January 18, 1976 - Winston Western 500

NASCAR entered 1976 with several storylines:

• Could additional team sponsors be signed to shore up many teams who struggled in 1975?
• Would fan attendance increase if the number of quality, sponsored cars participated?
• Richard Petty captured the Cup title in 1975 with 13 wins in 30 races - his second consecutive, fourth in five years, and sixth overall. Could he keep the mojo rolling?
• After a season of once again racing for his own team, how would Bobby Allison fare with Roger Penske's CAM2 team?
• With Holly Farms Chicken returning as a sponsor for the second year, how would Cale Yarborough fare with Junior Johnson's team as they pursued a full schedule?
• In their fifth season together, what kind of results would David Pearson and the Wood Brothers have as they ran a limited schedule of about two-thirds of the races?

The 1976 season opened as it had since 1970 with a 500-mile race at Riverside International Raceway's road course. Though many fans, drivers, media, sponsors, etc. viewed the Daytona 500 as the beginning of the season, the mid-January race gave the drivers and teams a chance to shake off the rust and get ready for superspeedway testing and Speedweeks that soon followed.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

Interestingly, NASCAR and Riverside scheduled the race on the same day as Super Bowl X. No one would book such an event in this day and age. Though still a spectacle in the mid 1970s, the Super Bowl wasn't nearly on the level that it is today making such dual scheduling feasible. As fans watched the non-televised Riverside race from the stands, greater America watched the Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Dallas Cowboys on TV from Miami.

Allison qualified Roger Penske's car on the pole. Though the team would race a Mercury the rest of the season, Allison raced his trusty AMC Matador with Penske's CAM2 sponsorship colors. Pearson joined Allison on the front row. Benny Parsons, Buddy Baker, and Dave Marcis rounded out the top five starters. Petty's Dodge developed engine issues during practice and returned to notch his starting spot on the second day of qualifying.

Courtesy of Daniel Mensinger

At the drop of the green, Allison set sail and led the first 18 laps before yielding to Dave Marcis for a lap as Allison hit pit road. As Allison made his stop, the Matador's engine failed. NASCAR did not have a rule prohibiting engine changes in that era. So the Penske crew spent the next hour thrashing to install a new engine in Allison's #2.

     

Allison re-entered the race but remarkably blew another engine with two laps to go in the race. Somehow, however, he still managed to eke out a 15th place finish.

The King, Richard Petty, roared through the field from his 27th place starting spot to take the lead on lap 20.  After leading a few laps, Parsons assumed the top spot followed by a rotation of drivers over the next few laps. The lead changed hands over the next 60 or so laps between Parsons, Marcis, Yarborough, Pearson, and Petty. The valves in Petty's STP Dodge Charger, however, once again began failing. He pulled behind the wall on lap 83 with a DNF to open his pursuit of a third consecutive title.

With Allison and Petty on the sidelines or on the trailer, Pearson broke the logjam of multiple leaders when he seized the lead and paced the field for 74 of the next 77 laps. He surrendered the lead briefly as he made a scheduled stop on lap 159 allowing Yarborough to retake the lead for a lap.

As Cale made his stop a lap later, Pearson returned to the lead and did not surrender it again for the remaining 32 laps. Pearson captured his 88th career Cup win, his second road course win, and his first at Riverside. The Wood Brothers also enjoyed their their fifth Riverside win with Dan Gurney having won the others in 1964-1966 and 1968. 

Source: San Bernardino County Sun

TMC

January 16, 1977 - Winston Western 500

The first race of the 1977 NASCAR Cup season was the annual event on Riverside International Raceway's nine-turn road course. In a change from prior races, the 1977 season opener was a 500 kilometer race vs. 500 miles. The change lopped off about 200 miles and a couple of hours.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

Cale Yarborough started from the pole in Junior Johnson's Holly Farms Chicken Chevrolet. David Pearson joined him on the front row in the Wood Brothers' Purolator Mercury. Darrell Waltrip, Jimmy Insolo, and Dave Marcis rounded out the top five starters. 

Waltrip was entering his second full season with the DiGard Gatorade #88 team. Though the results to-date had been hit and miss - largely because of constant turmoil within the team's ownership and leadership, Ol' DW was entering his salad days that continued until the mid 80s. 

Crew member Gary Nelson rode the rise with Waltrip. After having worked with Ivan Baldwin's west coast race team, Nelson joined DiGard in the offseason. The 1977 opener at Riverside was Nelson's first race as a Cup team member. Nelson, of course, grew to have a phenomenal career with teams such as DiGard, Hendrick Motorsports, and SABCO Racing. He did so despite starting his career looking a bit like actor Owen Wilson.

