1967: With Lower Banking And Smaller Crowds, Bristol Was Still A Big Deal
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08/17/2016 Frank Buhrman |
It was hot that Sunday in July of 1967 when three already-partying-too-hard college students trudged to their seats at Bristol International Speedway for the Volunteer 500 Grand National race. Two of those students were this writer and fellow RFF correspondent Dave Fulton.
Compared to today’s Bristol Speedway, the banking back then wasn’t much, but it was pretty steep by the standards of other NASCAR half-milers. The race was a pretty big deal, too. 500 laps, with more than $25,000 on the line and the winner would earn more than six grand – big bucks!
Compared to today’s Bristol Speedway, the banking back then wasn’t much, but it was pretty steep by the standards of other NASCAR half-milers. The race was a pretty big deal, too. 500 laps, with more than $25,000 on the line and the winner would earn more than six grand – big bucks!
Bristol looked a little different when it opened in 1961, and it hadn’t
changed much when Dave & Frank visited six years later.
changed much when Dave & Frank visited six years later.
Those also were the days of the “Big Bill France vs. the U.S. auto manufacturers” soap opera. In 1965, Chrysler Corp. had boycotted the circuit because NASCAR wouldn’t let Dodges and Plymouths race the Hemi engine; the next year Ford and Mercury sat out the action because the Hemi was allowed. Worse still, General Motors showed little interest at all, having bailed on direct factory involvement in ’63.
That was a problem for France, who knew that there were lots of Chevy and Pontiac fans out there who might not attend NASCAR races just to see Ford and Chrysler entries clean up, so there was always some secret project going on to bring another “hot” Chevy out to challenge Petty, Holman-Moody and the other big-money, factory-aligned, non-GM teams.
That was a problem for France, who knew that there were lots of Chevy and Pontiac fans out there who might not attend NASCAR races just to see Ford and Chrysler entries clean up, so there was always some secret project going on to bring another “hot” Chevy out to challenge Petty, Holman-Moody and the other big-money, factory-aligned, non-GM teams.
King Richard with what might have been his best ride ever.
At Bristol, that was a ’67 Chevelle #74 prepared by Turkey Minton, who I think had had some connection with Junior Johnson. Tiger Tom Pistone would be behind the wheel. Unfortunately, the car’s engine would cough its end after 14 laps, and Pistone would end up in 36th/last place.
We were there to see our buddy, J.T. Putney, the commercial pilot who did a pretty good job of challenging the factory teams in his much more modest equipment. Actually born in Farmville, Va., but ever associated by NASCAR with Arden, N.C., he lived/worked near Bristol by then, so he also was something of a local hero. (He was tolerant of us after the races, too, and we took that as a valued friendship.) Sadly, he didn’t have a good day that day, but I think I have a picture somewhere of Dave lighting up a smoke while J.T. was showing the effects of a hot day at the track.
We were there to see our buddy, J.T. Putney, the commercial pilot who did a pretty good job of challenging the factory teams in his much more modest equipment. Actually born in Farmville, Va., but ever associated by NASCAR with Arden, N.C., he lived/worked near Bristol by then, so he also was something of a local hero. (He was tolerant of us after the races, too, and we took that as a valued friendship.) Sadly, he didn’t have a good day that day, but I think I have a picture somewhere of Dave lighting up a smoke while J.T. was showing the effects of a hot day at the track.
Dave Fulton’s photos from the spring Southeastern 500 have J.T. Putney in a red Chevy #19,
but by July the color, number and sponsor had changed.
but by July the color, number and sponsor had changed.
I don’t remember a whole lot about the ’67 Volunteer 500 beyond that. Racing Reference.com tells me that Richard Petty won with Dick Hutcherson battling him all race long – the two combined to lead 442 of the 500 laps. The rest were led by David Pearson in the Holman-Moody Ford, but his engine also failed early.
Hutcherson was almost strong enough to keep up with Petty at Bristol.
A lot of the other competitors with a shot at winning didn’t finish, and Cale Yarborough, Bobby Isaac, Bobby and Donnie Allison, Sam McQuagg, Paul Goldsmith and LeeRoy Yarbrough all ended well down in the results. Only 15 of the 36 starters finished, with James Hylton 14 laps behind in 5th and Buck Baker in 10th, 31 laps down. A 500-lapper was a survival battle back then.
The crowd was announced at a little more than 20,000, which was good for those days. Interesting, it meant that each of us in the stands contributed about $1.25 toward the race purse – I’m pretty sure there was no TV money on the table. Think about this: last year’s late-summer Bristol race paid nearly $5.8 million in prize money and had somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people in attendance (maybe less; I’m in a generous mood). Even using the highest attendance figure (150,000), that works out to nearly $40 per fan toward the purse. If NASCAR’s TV revenues do decline with the next round of contracts, who’s going to make up those dollars?
A good friend is making her first pilgrimage to Bristol this year, and while she’s very disappointed that Dale Jr. won’t be racing, she hopes he’ll at least show up and she can see him. I hope so for her sake, and I hope she enjoys the race even more than I did the one 49 years ago. I also hope she’s in better shape for the trip home; traffic up the backbone of Virginia’s mountains has gotten a lot worse. At least she won’t have an exam Monday morning like Dave did.
(Author’s addition about racing, aging and rationalizing.)
When I asked Dave for his recollections for this story, he gave me plenty, but it was all about a different race – the Southeastern 500 at Bristol four months earlier. My photos were from July; his were from March. