The King was Fond of Pond

A recent birthday advanced me to the year of Lennie Pond.

Richard Petty and Lennie Pond struck a friendship somewhere during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pond traveled from time to time to Level Cross during his late model sportsman years to buy parts from the Petty shop in Level Cross. His visits and success on Virginia shorts tracks caught King's eye. Lennie eventually moved to NASCAR's Winston Cup ranks with encouragement from the Pettys.

Credit: Donald Evans

In 1978, Petty and Pond helped one another in a relief role in multiple races.

In the Southeastern 500 at Bristol, both Petty and Pond were involved in an early race accident along with Darrell Waltrip and Roland Wlodyka. Petty parked his Dodge Magnum, but Ranier Racing patched Pond's #54 Chevy well enough to continue. The car had staying power, but Pond had a tough time remaining in the seat. The King took over and rallied the car to a top 5 running position. Pond later returned to his car and maintained the track position gained by Petty to finish fifth.

Credit: David Allio / RacingPhotoArchives

When the tour returned to Bristol for its inaugural night race, the two drivers reversed roles. Six days earlier at Michigan, Petty debuted his new STP Chevrolet. His first start, however, resulted in a late race wall pounding. The team borrowed a car from Henley Gray for Bristol, and King did his best to race with a battered ribcage. After Pond fell out 100 laps into the race, he took over the 43 in relief. Pond helped the borrowed ride finish fifth - coincidentally just as Petty did in Pond's car in the spring race.

*   *   *   *   * Before joining the Cup ranks full-time, Pond came *this close* to being at the wheel of a Petty car in the 1970 Daytona 500. Kinda. Maybe.

The Petty team was a Plymouth stalwart from 1960 through 1968. The racing community was stunned in late November 1968, however, when Petty Enterprises announced a switch to Ford for 1969. During the one-year run with Ford Motor Company, the team sold a 1968 Plymouth to another Virginian, Don Robertson.

Robertson partnered with another independent driver and fellow commonwealther, Jabe Thomas, to race the 1969 schedule with the Plymouth acquired from the Pettys. The car was painted slate blue and gold, and Thomas started and finished a respectable 14th at Daytona.

Robertson planned to field a second Plymouth in the 1970 Daytona 500, and he originally slotted James Cox to drive it. Cox raced eight times for Robertson in 1969, and Robertson apparently submitted Cox's name on the entry blank for the 500.

While it isn't known which car, if either, was the former Petty Plymouth, the paint on the cars does provide a suggestive clue. Thomas' #25 Plymouth arrived at Daytona painted red and gold.

The second Robertson #23 Plymouth, however, bore the base slate blue that Thomas raced a year earlier. Though the car number, gold accents, and sponsor lettering differed, the blue and gold suggest the second car may have been the Petty Plymouth.

A couple of weeks before Speedweeks, a friend urged Pond to call Thomas about the possibility of racing at Daytona for his second career Grand National start. After discussions with Robertson, all decided Pond would be a good choice to race Robertson's second Plymouth over Cox.

Source: Petersburg Progress Index

*   *   *   *   * NASCAR's 1966 Rookie of the Year, James Hylton, had also been a Mopar man in his three Grand National seasons. In the off-season before 1970, however, he sold his Dodge equipment and bought a used Holman Moody Ford previously raced by David Pearson.

Misfortune struck Hylton when he wrecked his Ford during a practice session on Monday before the Daytona 500. The damage was significant enough that Hylton realized his crew couldn't repair it in time for the race.

Robertson and Thomas knew of Hylton's problem - and that he had more experience than Pond. Unlike Lennie, Hylton was a full-time driver chasing points for the Grand National title.

As a nice gesture, Robertson turned the #23 Plymouth over to Hylton for the 125-mile qualifying race. Hylton finished 11th and earned the car a starting spot in the 500. Robertson then withdrew Cox's name as the official driver, substituted Hylton, and kept Lennie on the sideline. Hylton was obviously grateful for the opportunity to race, but he felt somewhat awkward knowing the ride had been promised to Pond.

When the day was done, Hylton finished 22nd in the 500 with teammate Thomas a few spots back in 25th. Cox's opinion about being removed from the car are unknown, and it's not clear if he even went to Daytona.

Though circumstances resulted in Pond's losing the opportunity to race in his first Daytona 500 in 1970, he soldiered on with his late model sportsman career. He moved to Winston Cup in 1973, ran the majority of the races, and narrowly won NASCAR's Rookie of the Year honor over Darrell Waltrip.

That season, Pond finally got behind the wheel of a Petty car for the first time when he relieved the King during the Southern 500 at Darlington.