Pearson entered 1977 after having a dominant - though limited - 1976 season in the Woods' 21 Mercury. Although the team did not run the full schedule for the championship, Pearson won 10 times in 22 starts - including both Riverside races. As the new season began, he picked up right where he left off with the 1976 roadies by leading lap one of the 1977 race.

Pearson may have won 10 races, but Yarborough won the 1976 title. He too was ready to continue excellence into the new year. Cale  roared back by Pearson on lap two, and he quickly set the pace for the race.  

After Pearson led lap one and Yarborough flashed across the line to lead lap two, Bobby Allison must have decided it was his time to shine...or maybe not. After racing for Roger Penske in 1976, Allison returned to his own team with an AMC Matador. He qualified a respectable eighth but grenaded an engine on the fourth lap. His red-white-blue car suddenly had orange flames added to the sides as he headed for the sand to extinguish the flames.

Source: Newport News Daily Press

Yarborough dominated the race and led every lap through lap 103 when disaster struck. With a five-second lead over Pearson and only 16 laps to go, Cale committed a mental mistake and got off into the sand. He looped his Chevrolet allowing Pearson to catch and then pass him, but Yarborough managed to straighten his car and returned to the track in in hot pursuit. 

Cale couldn't, however, make up the lost distance. Pearson led the remaining laps and won his third consecutive Riverside race as Yarborough finished nine seconds behind him in second. Richard Petty, Marcis, and west coast racer Sonny Easley completed the top five finishers.

The victory was win #98 for Pearson. Not only was the win his third consecutive one at Riverside, but it was also his fourth consecutive California win. He also won the 1976 season ending race at Ontario Motor Speedway.

Source: LA Times

TMC

January 26 - Rookie and a Riverside Romp

January 26th and its ... the birthday of Schaefer Hall of Famer and raceday turkey leg connoisseur Rookie!

The day is also the anniversary of NASCAR Hall of Fame member Cale Yarborough's win in the 1974 Winston Western 500 at Riverside International Raceway in California. The southern California road course was a staple of NASCAR's Grand National / Cup schedule from the early 1960s until it was lost to commercial development in the late 1980s. Today's California Speedway in Fontana lies in close proximity to Riverside as well as the former Ontario Motor Speedway, also lost to expansion in the greater Los Angeles market during the 1980s.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

The race first took the green on the scheduled date of Sunday, January 20th. As the cars made their pace laps, Gary Bettenhausen started fifth in Roger Penske's #16 Matador with King Richard to his outside. Row 4 was Jimmy Insolo to the inside, and the 1973 WInston Cup champion Benny Parsons started sixth. At the right edge of the following photo is row 5, with Ray Elder to the inside and the ageless Hershel McGriff starting tenth in a second Petty Enterprises Dodge Charger.

Although the first two rows are outside the frame of this photo, their numbers can be read on the scoring pylon: 21 David Pearson on the pole, 11 Cale Yarborough second, 12 Bobby Allison third, and 15 George Follmer fourth. After starting second alongside pole-winner David Pearson, Cale spun off the course on the first lap.

He gathered the car back and resumed racing near the back of the pack. About 60 laps and well short of half-way, however, showers began to fall in the arid area of California. The race was postponed to the following Saturday, January 26th with Bobby Allison leading and The King sitting in second place.

Source: Lewiston Morning-Tribune via Google News Archive

When the teams returned six days later, Cale recovered from his spin and didn't take long to put his Junior Johnson Chevy back up front. He went on to lead 144 of the 191 laps to win the race. Not only was Petty running second to Allison when the rains fell on January 20th, but he also ended up second when the race ended on the 26th. The King tried to chase down Cale's Chevy but couldn't catch him.

Source for 3 photos above: Team Camaro message board

Richard racing his Petty Enterprises teammate, Hershel McGriff, although the photo caption erroneously had Charlie Glotzbach in the car.

Source: Hendersonville Times-News via Google News Archive

Following the race, David Pearson's 1971 Wood Brothers Purolator Mercury was retired to Darlington's  Joe Weatherly Stock Car Museum (as it was known then) ...

... but is now known today simply as the Darlington Raceway Stock Car Museum.

Source: waymarking.com

Source: Free Lance-Star via Google News Archive

The car was removed from the museum in 2008, restored by the Woods, and put back on the track a final time so Pearson could run a few pace laps with Carl Edwards.


After the promotional on-track return, the car didn't return to the Darlington museum. Instead, it was relocated to the Thunder Road exhibit in the higher profile NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte.

So while thinking of the postponed race, the close roadie win by Cale Yarborough over the The King, and the head-shaking reality that Cup cars no longer race at Riverside, the Schaefer Hall of Fame and Ring of Honor wish fellow Schaefer brutha Rookie...

Happy Birthday! SCHA-LOOT!!
and doesn't HE look as happy as a cat on a warm brick?

