then known.  He triumphed in stirring fashion, with a late charge to catch and pass Darrell Waltrip with just 12 of the 90 laps remaining on the 2.428-mile road course.

The victory for Hendrick Motorsports and crusty, colorful crew chief Harry Hyde continued an incredible streak for Richmond, giving him four victories in his last six starts.  He’d also finished second three times in his last eight.

After the Victory Lane ceremony and winner’s press conference, Richmond ordered his teammates and friends down the hill to Seneca Lodge for a party like the Formula One folks had enjoyed.

The revelry was going strong when Tim’s delight turned to dismay.  He suddenly realized that he had no wreath to hang on the wall.  He hadn’t been given one, in great part because the practice was discouraged by NASCAR.  The foliage, see, would obscure the driver uniform logos of sponsors in the hundreds of photos that are always shot during Victory Lane proceedings.

Tim grew increasingly upset, but the savvy veteran Harry Hyde saved the precious day by suggesting that the team “enshrine” a tire from its winning car instead.

Richmond quickly agreed and crewman David Oliver was sent to fetch a tire from the team’s big transporter parked outside the lodge.

Oliver remembers all this well as the Cup Series teams assemble once more at Watkins Glen for Sunday’s running of another Cup Series event At The Glen on Sunday.

“It was close quarters in there with the race car, the backup race car, all the tools and the other gear,” Oliver recalled recently. “I had to crawl around and under a lot of stuff, and I skinned myself up some.  But I eventually managed to get one of those big, fat tires out of the truck.

“I had to do it.  Tim wouldn’t have left until he’d put something to mark his victory on the wall in the bar.  And after Harry’s idea, it had to be a tire.”

Oliver has other intriguing memories of events that marked NASCAR’s return to Watkins Glen.

“Practically every team went to upstate New York in ’86 planning to use Jerico transmissions in their cars,” continued Oliver.  “These cut down on gear-shifting and the potential for a driver to make a mistake.

“Tim went out to practice, and after only a couple laps Tim came into the garage with a firm look on his face.  ‘Get that transmission out of the car and put a standard one in!’  he said.  ‘I can’t run well without shifting.  It’s messing up my rhythm.

“’Besides, this is WATKINS GLEN!  Anyone who is too lazy to shift doesn’t deserve to win here.’

“My stock in Tim Richmond as a great race car driver already was way up there.  At that moment, it went out of sight in the sky.”

Tim was waiting anxiously as Oliver returned to the festivities in the Seneca Lodge bar with the tire that had been part of the fulfilling victory.  With much ado and amid great applause, Tim and Harry Hyde hung the tire on the wall.

Then Tim — just like Jimmy Clark and all those Formula One greats who had preceded him — stood on the bar and was splashed by beer thrown by his teammates.

And like those Grand Prix greats, Tim Richmond is gone, too.  So is Harry Hyde.

Richmond’s decline first came into view at Watkins Glen a year later, on Aug. 9, 1987.  I recall it especially well, because that was my 50th birthday.

Richmond showed up very late for the driver’s meeting a quarter-century ago.  He appeared hung-over and confused.

As the meeting broke up, several top stars approached the Cup Series director, the late Dick Beaty of Charlotte.  Their unanimous message to Beaty: “If Richmond runs, we won’t! He’s in no shape to be on the track.”

NASCAR faced a dilemma.  A messy decision was averted when the race was rained out and rescheduled for the next day.  Twenty-four hours later Richmond was in better shape to drive.  He started the race and finished 10th.

The following week Richmond was again woozy at Michigan International Speedway—a team spokesman said Tim had a nagging cold–but he made the field and ran until a blown engine forced him out.

When Richmond didn’t show up two weeks later for the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, a classic in which he was defending champion, it became obvious his problem went far beyond a cold.  Before long it was learned that Richmond had fallen victim to AIDS.  The disease took his life on Aug. 13, 1989.

Oldtime patrons at the bar in Seneca Lodge regale newcomers with tales of the fabulous Formula 1 drivers and Tim Richmond.  But perhaps the drivers are remembered best by the yellowed wreaths and that tire, all of which serve to hallow the place.

Some racing fans claim that late at night, when the bar is quiet and the lights are low and the crowd is gone, those who use their imagination can hear the brittle leaves rustle and that tire of Tim Richmond  whir maybe just a bit.

