May 8, 1976 - Music City USA 420

I started following Winston Cup racing in 1975. As I've blogged many times, I latched onto Richard Petty as my favorite driver. As my family and I started attending Saturday night races at Nashville Speedway, I assumed Petty would also win the Cup races at the Fairgounds. After all, the 43 had banked eight Nashville wins from 1964 through 1974.

In May 1975, Darrell Waltrip notched his first career Cup win on his home track in the Music City 420. Cale Yarborough dominated the Nashville 420 in July 1975 and won by a full lap over the second place finisher. The upside I suppose was that The King was the one who finished second.

The 1976 Music City 420 was the next opportunity for Petty to get back to his winning ways at Nashville.

The King had already experienced a topsy-turvy start to the season. He lost to David Pearson in the Daytona 500 in what was arguably the craziest NASCAR Cup finish in history. His team rallied two weeks later, however, to win the Carolina 500 at Rockingham. In other races leading into Nashville, the STP Dodge either went home with a top 5 or a DNF.

Source: The Tennessean

While I was personally interested in whether Petty would experience feast or famine in the 420, his up and down 1976 season wasn't the primary story line. Two others trumping it involved an old guy and an upstart.

The old guy was two-time NASCAR Grand National (and now NASCAR Hall of Famer) Buck Baker - father of perhaps his better known son, the late Buddy Baker. Buck won two titles in the 1950s and raced actively in the Grand National division through the mid 1960s. Over the next ten years, he only raced sporadically in NASCAR's Grand National, Grand Touring, and Grand National East divisions. He got the itch again in 1976 and started eight Cup events. Nashville was to be the third one of the season for him.

Source: The Tennessean

The young'un making headlines was Sterling Marlin, Coo Coo's boy. After making only four local late model sportsman starts - including the fourth one the night before the 420 - Sterling prepared to take over his dad's #14 Cunningham-Kelly Chevrolet to make his first career Cup start.

Benny Parsons won the pole, and Yarborough qualified alongside him. As noted earlier, Cale won the previous Nashville race and had already won at Bristol and North Wilkesboro prior to the 420. Dave Marcis, Bobby Allison and Buddy Baker rounded out the top five starters. Waltrip, the defending race champion, timed sixth, and Petty started seventh.

Both Buck and Sterling made the race, but neither had a desirable starting spot. Sterling laid down a solid lap in the first round of qualifying and would have started 12th had he kept it. He chose to try again the next day, however, and missed things badly. His inexperience and bad decision relegated him to a 30th place start - at the end of the field.

In the 1975 Nashville 420, Cale dominated by leading 385 laps. He was an even stingier lap bully in the 1976 Music City 420. He led 398 of the 420 laps leaving only crumbs for the others.

Sterling's Cup debut was short-lived. He lasted only 55 laps before the oil pump went out on his family Monte Carlo, and his first race ended with a DNF.

Buck did alright for the rusty, crusty ol' man that he was. He finished 16th in the 30-car field and was the the last car still running at the end of the race.

As he had the previous July, Cale nabbed the money, trophy, and kiss. The win was also Cale's third in four short-track races of the season to date.

Also as happened the previous July, the King went to the next race with another second place finish. The race was the 22nd of thirty-one times that Petty and Cale finished in the top two spots. Considering the fortunes of his season, a P2 certainly outweighed a DNF. But after a 13-win season in 1975, Petty was expecting more Ws - as was I as a new fan!

Source: The Tennessean

Though some had concerns about Sterling's entry based on his truly limited experience, he handled himself well. He didn't make any notable bone-headed moves, and he wasn't a potential problem for the field after 50+ laps anyway. Marlin didn't become a Cup regular until 1983, but I'm sure he still recalls that first start at his home track.

Source: The Tennessean

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April 20, 1958 - Welborn Wins Martinsville

Driver Bob Welborn and owner Julian Petty won their fourth consecutive race together on April 20, 1958 in the Virginia 500 Grand National race at Martinsville Speedway.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

NASCAR Hall of Famer and two-time defending race winner Buck Baker let the field know early he planned to extend his win streak to three. He won the pole in his #87 Chevrolet and was joined on the front row by another future NASCAR Hall of Fame member, Glen Wood. Welborn's Chevy was not quite right during qualifying, and he had to settle for a 20th place starting spot in the 47-car field.

Source: Spartanburg Herald via Google News Archive

Baker's top starting spot didn't yield him much of an advantage. He did lead the first lap once the green was dropped, but he soon gave way to Wood. The #21 Ford driven by Wood led the next 138 laps before giving way to Julian Petty's older brother, Lee. Papa Lee piled up 58 laps out front as Welborn continued working his way through traffic.