TMC

September 30 - This day in Petty history - part 2

1970 - Richard Petty wins his 117th career Grand National race and the final NASCAR Grand National race run on dirt - the Home State 200 in Raleigh, NC. He drives a Plymouth owned by Don Robertson - not Petty Enterprises - to a two-lap victory over second place driver Neil Castles.

In October 2010, the governor of North Carolina presented an historical marker to recognize the fairgrounds track as the site of the final Grand National dirt race. (Despite what the sign says, I'm all but certain this race was not the final NASCAR dirt race.)

As the Petty team began to look towards 1971 and an all-asphalt series, a Plymouth was sold to Robertson who fielded cars sporadically - primarily for Jabe Thomas. Because Richard still needed to race on the dirt at Raleigh, the team rented back the car for this event though it was still officially entered under Robertson's name.

In May 2010, writer Rick Houston interviewed Petty as part of a NASCAR.com series on each of the inaugural NASCAR Hall of Fame inductees. At the end of the interview, he asked him about Don Robertson as a favor for me.

RP: They were boys out of somewhere in Virginia. What we did, we sold the car to Jabe Thomas and at that time, they was going to mostly asphalt tracks. Wasn't but two or three dirt tracks a year, so we didn't even have a dirt track car. So what we'd do ... we did it two or three different times ... we'd go borrow his car, bring it back to the shop.

RH: Are we talking about Jabe Thomas or Don Robertson here?

RP: This guy (Robertson) owned Jabe's car. So we'd borrow the car back. We'd put a new engine in the thing, put all new suspension and just refurbish it, just like we would our car. Then, we didn't pay him anything for borrowing the car, but when he got the car back, he had a brand-new motor with one race on it, had brand-new spindles, hubs, rear ends, axles. He had a brand-new car again ... we won a couple of races. We borrowed it a couple, three times and I know we won two races with it. But it was one of our cars.

In his book, Silent Speedways of the Carolinas, Perry Allen Wood laments:

Instead of hats and horns and some sort of fanfare worthy of a truly landmark event, NASCAR let the era of the dirt track slip away for good on Wednesday night, September 30, 1970. About 6,000 race fans witnessed that last battle on the dirt and what a shame it was...It is a real shame that everybody and his brother did not try to run that last scheduled dirt race...The Home State 200 itself was an anti-climax to 21 years of great dirt track history. Big John Sears took the pole and led early. Then Benny Parsons paced the pack over the next 89 laps until Petty got out front and it was all over...Then they loaded up the trucks and trailers and literally left NASCAR's heritage in the dust. (pp. 150-151)

For many years, Petty 'wrote' a column for the monthly Stock Car Racing magazine. In a September 2009 column, he wrote about the legacy of dirt racing in NASCAR's Grand National series. Here are some excerpts from the column about the final dirt race at Raleigh:

... John Sears, a drivers dirt track racer, won the pole and led the first 10 laps. Then Benny Parsons took the lead and led from lap 11 through lap 88. I took over on lap 89 and led the rest of the race, which was through lap 200. I think I averaged about 68 miles per hour. Neil Castles finished second, Bobby Isaac third, James Hylton fourth, and Cecil Gordon fifth. Bobby Allison finished sixth.

Now, I want to tell you something about how we won the race. At Petty Enterprises we didn't have a car built exclusively for dirt track racing. We were running the Plymouth SuperBird on the big speedways and the regular Plymouths on the paved short tracks. But we remembered selling driver Jabe Thomas and team owner Don Robertson a '69 Plymouth built for dirt track racing, or let's say it was better suited for dirt than anything we had to race at our shop. So what we did was borrow that car from Jabe and Don. We put one of our engines in the car and won the race. Then we returned it to Jabe and Don and left our engine in the car as a payment.

The other two dirt track races that year were at Columbia Speedway in Columbia, SC. That track was as hard as asphalt. We ran the first race at Columbia that year on April 30. We did the same car-borrowing then. That was the first time we borrowed our old car back from Jabe and Don. We were lucky enough to win that race too. Bobby Allison finished second and Bobby Isaac third. Neil Castles ran fourth and James Hylton fifth.

We did the same thing after the win too. We turned the car back over to Jabe and Don with one of our engines in it. What you must remember is that back in the early days of stock car racing, we ran a lot of state fairgrounds tracks, and they were all dirt. In fact, I don't remember Hillsborough, NC having guard railings for a long time. You ran off the track going into the third turn, and you drove off down into a pine thicket. Nope, racing wasn't always as prim and proper as it is now.

~ Full column is here. HT to Dave Fulton, fellow RacersReunion.com member and former special events/media coordinator for Wrangler Jeans, 7-Eleven and Richmond International Raceway.

Article courtesy of Jerry Bushmire

TMC