They claim you can hear the long ago laughter of the drivers and their crews, and you can smell the foaming beer.

There is magic.

Ghosts are lurking ’round.

Danger, Deer And A Drunk

Always watch races at Pocono Raceway–whether in person or on television–with special trepidation.

Although not as fast as the superspeedways at Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega, it is a very, very dangerous place.  Possibly the most frightening on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

This is because the triangle-shaped, 2.5-mile track in the Pocono Mountains, site of the Pennsylvania 400 on Sunday, has two long straightaways where speed builds breathtakingly.   At the end of each are what essentially amounts to 90-degree left turns.    And these turns relatively are barely banked compared to other big speedways.  The first turn is just 14 degrees, the second turn, also known as The Tunnel Turn, is a narrow, challenging 8 degrees.

Some of NASCAR’s biggest stars have experienced extremely violent crashes, and been hurt, while racing over a tunnel that leads into the infield and the garage area.

The list includes seven-time series champions Richard Petty and  Dale Earnhardt, Davey Allison, Harry Gant, Neil Bonnett and Steve Park.  Earnhardt, Allison and Bonnett all are deceased.

The career of legendary Bobby Allison, the 1983 champion, sadly was brought to an end on June 19, 1988, Father’s Day,  when he was involved in a wreck between Turns  1 and 2.  Allison spun when his car’s left rear tire went flat on the first lap.

The legendary Bobby Allison

He was hit in the driver’s side door by the following car of Jocko Maggiacomo and suffered criticial head and chest injuries that left him hospitalized for five months.

Maggiacomo wasn’t seriously hurt, but never raced again on the big-time NASCAR tour.

Four-time champion Jeff Gordon crashed going into the first turn following a run down the 3,740-foot frontstretch in 2006.  His car was destroyed, but Gordon wasn’t badly injured.  Some sources say that Gordon’s impact with the wall created a whopping 64 in G-forces.

One of the most horrifying incidents near The Tunnel Turn involved a drunken fan.  Luckily, he didn’t cause a massive pileup and possibly deadly injuries to drivers in the Champion Spark Plug 500 of 1993.

The fan scaled  a 6-foot-high wire fence separating the track from the infield.  He then jumped over the inside wall and ran onto the racing surface.

For a terrifying second he froze with Kyle Petty and Davey Allison, battling for the lead, bearing down on him along the 3,065-foot Long Pond Straight.  As fans at the track and a national TV audience gasped, the man finally wheeled and dived head-first across the outer wall just before Petty and Allison swept by.

“I came around the first turn and I couldn’t believe what a I saw,” Petty said after winning the race.  “He was right in the middle of the race track.  I let off the throttle, checked up a little bit, gave a wave to Davey, and he checked up, too.

“I turned left and motioned for Davey to do the same to give the guy a chance to get across the wall.  When we got there, his feet were sticking over the wall.  Davey was shaking his head.  He couldn’t believe it either.

“I don’t know how much we missed him, but it wasn’t by much.  I wouldn’t have wanted to be that close to a passing car running 55 (mph), much less 160.”

Davey Allison

Said an angry Davey Allison:

“I’ve never seen anything like that before.  I never believed anybody could be that dumb.”

Law enforcement authorities began an immediate search for the culprit, concentrating on a swamp not far away.  About three hours later they arrested a 25-year-old man from Elphata, Pa., and charged him with two felonies and five misdemeanors.  The felonies: endangering persons and risking a catastrophe; the misdemeanors: criminal mischief, defiant trespass, persistent disorderly conduct, recklessly endangering another person and public drunkeness.

Arraigned the next day, the man admitted to drinking beer since 3 a.m. and taking medication to stay awake.  He later was sentenced to prison.

As far as can be determined, this is the only time in NASCAR’s so-called modern era, dating to 1972, that a fan has gone on a track while a race was in progress.

However, there’s a heavy deer population in the Pocono Mountains, and several times whitetails have caused problems by wandering onto the asphalt racing surface at the track there.

Bonnett once struck a deer while practicing at Pocono and returned to the garage area with heavy damage to the grille of his car, where crewman found a leg of the deer, which, of course, was killed.

