- Richard Petty's second win in three years in the Daytona 500
- A four-race win streak by David Pearson in Cotton Owens' Dodge
- The full-time return of the factory-supported Plymouth and Dodge teams
- A withdrawal of factory support for Ford teams after NASCAR endured a similar protest by Chrysler a season earlier.
Source: Free Lance Star via Google News Archive |
Ford's withdrawal of support for its marquis teams - namely Holman Moody and the Wood Brothers - didn't mean, however, the absence of all Ford racers that season. Dave Fulton, simply a race fan at the time but a future employee of Paul Sawyer's Richmond Raceway, shared this memory from race day about an independent Ford driver who won the pole.
As a high school senior in Richmond, VA on May 15, 1966, Tiger Tom Pistone gave me and my buddies one of our most cherished NASCAR memories. On that spring Sunday, driving his powder blue #59 1964 Ford Galaxie, Tiger Tom blistered the old dirt half-mile Richmond Fairgrounds layout with a record, all-time, NASCAR Grand National qualifying speed of 70.978 mph - a record that stands to this very day and will never be broken. Only three more dirt races were run on the Richmond track before it was paved for the September 1968 GN race, and nobody ever again approached Tiger's one-lap speed record on the dirt.
To this day I feel privileged to tell folks that I saw Tiger Tom Pistone set a NASCAR track record that will never be broken on a track that I dearly loved. For those who never saw a NASCAR Grand National stock car kick up a roostertail of dirt as it slid sideways, you are part of the underprivileged NASCAR generation.
Source: Free Lance Star via Google News Archive |
Big thanks to Russ Thompson and Jerry Bushmire for sharing images from Stock Car Racing magazine.
TMC
In the green flag photo,my buddy Frank Buhrman and I are standing in the top row of the bleachers to the right of the flag stand.
ReplyDeletePretty cool history, please tell more and more
ReplyDeleteI wonder how a current Sprint Cup car would go on a dirt track?
ReplyDelete