TMC
Edited January 26, 2015

June 14 - This day in Petty history - part 2

Happy Flag Day!

May Old Glory be unfurled proudly

and viewed with honor and respect.

1970 - Starting second alongside Bobby Allison, Richard Petty goes on to dominate the Falstaff 400 at Riverside International Raceway. Petty leads 149 of 153 laps in his Plymouth Superbird on the southern California road course, and he banks his 106th career NASCAR Grand National victory. The King's win also gave Chrysler Corporation its first win at Riverside - a track that ran its first Grand National race in 1958.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

 A few race highlights...

 

When I visited the Richard Petty Museum in 2011, this trophy Richard won for the Falstaff 400 was one of the more unique ones I saw.

However, as seen in the video clip that follows, the King was awarded an additional, larger trophy for his win (fast forward to race highlights at 2:13 and trophy at 3:07).


Here is a better picture of the larger trophy - though I was unable to locate it in either of my visits to the Petty Museum.

Credit: Crabber1967 on Photobucket

If you are a more contemporary NASCAR fan, you may have heard the phrase "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday." The auto manufacturers of that era certainly believed that slogan - and invested ad dollars towards it. Here is an ad I found on ebay that tried to encourage consumers to latch onto the King's Riverside win and nudge them towards a Plymouth purchase.

Article courtesy of Jerry Bushmire

And who amongst us doesn't like those winged MoPars of 69-70? Well, here is some bonus footage for you.

TMC

June 12 - This day in Petty history - part 2

1977 - Continuing his good fortunes from a win in the World 600 two weeks earlier, Richard Petty wins the pole, leads 71 of 95 laps and wins the NAPA 400 at Riverside International Raceway for his 184th career victory.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

Petty often said he didn't consider himself a good qualifier. Yet, his top run at Riverside was his 120th of 123 career pole runs. The King hustled his Dodge Charger around the track quicker than anyone in a car that hadn't been raced since the 1977 season opener at Riverside. Having a dedicated road course car was a true rarity in those days. Teams often raced their Riverside car at other tracks including Nashville and Dover.

Source: Gadsden Times via Google News Archive

At the drop of the green flag, Darrell Waltrip got the jump on the 43 and led the first 20 laps.

Photo courtesy of Rickysuave44 on Photobucket
(Visit his album for neat pics of other Cup drivers from the race)

The STP Dodge stayed right with Waltrip, however, and the two swapped the lead a few times over the next 12 laps along with Cale Yarborough and David Pearson. From there though, the King took over and settled into a comfortable lead. He paced the field around the serpentine track for the final 63 laps to clinch what seemed to be an easy victory.

Credit: Rickysuave44

The King leading The Silver Fox, David Pearson, through turn 8.

Petty pulling Darrell Waltrip through turn 6. After leading the first 20 laps, Waltrip eventually developed transmission problems in his DiGard Gatorade Monte Carlo and faded to 26th.

When the checkers fell, the 43 again took its rightful place in victory lane.

And Richard's reward: squeezing the girls for the 184th time...

Credit: Petersen Automotive Museum

and Riverside International Automotive Museum

Pearson's second place finish to King's win was the 63rd and final time the two rivals finished 1-2 in a GN / Cup race dating back to 1963. Although Pearson edged Petty in wins in those 1-2 finishes 33 to 30, the King did get the upper hand the final three times in 1977 at Atlanta, Charlotte and Riverside.

The winner's trophy as seen on display by TMC at the Richard Petty Museum in Randleman, NC in 2012:

As mentioned in a couple of recent posts about Petty's wins at Charlotte in 1975 and 1977, the September 1977 issue of Stock Car Racing magazine included three in-depth features on the King. Included with the three was a feature on his win in the June 1977 Riverside road courses.

Here is a PDF scan of the SCR article.

Article courtesy of Jerry Bushmire

TMC

Edited June 11, 2014

June 8 - This day in Petty history - part 3

1975 - Richard Petty leads 60 of 153 laps and wins the Tuborg 400 at Riverside International Raceway to earn his 171st career NASCAR Winston Cup victory.

Petty started second alongside long-time rival Bobby Allison. The majority of the 153 laps on the southern California road course were led between the two drivers - 75 by Allison and 60 by Petty. Interestingly, two drivers and teams who historically raced well at Riverside - Cale Yarborough with Junior Johnson's Chevy team and David Pearson with the Wood Brothers Mercury team - did not enter the race. Economic times for race teams was tough in 1975 - low race purses, high operating costs, limited sponsorship dollars. Riverside wasn't the only race where some of the more well-established teams chose not to enter in 1975.

Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

Source: 'beentherebefore' from H.A.M.B.

Article courtesy of Jerry Bushmire

TMC