There have been strange, amusing  incidents involving critters at Pocono.

I recall NASCAR and speedway personnel having to stop a race in order to run down a rabbit near the start/finish line.  Ditto, and maybe strangest of all, a rooster that somehow found its way onto the track, appearing just under the flagstand.  It was hilarious watching the late Harold Kinder, the flagman and a colorful character, come down from his perch to try and help re-coop that rooster.

During one cold, rainy day at Pocono Raceway a NASCAR official named Carl Hill was manning a small booth just outside the track near The Tunnel Turn.  His duty was to check in the teams as they arrived.  Not much was happening that day, and Carl dozed off to sleep.  He was awakened by something trying to get in the booth with him.

Carl peeked out to see a LARGE black bear that had come out of the thick forests that surround the track!  Hill’s shouts finally scared the critter away. Carl never dozed off again at Pocono before his retirement.

In the 1970s there weren’t enough cars at Pocono for a full field.  Some rival drivers and crewmen dared the impish, fun-loving driver/car owner James Hylton to see “how slow” he could run a qualifying lap.  Hylton went around at about 45 mph.  His run seemed to take forever on the big, long track.

His NASCAR peers, standing on the pit wall, cheered in delight as Hylton finally took the checkered flag.

James Hylton
(photo: Terry Strange)

The sanctioning body’s officials weren’t nearly so amused.  Hylton was fined several hundred dollars.

Finally, one favorite memory from my many trips to Pocono Raceway as a member of the motorsports media.

None of the competitors were satisfied with the garage area “facilities” at the raceway.  Long-time driver Dave Marcis complained loudest and longest and angriest to the track owners, Doctors Rose and Joe Mattioli.

Finally, they built a new, nice “rest area” for the drivers, crews, press and others with access to the garage.    And they named it “The Dave Marcis Lounge.”

Dave Marcis

At first, Dave was not amused, but later laughed about his namesake “potty.”

As at all tracks, there’s humor and fun to be found at Pocono Raceway.  But it’s tempered by the danger.

A Brickyard Full Of Memories

I didn’t attend the first Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sept. 4, 1950.

Nor the first Daytona 500 on Feb. 22, 1959.

Nor the first World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on June 19, 1960.

All, or course, were significant events, destined to become classics on the NASCAR schedule in succeeding years.

I was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Aug. 6, 1994 for the inaugural Brickyard 400, and I can’t imagine the first races at Darlington, Daytona and Charlotte being bigger spectacles.

1994 Brickyard 400

As the 400 is run for the 19th time Sunday, memories of what transpired at Indy in August of ’94 come racing back.

I recall astonishment about what me and my media pals  who’d never been to the great race track previously saw upon reaching the press box.

The front stretch grandstands on both sides of the straightaway looked like canyon walls filled with people.  The sound of their anticipation and excitement was a buzz akin to what might have been emitted by thousands upon thousands of bees.

At the start/finish line NASCAR’s former big-time champions were introduced and then seated in convertibles to be honored with rides around the historic track.  Many brought their wives along.  I especially recall the beaming pride of Buck and Sue Baker and Tim and Frances Flock.  Both Buck and Tim have passed on now….

Frances Flock at Brickyard 400 1994 (TimFlock)

Finally and appropriately, men who had paved the path for NASCAR to someday take its show to Indy were being recognized in a major way.

Allow me to put the recollections in reverse just a bit.

As the drivers in the ’94 field gathered near the flagstand for a photo with the speedway’s Mary Hulman George and NASCAR chief Bill France, Jr., I thought back to June 22, 1992.

That’s when NASCAR had taken nine selected star drivers and their teams to Indy for a test.

So charged up were the Indiana fans that hundreds of them lined the street leading into the track just to watch the teams’ transporters roll in during the middle of the night.  The trucks came directly from Michigan International Raceway, where Geoff Bodine had won the Goodwrench 400 the day before.

As fans swarmed to the speedway for the test, some spectators awaiting the action in the infield at turn one began chanting, “We want a race!  We want a race!”  Never mind that some former Indianapolis 500 champions were against NASCAR intrusion onto what they considered hallowed ground.

As Dale Earnhardt went onto the track for his first lap I stood beside Richard Childress, owner of the famed, black No. 3 Chevrolet driven by “The Intimidator.”

