NASCAR's 49-race 1966 Grand National season hit its halfway point with the East Tennessee 200 on the half-mile Smoky Mountain Raceway. The track was located in Maryville, TN - just south of Knoxville.
The 26-car field was missing a key, regular driver and included a local driver racing on his home track. The missing driver was The King, Richard Petty. Six days earlier, Petty's 43 Plymouth blew a tire and pounded the wall at New Asheville Speedway. The wreck damaged the car enough that Petty had to skip races in Spartanburg, SC and at Smoky Mountain as Ol' Blue was rebuilt.
The local racer looking to make an impact was Jim Hunter. Many fans are familiar with the Jim Hunter who worked for Darlington Talladega, wrote as a journalist and publicist, served as a NASCAR executive, and was passionate about racing history. The Jim Hunter at Maryville; however, was a local late model sportsman racer at Smoky Mountain. The 1966 race was his second of five career Grand National starts. Four were on his home track, and the fifth one was just up the road at Bristol.
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel
Tiger Tom Pistone won the pole in his independent Ford. He was flanked by another local racer, Paul Lewis. Rookie of the Year challenger, James Hylton qualified third, and David Pearson and Big John Sears rounded out the top five starters.
Pistone seized the lead at the start and began his domination of the race. Lap after lap, Tiger pulled the rest of the field around the half-mile, dirt track.
Hunter's shot at running with the big dawgs was short-lived. Overheating issues after only eight laps sent his Ford to the trailer before he could even work up a good sweat. Two laps earlier, J.T. Putney - another driver from relatively close to the area in Arden, NC - parked his Ford with engine issues.
The engine issues experienced by Hunter and Putney turned out to be a harbinger of things to come for a third driver - the lap bully Pistone! After leading 72 consecutive laps, Tiger's engine began overheating. He headed disappointingly to the garage, and Pearson assumed the lead.
With Petty at home and Tiger on the trailer, Pearson went the rest of the way unchallenged. He led the remaining 128 laps and won his 21st career race by two laps over second place Buck Baker. Lewis had a great night with a P3 finish. He backed it up by winning Maryville's second 1966 race in late July.
After missing two races, Petty returned three days later. He wore 'em out in winning the Fireball 300 from the pole at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway.
The track remains in operation today though it is now known as Smoky Mountain Speedway. Hunter was inducted into the track's hall of fame in 2014.
NASCAR's Grand National drivers rolled into Richmond's half-mile, fairgrounds dirt track on May 15, 1966 for a 250-lap race. The storylines of the season after about a third of it had been completed were:
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.
Fans got a pleasant surprise during qualifying for the race. James Hylton qualified second, and future NASCAR pace car driver Elmo Langley timed third.
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.
Tiger grabbed the lead as the green flag fell, and he kept his dual, four-barrel carb'd, independent Ford at the point for the the first 22 laps. Pearson then took the lead from Pistone, and it was pretty much his race to lose the rest of the way.
Pistone's top starting spot didn't help him in the long run. He burned a piston, and ended the day with a DNF and 16th place finish in the 30-car field. Like Pistone, Langley's starting position near the front didn't mean anything when the day was done. After racing for a while against King Richard, he lost a differential in his two-year old Ford. The final results showed Langley with a 17th place DNF - one spot behind Tiger.
After Pistone's 22 laps out front to begin the race, the day belonged to Pearson. He led 216 of the remaining 228 laps to capture his fifth win of the season.
Petty, who started tenth, hung around, but really offered no substantive competition to Pearson that day. He returned home to Level Cross with a second place finish, two laps down to the winner. By finishing two laps behind Pearson, it's tough to say Petty's second place finish was an almost win. The race was, however, the twelfth of 63 times the two drivers finished first and second.
Tom Pistone was an iconic NASCAR Grand National racer who drove from the mid-1950s through the late 1960s. Originally from Chicago, he raced many late model events and claimed championships at Solider Field. Yes, that Solider Field. The home of the Chicago Bears hosted stock car races throughout the 40s and 50s.
Tiger Tom made a handful of starts in NASCAR's Grand National and convertible series from 1955 through 1957. He did not race in either series in 1958 but signed on with car owner Carl Rupert to race about half the 1959 Grand National season - including the inaugural Daytona 500.
