#10 - The Original Golden Boy
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02/01/2018 Matt McLaughlin |
(Editor’s Note) In 1997
- 1998, Matt McLaughlin penned a special Anthology of historical pieces in
honor of the 50th Anniversary of NASCAR entitled "50 Years of NASCAR
Racing." Matt has entrusted the entire collection, minus one or two that
were misfiled back then and cannot be salvaged, to my tender, loving care.
As NASCAR turns 70, the
Anthology itself will celebrate a 20th anniversary through 2018, and will run
again here on Race Fans Forever. As before, there is no record of which pieces
came first, so it will appear in the sequence presented earlier. Please, sit
back and enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and
perhaps relive a memory or two.
As always, many thanks
to Matt, and God bless you my friend. ~PattyKay
Love him or despise him, there's no denying Jeff
Gordon has taken the stock car world by storm, and indeed has become the face
of NASCAR, particularly in newer fans’ and casual fans’ of our sport's minds.
In a short period of time Gordon has emerged as a leading contender at almost
every race he enters and has run up incredible streaks of wins. But long before
Jeff was even born, NASCAR had another Golden Boy, a good looking young man
whose name and image helped define NASCAR in an earlier age. Fred Lorenzen was,
in his prime, one of the finest drivers ever to run in NASCAR.
A native of Elmhurst Illinois, Lorenzen was fascinated
with automobiles as a teenager and an active street racer in a 1952 Olds he
built at the filling station where he worked. His first attempt at oval type
racing was with a bunch of buddies one beery evening, competing to see who
could get an old jalopy to roll first. From there he moved on to more
conventional forms of short track racing.
At the tender age of 21, Lorenzen decided to try his
hand at Grand National racing. He bought a 56 Chevy from Grand National racer
Tom Pistone, and drove off to compete at the infamous circular track in
Langhorne, Pennsylvania, with as he put it, "no spare clothes and less
money." Recollecting that day, Lorenzen claimed he knew he had to finish
in the top thirty to earn enough money to get home. A fuel pump failure
relegated him to 26th finishing position, which was good for a $25 dollar pay
day. He must have used a siphon to get home. All told, Lorenzen competed in 7
races that year and earned $235 dollars. Chastened by the experience, he wisely
decided to give his NASCAR career a break. Instead, Lorenzen turned his
attention to the USAC stock car racing series, which ran closer to his Midwest
home. He won the championship in that series in both 1958 and 1959, driving
what would become his trademark, white Fords carrying the number 28, which has
been associated with winning Fords ever since. With more experience and better
financing, Lorenzen decided to have another go at NASCAR racing in 1960, lured
by the bigger purses Bill France's organization offered.
Like so many drivers who have come after him, Lorenzen
packed up his belongings, his hopes and his dreams and moved south. He took up
residence in a tiny house trailer in a friend's backyard and began looking for
a ride. Fred, a great mechanic, landed a job turning wrenches at the Holman and
Moody shop, which was the premiere Ford team of the day. But he had come south
to drive, not be a mechanic, and Lorenzen left the team shortly thereafter,
bought another race car and struck out on his own. Like most drivers from
lesser leagues, Lorenzen had competed only on short tracks and his first race
that year was at Daytona, which he admitted scared him half silly the first
time he saw it. Joe Weatherly and Fireball Roberts offered a little advice and
Lorenzen stunned everyone by finishing third is his qualifying race and eighth
in the Daytona 500. It was to be the highlight of his abbreviated season, which
was cut short when he was forced to quit the circuit due to financial problems.
After being unable to find a team that would take him on as a driver, Fred sold
his car and returned home with his tail between his legs to resume working as a
carpenter.
Christmas Eve of that year, days before his 26th
birthday, Lorenzen received a special present. Ralph Moody, the
"Moody" half of Holman and Moody, called to ask if Lorenzen was still
seeking a ride for the 1961 season. Though the car he was promised was not
ready in time for the event, Fred went to Daytona anyway and was able to land a
ride the day before the race in a lightly regarded car owned by Tubby Gonzales,
which was qualified in the 45th position. Lorenzen drove that car to a fourth
place finish.
In his first race with Holman and Moody at Atlanta in
March, Fred led for a short while before a blown tire put him into the wall.
His very next start for the team that April, he won the rain-shortened Virginia
500 at Martinsville. The Ford fans had a new hero.