Earnhardt and Childress were communicating by radio.

Suddenly, Childress bent to slap a knee while bellowing with laughter.

I inquired as to what was so funny.

“I asked Dale what he thought when he got up to speed on the backstretch,” replied Childress, his eyes sparkling with delight.  “Dale said his (a part of the anatomy) ‘Is as hard as Chinese arithmetic.’”

Earnhardt was very quick that day.  And he continued fast when time trials were held for the inaugural Brickyard 400 on Aug. 4, 1994.  Like all the other drivers, he held a deep desire to win the pole position for Indy’s first stock car race.That honor, in what widely was regarded as a whopper upset, went to Rick Mast, who clocked 172.414 mph in a Chevrolet fielded by Richard Jackson.  Earnhardt qualified second at 171.726.

During a rollicking interview after his pole run, the witty Mast was asked repeatedly to tell stories about his prize-winning cow.

As a teenager in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Mast had traded the animal for his first race car.

His anecdotes were hilarious, and the reports that were published in papers across the country the next day won Mast a legion of new fans.

He and Jackson won a lot more shortly after the press conference was completed.

Among the prizes for the pole-winning team was a new van for the car owner.  Jackson and Mast crammed as many crew members as possible into the van and took them for a ride around the speedway, the most famous in the world.  Amused fans cheered in appreciation.

Finally, the 400 field got the green flag.

Earnhardt was determined to lead the first lap.

He tried too hard.

Exiting the fourth turn the back of his car slipped a bit and hit the wall.  The damage took Earnhardt out of contention for the victory, but he persevered to finish fifth.

Mast led the first lap.

As the race rolled on, I remember amazement among the press corps at the strong showing of Geoff Bodine.  It appeared he was the driver to beat.

Geoff was getting far better tire wear than his rivals.  He was poised to make one less pit stop, a pivotal factor.

Then he and his younger brother, Brett, took turns spinning each other out of the lead.  Geoff struck first.  A bit later, on the 101st of 160 laps on the 2.5-mile rectangular track, Brett retaliated.

Geoff’s car was so badly damaged that he was knocked out of the race.

Geoff then traced the trouble to “family personal problems.”  Brett, who was to finish as the runnerup, fervently denied that.

With Bodine eliminated, Jeff Gordon and Ernie Irvan staged a thrilling duel for the triumph.  They swapped the lead five times between laps 136-156.

It seemed they might sweep across the strip of bricks abreast at the finish.

However, a flat right front tire on the 156th lap forced Irvan to pit his Ford.  This left Gordon with a lead of 10-car lengths over Brett Bodine, and Jeff maintained the edge to the finish to the roars of a crowd estimated at 300,000, the largest in NASCAR history.

It was a storybook outcome.

Gordon grew up in nearby Pittsboro, Ind., and he’d celebrated his 23rd birthday just 48 hours earlier.

Jeff Gordon, winner of the Brickyard 400 (Dozier Mobley/Getty Images)

Rather than popping corks to celebrate the terrific triumph, Gordon went to his hotel room to watch replays of the race.

He phoned to order a pizza.

“There was a race in town today,” he was informed.  “We’re swamped.  Your delivery might take quite a while.”

“What If I told you I was the driver that won the race?” said Gordon.

A piping hot pizza was served up relatively as fast as Jeff had driven.

Some members of the media panned the 400.  The NASCAR competitors disagreed.

“I think the people saw a hell of a show,” said four-time Indy 500 winner A.J. Foyt.  “I think the crowd went home well satisfied.”

I echoed Foyt’s sentiments then and still do.

The fact that the 400 remains a highlight date on the Cup Series schedule after all these years demonstrates the aura of The Brickyard.

Sakes, Er, Sacks Alive!

    I ‘d barely made the late afternoon airline flight direct from Daytona Beach

to Charlotte.

It had been a hectic, sweaty dash from the press box at Daytona International

Speedway, where the Pepsi Firecracker 400 had been run earlier in the day, to

the airport terminal a few hundred yards from the famous track’s third turn.

A bit after the plane got airborne the flight attendants began service in the

cabin.  Thankfully, it finally came my turn to order.  I needed a cold adult

beverage.

One of the stewardesses noticed the media credential still dangling from a

lanyard around my neck.