One of my favorite cars of Tom's is his mid-60s #59 Ford sponsored by Shoney's Restaurants. Though I don't have any memories of the car in the era it raced, our family were frequent diners at Nashville's Shoney's Big Boy drive-in when I was a kid.
I've lonnnnnng since bailed on Shoney's as a dining option. But I'll still give them props. My mother was looking for a job and was willing to develop new skill to function in a technology-enabled workplace. She landed at Shoney's and wondered if it would be a short-term gig. Instead, she worked in their corporate training department for about two decades; dedicated herself to learning all about Microsoft Office apps, HTML, learned to troubleshoot her PCs at the office and home; spent countless (and uncompensated) hours on nights and weekends; and was even featured in their Annual Report in the late 90s for her contributions to the company's training initiatives.
But I digress...
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes to speak by phone with Pistone about his memories from the first 500. While I wasn't able to record the call to get absolute quotes, the comments below represent the gist of his remarks. (In an weird sort of way, I kind of hope I do mess up something. It might give me to chance to reconnect with him again to get the story straight - and perhaps cover a new topic.)
For the first Daytona 500, Tiger Tom raced a 1959 Ford Thunderbird sedan purchased as race-ready from Holman Moody for $5,900. His third place finish in his qualifying twin placed him fifth in the starting line-up. When the checkers fell, Tom's T-Bird finished a very respectable 9th five laps off the lead. Of the top 10 finishers, only Pistone and sixth-place finisher Jim Reed are still with us in 2013.
Photo courtesy of Chrissy Pistone
Tiger Tom raced a couple of times on the old Daytona Beach sand and street course - in 1956 and 1957 - in NASCAR's short-lived convertible series. But his arrival in February 1959 at the new superspeedway was his first time to see the new track. He had not visited it all during its construction.
He said the track was pretty easy to drive from the get-go. The greatest challenge was learning about the draft and figuring out to manage it well. Pistone said before the race weekend was complete, most drivers figured out the draft pretty quickly.
Despite having run convertibles in 1956-57, he chose to go with the
hardtop sedan for the 500. He said the convertibles were simply too
slow on the new high-banked superspeedway.
Tom said he hadn't been out of the city of Chicago many
times at that point in his life. He was unsure what trips to the South would be like.
He wondered if southerners would like him. He remembers flat-bed towing the race car to Florida, passing farm houses, meeting people along the way. He said he didn't know a lot of history back
then and wasn't really sure about the whole Yankee vs. southerner
debate.
Pistone said two qualifying sessions were held to set the fields for the
twin qualifying races. He claims he had by far the fastest times in both rounds -
until Cotton Owens showed up and bested his time. He said the cars
ran about 20 MPH faster than the Firestone tires were equipped to run. The
full-treaded tires started coming apart with the high speeds, and
the drivers had to adapt to better manage their tire wear. Pistone believes
had be been better able to manage his tires as Lee Petty did that he may
well have been able to win the race.
He said his team didn't have much leisure time and certainly
not much money for their round-trips to the beach and back to Chicago in the second half of the 1950s. So they didn't have time to visit DIS while it was
under construction. And they certainly didn't stick around long after
the race wondering who'd indeed won the race: Johnny Beachamp or Lee
Petty. If a racer doesn't have the trophy in one hand and his other arm around the beauty queen, he may as well just load up and begin preparing for the next race.
Pistone was very complimentary of NASCAR's first president, Bill France
Sr. Big Bill supported Tom in his racing, encouraged him about
participating in NASCAR events, arranged a shop in Daytona to work in,
provided lodging, etc. Without France's support, Tom said he likely
would not have made it in the sport. Despite some initial misgivings about how he and the South might get along, Tom took to the area and moved his family to Florida in 1965.
In 1991, Charlotte Motor Speedway created a quarter-mile track in the grass area between pit road and the frontstretch dogleg. The original purpose of it was to host a Winston Legends race for old-time drivers to race in scaled-down versions of their old cars and painted in colors recognizable to fans of their era. Tom not only returned to race in the event but also told a few old school stories along the way.
Tom still interacts a good bit with race fans - especially when made aware of someone's interest by his daughter, Chrissy. He runs a racing parts business and helps his grandson with his budding racing career. Pistone can also be found on Twitter. If interested in learning more about him or reaching out to ask a question or thank him for the racing history to which he contributed, here are a few channels.