Welborn went to the point for the first time around lap 200. Baker had developed an issue with his car's wiring several laps earlier and was done for the day. After his stint out front, Lee Petty no longer challenged for the lead, When the day was done, he had to accept his 11th place finish. Wood got back by Welborn around the 300-lap mark  to lead for another 30 laps or so. But as with Petty, Wood's car began going away, and he cruised the final 200 laps to finish 9th.

With Welborn's top competition out of the race or sliding back through the field a bit, he settled into his rhythm and clicked off one lap after another. In time, he built a 5-lap lead over the second place car and seemed to be on his way to an easy win.

With about 30 days to go, however, Welborn's Chevy cut a tire. Fortunately for him, he was able to nurse his car back to the pits and have the tire changed. He gave back a couple of his laps he'd built on second place Rex White, but the remaining ones he'd accumulated seemed to be an insurance policy for a victory.

As the checkers fell, Welborn was indeed fortunate to win the race. White and third place finisher Jim Reed managed to get back on the lead lap with Welborn, but they couldn't get past him for the win.

#80417370 / gettyimages.com

After joining Julian Petty's team a month earlier, Welborn could seemingly do wrong. Their 1958 win streak stood at four following Martinsville:

• April 5 GN win at Champion Speedway in Fayetteville NC
• April 7 convertible win at Bowman Gray Stadium
• April 13 convertible win at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway
• April 20 GN win at Martinsville

Source: Spartanburg Herald via Google News Archive

Following the race, Welborn was congratulated by the top two party drivers on the circuit - Curtis Turner and NASCAR Hall of Famer Joe Weatherly. My guess is one of two things happened - well maybe both:

• The two may have gotten Welborn likkered up that night as part of a long celebration, and/or
• They may have taken Bob up in Turner's plane and barnstormed it enough to scare Welborn into giving up his trophy - with them laughing the whole time.

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September 8, 1957 - Lee Petty Aces Asheville-Weaverville

September 8, 1957: Starting 2nd in his #42 Oldsmobile, Lee Petty leads 46 of 200 laps and wins the 100-mile race on the half-mile, asphalt Asheville-Weaverville Speedway.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Cotton Owens started fourth and was the stud of the show. He led 131 laps, but he crashed and finished 16th in the 20-car field. Another NASCAR HOFer, Buck Baker, qualified third and finished second. Baker later raced in six races for Petty Enterprises in the first part of the 1964 season.

Retired Charlotte Observer motorsports writer, ThatsRacin.com contributor and author Tom Higgins wrote about his memories of the 1957 A-W race.

On September 8, 1957, I covered the first race I ever saw, a 100-miler at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway. I arrived at the rustic track well before race time and, although nervous, decided to walk along the “garage area” behind the pit wall to introduce myself.

Among the first I met were Lee Petty and his sons, Richard and Maurice. Their cousin, Dale Inman, also was helping them work on Lee’s No. 42 blue Olds, which was to win the race.

Although busy, they took a minute or so to welcome me to the sport, destined to become our lives. I was struck by the friendliness of the Pettys, and others that day, including Rex White and Marvin Panch.

Who would have imagined back then that someday there would be a NASCAR Hall of Fame? And that with the election of Maurice, the first engine builder to be chosen, all four in the Petty quartet would be in it?

Read more here: http://www.thatsracin.com/2013/05/23/106388/higgins-scuffs-my-favorite-memories.html#storylink=cpy

Perry Allen Wood succinctly summarized the race in Silent Speedways of the Carolinas:

Californian Bill Amick put his Ford on the pole and led the first nine laps before giving it up to Cotton [Owens] for 130. Owens was looking like a winner when a tire popped on lap 141 and he stuffed the Pontiac into the fence for the day's only caution. Amick, [Buck] Baker, and [Lee] Petty swapped the lead until the laps ran out and Lee and his Olds were leading ... The race took less than 90 minutes. ~ p. 221

Source: Lexington NC The Dispatch via Google News Archive

Though not related to the Asheville-Weaverville race, the article does reference another story with a Petty connection. A tragic one, yes - but an historical one nonetheless. A hat was passed at Greensboro's short track to collect a few dollars for the family of Bobby Myers. The father of long-time Dale Earnhardt crewman Danny 'Chocolate' Myers, Bobby Myers was killed six days earlier in a crash during the Southern 500 at Darlington while piloting a white #4 Petty Engineering Oldsmobile.

Final photo taken of Bobby Myers courtesy of Randy Myers

Three-wide racing from the jump begins around 11:45 of this video. Beginning around 14:45, Fonty Flock spins in turn 1. Myers tragically drilled Flock and flipped several times. Myers passed away a couple of hours after the accident at a local hospital. From its opening until today, Myers' death remains one of only two at Darlington. (The other was Buren Skeen in the 1965 Southern 500.)