“Who won the race?” she asked.

I pointed across the aisle.

“That guy right there,” I said.

“Oh, sure,” she replied a bit testily.  “Seriously, who won the race?.”

“Seriously, he did.”

She turned to my fellow passenger and said, “Did you really win the

Firecracker 400?”

Greg Sacks smiled, blushed a bit, and nodded affirmatively.

“Oh, my God!” the flight attendant said, almost shouting.  “We’ve got the

Firecracker 400 champion on board!”

After completing their service, the attractive flight attendants gathered to

fawn over Greg Sacks, who none of them knew and probably never had heard of

before.

“Hey, what about me?”  I thought to myself enviously.  “I wrote a story about

him…”

And what a story that race produced!

On July 4, 1985, Sacks scored what remains one of the most surprising

victories in the history of NASCAR’s major series.

Here are a few of the reasons it ranks, even 26 years later, among stock car

racing’s biggest upsets:

–Sacks was driving a Chevrolet being fielded for the first time as a

“research and development” vehicle by a new team, Bill Gardner Racing (an

offshoot of the established DiGard Racing).  The team had started taking

rough-edged shape only three weeks earlier under the leadership of engineer Gary

Nelson.

–Sacks, then 32, a native of Long Island, N.Y. and never a winner in

NASCAR’s big-time, was available to take the ride only because he folded his own

team earlier in the season due to under-financing.

–The triumphant team’s pick-up pit crew on race day included a New

Zealander, Tony Price, who’d never been to a Winston Cup Series event before.

Price carried the tires.  The jackman was a former Boston College running back,

Robert Biestek, peforming the task for the first time.

“To call what we had in the pits today a pick-up crew isn’t exactly right,” a

grinning Nelson said in the press box after Sacks flashed to the finish line at

the 2.5-mile track a whopping 23.98 seconds ahead of runnerup Bill Elliott in a

Ford.  “It was more of a skeleton crew.

“We hired Tony Price only two weeks ago, and he sleeps in our garage.

“And Robert Biestek would have been in a pro football tryout camp if he

hadn’t broken his arm.  Although Robert is the son-in-law of our team owner,

Bill Gardner, he’d never worked in the pits before.”

(Biestek, however, knew about performing under high-level pressure.  He once

scored two touchdowns for Boston College in 83 seconds as the Eagles beat

Alabama).

Nelson continued:

“As the race went on and Greg hung in there, I said to myself, ‘Uh oh, we’re

going to mave to make pit stops that are going to mean something.  I don’t think

too highly of our chances.'”

But the crewmen who had introduced themselves to each other just before the

race did fine, and Sacks sped to his first Winston Cup victory after only two

other top 10 finishes in 41 starts.

Upon first reaching Victory Lane, Sacks seemed stunned.

“It hasn’t sunk in on me yet,” said the personable former Modified Division

star, who won 28 of 38 starts at tracks in the Northeastern U.S. in 1983.  “I

guess it might be tomorrow before the magnitude of everything hits me.”

Rivals were as startled as Sacks.

Perhaps Terry Labonte put it best.

“Not taking anything from Greg, but I’m surprised he won under the

circumstances,” said the 1984 series driving champion.  “I’ll still be surprised

tomorrow and I’ll be surprised for a long time to come.”

Elliott was a bit more diplomatic.

“Greg ran a good race,” said Elliott, who dueled Sacks tightly for many laps,

but fell behind when he had to pit for gas to complete the last 20 miles because

a vibration shook something loose in his car’s fuel pickup system.  “He came on

really strong at the end.  If I hadn’t been forced to pit, it might have been

close at the finish.  I don’t know, though, ’cause Greg was doing a mighty good

job.”

Gardner said he created the research-and-development outfit to try and find a

way to compete with Elliott, who was dominating the series at the time.

“We felt we had to put extra effort into catching the No. 9 car (Elliott’s),”

said Gardner.  “We wanted to try some things we couldn’t risk on our main entry,

the No. 22 driven by Bobby Allison, because that car is involved in a points

race for the title.  Today we were experimenting with chassis setups, and

obviously we found something.”

It didn’t help, as Allison finished 12th in the standings that season and the

next year moved to a team owned by Bill and Mickey Stavola.

