July 15 - This day in Petty history - part 2

1969 - Starting from the pole in his Petty blue #43 Ford Torino, Richard Petty leads about a third of the race (91 of 300 laps) and wins the Beltsville 300 at Beltsville Speedway in Maryland for his 97th career NASCAR Grand National victory.

Courtesy Chris Hussey

Career rival, David Pearson, was initially flagged as the race winner. After checking the scoring records for 40 minutes, Petty was declared the winner. The teams' scorers apparently got confused a bit during pit stops by Pearson and Petty with only a couple of laps to go as more fully described in the following article.

For decades, scoring for NASCAR races was done manually. NASCAR provided a scorer for each car, and the team provided its own scorer as well. The records for the pair should have matched at the end of each race. Frequently, however, the records didn't match, and NASCAR would have to sort through the discrepancies.



TMC
Edited June 19, 2014