It was never Ralph Moody or Fred Lorenzen's
idea to run for a championship. Lorenzen ran only the major events, paved
tracks of a half-mile or more, and particularly the new superspeedways that
were popping up all over in that period, a trend that started at Daytona and
Charlotte. Lorenzen became the master of the big track, high profile events
that got all the headlines, and left the tiny dirt ovals and the $600 paydays
to the others. Ford was delighted. Besides being a great race driver, Lorenzen
was also Hollywood handsome, with short blonde hair and a toothpaste commercial
perfect smile. He was well spoken, good with the media, and never forgot to
mention his sponsor's name while smiling pretty for the cameras. In an age
where most race car drivers were still hell raisers who showed up in victory
lane occasionally with a bottle of Jack Daniels in a paper sack, Lorenzen was
not the sort to get arrested for running a load of shine, playing demolition
derby with rental cars, or tossing naked woman from motel balconies into the
swimming pool. In short he was Ford's answer to a lanky smiling young man who
drove Plymouth's with no little success, Richard Petty.
That was the first of three victories that season for
Lorenzen, who also won at the big tracks at Darlington and Atlanta.
In 1962, Lorenzen ran in 19 races with sponsorship
from Lafayette Ford in Fayetteville North Carolina, an agency that would
sponsor him most of his career, in immaculately prepared Holman and Moody Fords
with factory backing. He won two times and finished in the top 10 twelve times
that year. Lorenzen wound up 7th in the points despite only starting 19 of 53
races. As an interesting footnote, that fall the car Fred drove was officially
listed as owned by Mamie Reynolds, the 19 year-old daughter of Senator Robert
Reynolds. Lorenzen's win at Augusta, Georgia made her
the youngest car owner ever to have won a race.
1963 was a banner year for both Lorenzen and the
Holman and Moody team. Early that spring, Ralph Moody was able to sign NASCAR
legend Fireball Roberts to drive a team car as well, mainly because GM was not
backing the Pontiac team Fireball had been driving for as well as a top rank
team needed. In the very first race where the two teammates competed against
each other, on March 31st at Bristol, Roberts and Lorenzen finished one two.
That year also marked the most races Fred Lorenzen would drive in a single
season, 29, and he would win six of them. He won the highly coveted World 600
at Charlotte, the Atlanta 500, an event he was becoming dominant in, and the
fall race at Bristol, another track he was very successful at. Just to keep
everyone honest, Lorenzen also won a race on the .375 mile track at Huntington,
West Virginia, in a rare short track appearance. Despite running only 29 of 55
races, Lorenzen finished third in the points. Even more remarkably, he won over
$122,000, more than the drivers that finished first and second in the points.
In fact, to that point no driver had ever won more than $75,000 in a season,
and the six figure mark was thought an impossible dream. There were some
rumblings from older drivers that they had gotten into the sport too early,
before "The big money" was available. Roberts added four more
victories to the Holman and Moody total and finished fifth in the points.
1964 was a year of both triumph and tragedy for
Lorenzen. That year he set marks that still rank as almost unbelievable. Of the
16 races he entered, Lorenzen led 11 , qualified for the pole seven times, won
eight events, and finished in the top four 10 times. The incredible feat earned
him almost $74,000 in just 16 races. But 1964 was a brutal year, as the cars
were much faster than the tires could handle. Three drivers, including two-time
champion Joe Weatherly and Jimmy Pardue died in race
cars. The third driver to lose his life was Lorenzen's
teammate, Fireball Roberts. Roberts had fought an incredible battle trying to
recover from the injuries sustained in the fiery wreck at that year's World
600, but succumbed to his injuries on July 2nd. The very next day there were
two qualifying races of 20 laps apiece to determine the starting order for the
Firecracker 400. Lorenzen got involved in a terrifying wreck of his own that nearly
tore off the left side of his car. Lorenzen staggered out of the car and
collapsed, bleeding profusely with a severed artery in his hand. Surgeons were
able to control the bleeding and spare his life, but Fred was badly shaken,
both by the loss of his teammate and friend and his own close call. Shortly
thereafter he announced he thought the speeds were too high and he was retiring
from racing. Within the week he reconsidered and returned to the track, after
NASCAR assured the frightened drivers they would find a way to control the
speeds.
The measures NASCAR tried to institute to slow the
cars down led to the Chrysler Boycott of 1965. Had he made a concerted drive
for the championship that year, certainly Lorenzen could have given Ned Jarrett
a good battle for the title. Lorenzen chose to remain on a limited schedule and
ran 17 races. He won four of those, but one of them was a biggie. Lorenzen won
the 1965 Daytona 500, which actually had to be halted at 332.5 miles due to
rain. Still, that single victory was worth $27,000 plus, not to mention the
prestige of winning the greatest event in stock car racing. He added another
World 600 trophy to his awards cabinet that year as well. In fact Lorenzen
looked to have a lock on the Southern 500, which would have given him the three
crown jewels of NASCAR racing (and the Winston Million in modern times) when he
lost an engine late in the race. That day another race car driver, Buren Skeen,
was fatally injured during the race, and once again Lorenzen spoke openly about
retiring, citing the danger and the pressure. Lorenzen won the National 400 at
Charlotte in the fall, prevailing in a three-wide side by side battle to the
checkers. In that race yet another NASCAR driver, Harold Kite, was fatally
injured in a wreck.