Some media sources subsequently reported that Nelson had confessed the team

fielding Sacks had “cheated” to win that July day in ’85.  However, I personally

never heard such a concession made by Nelson, who later became director of

competition for NASCAR for several years.

Regardless, Sacks got the handsome Firecracker 400 trophy, the only one he

ever was to claim at the Winston Cup level in 270 career starts.

After the flight attendants quit gushing over Sacks to begin a second round

of drink service that memorable Independence Day so long ago, he leaned across

the aisle and talked about his enthralling experience.

“Before this win, I’d planned to be back home, on Long Island, helping with

my family’s produce business at 4 a.m. tomorrow,” he said.  “We provide a lot of

vegetables to 400 customers in Manhattan, and this holiday week is a busy time

for us.  But now, my plans have had to change.”

Instead of going to work before dawn on July 5, Sacks became a guest on

ABC-TV’s Good Morning America at 8 a.m.

After arriving at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, Sacks and I shook

hands in the terminal and said goodbye as I congratulated him yet again.  Then,

he rushed off to make a connecting flight.

A guy I knew came walking by.

“Hey, Tom,” he said.  “Who won the race today?”

“That young fellow I was just talking with, Greg Sacks,” I said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Click below for Racing One’s great video!  Happy 4th to you all.

Watch Racing One's Rewind of Greg Sack & Firecrakcer 400

Racing Fans ~ A Must!

Racing Fans ~ A Must!

Read Mike Hembree’s new book 100 Things NASCAR Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die

Junior Johnson ~ on the move!

Junior Johnson ~ on the move!

NASCAR legend Junior Johnson is moving to Quail Hollow.

Fans respond~

“You go Junior…best damn thing charlotte has going for it!”

“Keep the Wilkes County always in you, Junior! Wear those overalls!”

“Hope he takes his coon dogs with him”

Talledega ~ Twilight Zone

There appears nothing sinister about the setting of  Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

The track is in a broad, peaceful-looking valley between mountainous ridges of the Talladega National Forest, which covers 200,000 acres of lush greenery. Mount Cheaha, the highest point in Alabama at 2,497 feet, looms in the distance behind the third turn.

Prospering farms and ranches dot the countryside, along with community churches and schools.

But appearances deceive.

An aura of something mysterious and evil lurks about the valley and its speedway, where a NASCAR Cup Series stock car racing classic, the Aaron’s 499, is scheduled Sunday.

The track, once known as Alabama International Motor Speedway, is “Phantom Of The Opera” organ music. … It’s a Transylvanian castle on a stormy night. … It’s the Victorian home overlooking the Bates Motel.

When Bobby Allison’s car became airborne and almost slashed into the speedway’s front stretch grandstand in May of 1987 during the Winston 500, the near-catastrophe continued a history of incredible incidents that have struck the facility since its opening in 1969.

Competitors lives have been lost in freaky accidents on the track.  Fans have died in unusual incidents on adjoining speedway-owned property. … The only driver boycott in NASCAR history was here, in the very first race. … A champion driver once heard a voice commanding him to park his race car, and he did. … Several of the foremost cars were sabotaged prior to one race. … In 1986 the pace car was stolen from pit road just before the parade lap was to begin. … The list of strange occurrences is a long one.

Some contend the area where the track is located is cursed. The idea has been traced almost two centuries to the time when Gen. Andrew Jackson and his troops marched through Northern Alabama, forcing the Talladega Indians to flee.

A tribal medicine man, the legend goes, put a curse on the valley and all white men who came to it.

Hexed or not, there has been a pattern of trouble at the track, far more than experienced at other speedways.

A partial chronology:

1969     Amid much fanfare about 200 mph speeds, which would be a first for NASCAR, the track opens for the 1969 Talladega 500. The cars do run very fast.

Too fast for conditions.

Because of construction delays at the 2.66-mile layout, engineers haven’t had time to conduct thorough tests to develop a proper tire compound for the new speedway. The tires shred after only a few laps.

This failure emboldens the drivers, who are working to form a union, the Professional Drivers Association. They charge ahead with their plan, organizing a boycott, citing the tire problem.

Practically all the top drivers go home, but NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., who is also president of the Talladega track, stages the 500 anyway.