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August 13, 1954 - Lee Scores Southern States

Driving a #42 Chrysler, Lee Petty wins his sixth race of the season in a 200-lap, 100-mile race at Southern States Fairgrounds in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 13, 1954. The event was the first Grand National race at the track, and GN races continued to be promoted on the Carolina half-mile, dirt track through 1961.

Perry Allen Wood describes the track in his book Silent Speedways of the Carolinas:

At the southeast corner of Sugar Creek Road and US 29 in Charlotte stands a shopping center with lots of Asian and empty stores anchored by a Park N Shop that is as much eyesore at is is supermarket. Its stands on the site of the Southern States Fairgrounds that held 17 100-mile Grand National races from 1954 to 1961. It actually lasted two seasons after the opening of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. However, there is no trace of it left to stir the imagination; no rusting guardrails, no pine trees popping through the concrete grand stand, no wooden fairgrounds fence, not even a bullet-riddled light pole. There is no magic in a dirty asphalt parking lot 45 years after the show closed. Postcards of the old fairgrounds show a lovely lake in the infield that today has been reduced to a miserable little litter-strewn rivulet surrounded by scrub brush and all that nasty pavement. ~ p. 194

 The footprint where the track once stood...


View Larger Map

And a postcard view of the track as referenced in Wood's book... 

Lee won three Grand National races (1954, 1957, 1959) and one convertible series event at the track (1958). In 1960, Richard Petty won his first career Grand National / Cup race in the the next-to-last GN race at Southern States.

Future Petty Enterprises driver Buck Baker started from the pole in the 1954 inaugural race but finished fifth. The rest of the starting line-up and lap leaders apparently were not documented or simply were lost to time. Based on the article below, Lee didn't lead the entire race. He took over the lead from Baker with 50 to go, and then went on to a two-lap victory over second place Dick Rathman.

Source: Spartanburg Herald Journal via Google News Archive

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Edited August 12, 2014

February 23 - This day in Petty history - part 1

1964 was an eventful year in multiple ways ...

• The Beatles released their first U.S. album and later appeared on The Ed Sullivan show.
• The Rolling Stones released their debut album.
• Super Tex - A.J. Foyt - wins his second Indianapolis 500 as Indy hero Eddie Sachs is killed
• Two-time reigning NASCAR champion, Joe Weatherly, was killed at Riverside in January
• NASCAR's most popular driver, Fireball Roberts, had a horrific crash in the World 600, suffered significant burns over most of his body and died about six weeks later.
• And the 1964 World's Fair opened in New York featuring ... The Schaefer Center.

1964 was also a coming-of-age year for Richard Petty. He won his first Daytona 500 and eventually his first NASCAR Grand National championship.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Project

Starting from outside of the front row, Petty led 184 of 200 laps en route to his 29th career win and the first superspeedway victory of his 5-year career. Teammate Buck Baker in a #41 Petty Plymouth started fifth and finished twelfth.

Before Richard's domination in the 500, he was part of a dramatic finish in his 100-mile qualifying race a couple of days earlier. His second-place qualifying run for the 500 put him on the pole for his qualifying race. He was leading and the win secured when he ran out of fuel on the last lap. The 43 coasted along the apron helplessly as Bobby Isaac and Jimmy Pardue closed quickly. The three of them flashed across the line in a finish too-close-to-call. The start-finish line camera malfunctioned, and officials needed four hours before deciding Isaac won. (Coincidentally, the camera was installed after the finish of the inaugural Daytona 500 when Lee Petty barely edged out Johnny Beauchamp.)

Source: Spartanburg Herald via Google News Archive

Despite Petty's near-miss in his qualifying race, his second place starting spot was still secure. Paul Goldsmith in another Plymouth started on the pole.

Courtesy of Ray Lamm

Green, green, green!

Richard's hemi-engine Plymouth powered the blue #43 to a 1-lap victory. Second place Pardue and third place Goldsmith also ran Chrysler's hemi engine giving Plymouth a 1-2-3 finish.

To the victor belongs the spoils ... and a nice, little kiss.

The winner posing with his trophy...

... and the trophy hanging out afterwards on the hood of a car before it headed back to Level Cross.

Courtesy of Tim Leeming

Though the driver and his team enjoyed the celebration of victory lane, his family did not. Instead of being at the track, Richard's wife Lynda was at a local hotel caring for their two children at the time - Kyle and Sharon - who were sick!

Richard's 1964 Daytona 500 winning trophy was one of a handful I specifically wanted to see when visiting the Richard Petty Museum in March 2011. I must concede, however, that I don't understand the significance of the Japanese emphasis (yet).

Article courtesy of Jerry Bushmire

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Edited February 26, 2015