Ford launched a boycott of their own early in the 1966
season, and Lorenzen obediently obeyed the factory's orders not to compete.
When Ford did finally return to racing, Lorenzen drove the notorious and highly
illegal "Yellow Banana" at Atlanta. Though he competed in only 11
races once Ford reentered the fray, Lorenzen won two of them, including the big
season finale at Rockingham.
In 1967, Ford was applying heavy pressure on all its
drivers to try to derail Richard Petty, who was dominating in his Plymouth.
Lorenzen won his qualifying race at Daytona (which paid points in those days)
leading a one-two-three-four race sweep over Richard Petty and that electric
blue Plymouth. He also placed second in the Daytona 500 that year behind Mario
Andretti in another Holman and Moody Ford. After that it was all downhill. Ford
was once again threatening to boycott. The pressure got to Fred and he
developed a massive stomach ulcer as a result of both the corporate pressure
cooker and his own drive to win. He missed races at Martinsville and North
Wilkesboro as a result of his stomach problems. On April 24th, Fred Lorenzen
told the stunned media he was retiring from stock car racing, noting "I
want to go out on top", echoing sentiments Ned Jarrett had used announcing
his retirement near the end of the previous season. "I've won everything
you can win and there's nowhere to go but down." he added sadly. It is
ironic that the increased pressures of the sport that Fred Lorenzen helped
build up, coupled with his own relentless perfectionism, wound up driving him
away from the Superspeedway tracks that he had been the master of.
AFTERMATH- Later in 1967, Ford asked Fred Lorenzen for
advice on what they could do to stop the Petty express. When his answer didn't
agree with their "experts", the powers that be at Ford basically told
him if he was so certain he knew more than they did, he should start his own
team. Lorenzen did just that, obtaining a car from Holman and Moody, and
enlisting the services of "Suitcase Jake" Elder as a crew chief, and
an up and coming driver from Alabama by the name of Bobby Allison. The team won
the last two races of the year. Naturally, the team was asked to stay together
for the 1968 season and Lorenzen partnered up with veteran car owner Buddy
Long. Allison started out the 68 season with a win at Macon, a second at
Montgomery, a fourth at Riverside in the team's new Torino, and a third place
at Daytona. He was leading the points battle when he lost an engine at the next
race in Bristol, finishing dead last, but still Allison trailed Petty by a mere
23 points. At that point, Ford announced to Allison and Lorenzen they would not
be funded to run every race for the championship, but only at the larger
events. Allison eventually quit in disgust, wanting to run every race. Lorenzen's health problems resurfaced and he began missing
races, and finally resigned from the team in July. In 1970, Charlotte promoter
Richard Howard arranged a ride for Lorenzen, who was still a fan favorite, in
another of Howard's creative projects to sell tickets. While his car still
carried the familiar number 28, it was a red and gold Dodge Daytona, not a
white Ford. In his very first race back at the World 600 in Charlotte, Lorenzen
charged to the front and was leading the race to the delight of the crowd when
his engine expired. Lorenzen would start seven races that year, six in the
Dodge and one filling in for LeeRoy Yarbrough in Junior Johnson's Ford. His
best finish of the year was aboard the winged warrior at the fall race at Charlotte,
where Lorenzen finished third.
In 1971, Lorenzen started the year in a Plymouth owned
by Ray Nichels and sponsored by a newcomer to the
sport, STP. He finished fifth in both his qualifying race and the Daytona 500.
At Ontario he led many laps but lost an engine late in the going. Fred also
placed second at the June race in Dover, his best finish of the year. At the
Southern 500 Lorenzen filled in, in place of the Wood Brothers regular driver,
Donnie Allison, who was driving in the California Indy car race that weekend.
In practice he lost control of the car, hit the outside wall and rebounded into
the pit wall. Lorenzen suffered a broken foot, concussion, facial cuts and a
nasty laceration to his throat that required surgery and sidelined him six weeks.
He eventually quit the team, citing differences with his crew chief. Lorenzen
returned to Fords, and even one ride in a Chevy in 1972, starting eight races
and with a best finish of fourth on three separate occasions, before retiring
from racing for good. In addition to driving, Lorenzen also did a brief stint
in broadcasting covering races.
*Matt can no longer
field comments or email at Race Fans Forever. If you have comments or
questions, please leave them below and I’ll do my best to supply answers.
~PattyKay Lilley, Senior Editor.