He waives the rules to fill the field with cars from other NASCAR and ARCA divisions. A relative unknown named Richard Brickhouse wins the race.

Spring, 1973     The biggest wreck in NASCAR history at that time occurs on the 10th lap of the Winston 500, sidelining 19 cars, or approximately half the field.

The accident is triggered when Ramo Stott’s car blows its engine right in front of the lead pack, paced by Buddy Baker and Cale Yarborough. Cars smash into the wall and each other.

Baker recalls the scene vividly:

“I knew there was big trouble. … Cale’s car sailed over top of mine. I mean literally over it, airborne. I hit the wall and the impact knocked the engine out of my car.

“After we got stopped, Cale and I ran over to each other and hugged, we were so glad to be OK. I guess we might have been in shock. We got up on the inside wall to get out of the way.

“I guess a minute and a half passed and I got down off the wall, figuring the wrecking was over. Then I heard something coming. It was Joe Frasson, doing about 180 mph backward in the grass.

“He barely missed me. I got back on the wall and stayed there. About that time another car came by upside down in the air higher than a telephone pole.”

The late NASCAR champion Benny Parsons was among the drivers to escape the first big wreck.  He was part of the “second wave” to watch in horror as yet another multicar accident unfolded under the yellow flag.

“When I came back around, there was so much debris scattered on the backstretch that it looked like the crash of a 747 airliner,” Parsons vividly recalled.

The starting position of Stott, whose engine failure began the massive accident? He was lined up 13th.

Still more of a sinister nature is to occur later in the race.

After completing Lap 89, Bobby Isaac, the champion in 1970, suddenly pulls in and cuts off his car’s ignition while in contention for the Bud Moore team.

“What’s wrong with the car?” asks Moore.

“Nothing,” answers Isaac.

“Then why… ?”

“Bud, a voice told me between turns 3 and 4 to park this thing, and that’s what I’m doing,” Isaac says.

1973      Larry Smith dies in what appears to be a minor single car wreck in the Talladega 500.

Smith’s car hits the wall a glancing blow, damaging only the right-front fender. His roll cage, seat belt/shoulder harnesses and other safety equipment all work properly.

Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR

But Smith is dead of a skull fracture. NASCAR officials speculate the injury occurred when the impact snapped his head back into the headrest.

The lap just completed by Smith?   Lap 13.

1974      A dozen top cars are sabotaged on the eve of the Talladega 500. The damage is discovered when the crews arrive on race morning.

Oil and gas lines have been loosened just enough to become disconnected when the cars reach racing speed. Sand has been poured into gas tanks. The inner sidewalls of tires have been sliced so that they’ll blow out when pressure is applied to them.

“Someone tried to commit mass murder here,” says Buddy Baker.

The start of the race is delayed about three hours. The culprit never has been caught.

1975     Randy Owens, 18, brother-in-law of all-time NASCAR victory leader Richard Petty, is killed during the Winston 500 when a water tank explodes in Petty’s pit area.

Owens, a member of the crew, had been watching the race from a spot nearby. He dies instantly.

Driver Tiny Lund is killed during the Talladega 500, a race he wasn’t even supposed to run.

Lund originally fails to qualify fast enough for the lineup. However, rain postpones the race until the following Sunday.

Before the race is delayed, though, a crewman for driver Grant Adcox suffers a fatal heart attack on pit road. Adcox withdraws from the event, opening a spot the following Sunday for Lund, the first alternate.

Shortly after the race begins, Lund spins coming off the second turn and careens through a grassy area on the inner portion of the track. He appears to momentarily regain control, but the car makes one final, slow loop back onto the pavement – and into the path of another car.

Struck in the driver’s-side door, Lund dies instantly.

1977     Spectators are stunned early in the Talladega 500 when the car of David Sisco wheels into the pits and he leaps out and sprints frantically up pit road toward the garage and the infield infirmary.

Has he somehow hurt himself in the car?

It’s worse. Sisco’s mother, strolling through a paddock reserved for drivers’ families, has been struck by a small truck and killed.

1979     As Buddy Baker charges toward the lead entering the homestretch early in the Winston 500, his car swerves sideways without warning. Following drivers, suddenly forced to take evasive action, lose control. Their cars collide.

Seventeen cars are swept into the wreck, but the only driver injured is Cale Yarborough, who has bruised legs.

Yarborough becomes pinned between his car and that of Dave Marcis after climbing out to check on other drivers. As he makes his way about, a second wave of cars crash and one hits the Marcis machine, jarring it into Yarborough.

“I can’t look, Dave,” says Yarborough. “Tell me if my legs are cut off.”

The accident occurs on May 6. It is the same date as the 19-car crash in 1973.

1981     Television coverage of the Talladega 500 is knocked off the air as the race winds down. An electrical storm several miles away damaged a vital transformer and telephone lines.

Television viewers miss a three-abreast finish in which Ron Bouchard edges Darrell Waltrip and Terry Labonte. It’s the first and only Winston Cup victory for Bouchard, then a rookie.

Home in Massachusetts, Bouchard’s father throws an object through his television screen in anger upon missing the sight of his son winning.

1985     Tornadoes and thunderstorms rumble through Talladega County, interrupting time trials for the Winston 500. Driver Waltrip warily eats lunch as the storms threaten, wearing his racing helmet to the table as a precautionary measure.

Shortly after qualifying is completed another twister approaches during time trials for a companion event, the ARCA 500.

The storm arrives so suddenly that hail is pounding down in Turn 2 while a car is on the track running full speed in Turn  4. Luckily, officials get a warning to the driver.

The swirling cloud forces evacuation of the press box.

As the national anthem is sung prior to the Talladega 500, a Boy Scout color guard begins raising the flag on a pole near Victory Lane.

The flag reaches half-staff and stops. Try as they might the scouts can’t get the flag to go higher.

Spectators who notice are aghast at what the incident suggests.

The scouts take the flag down and try again with the same result.

Rather than leave the flag at half-staff, they remove it from the pole altogether and the race is run without Old Glory flying.

1986     The start of the Winston 500 is delayed when a fan steals one of the pace cars on pit road and drives almost two laps around the track at high speed before police and state troopers block the track and stop him.  He is handcuffed and jailed.

Later it is learned that the culprit stole a motorcycle in Birmingham and rode it to the track.  Then, he somehow managed to sneak not only into the track, but onto pit road.

“I was getting ready to escort the grand marshal into the pace car and when I turned around it was gone,” says an incredulous speedway official, Larry Balewski.

1987     There is apprehension along pit road before the Winston 500 as speeds have escalated well above 200 mph, topped by Bill Elliott’s still-standing record time trial mark of 212.809 mph.

Early in the race Bobby Allison’s car slips sideways after a tire is cut in the homestretch. The car lifts into the air, rear end first, and slashes into the fence fronting the grandstand.

After taking out 150 feet of fencing and nine heavy support posts, Allison’s car plummets  back onto the track.

Allison is not badly hurt, sustaining minor injuries to his hands. However, debris from the crash has spewed into the stands, leaving two fans with eyeinjuries and dozens with slight cuts and nicks.

In a storybook development, Davey Allison, Bobby’s son wins the 500, edging Terry Labonte by 0.78 seconds.  Davey had rushed from his car during the red flag period for fence repairs to make sure his dad was okay.

1993     Davey Allison, one of the brightest, most popular stars in motorsports, suffers fatal injuries on July 12 in the crash of a helicopter he was piloting and trying to land at the track.  The crash occurs at a gate leading into Talladega’s garage area and infield media center.

Davey succumbs in a Birmingham hospital about 24 hours after the accident.

Family friend and veteran driver Red Farmer is injured in the crash, but survives.

The two were flying to the speedway to watch another member of the famed“Alabama Gang” of drivers, Neil Bonnett, help his son, David, shake down a car they had entered for the younger Bonnett in an upcoming 300-mile race at the track.

Davey’s death shook to the core even a track official who previously had scoffed at suggestions of a jinx.   “This is beyond belief,” he conceded sadly.

1996     Stunningly, Bob Loga, the president of the ARCA sanctioning body, is killed when his passenger car is T-boned in the door by another private vehicle as he drives out of the tunnel under the fourth turn .

Sinister and spooky?

The track is both of these and beyond.

For all the fantastic number of lead changes and thrilling finishes it has produced over the decades, Talladega Superspeedway  forever will be known by some as NASCAR’s “Twilight Zone,” the Bermuda Triangle of racing.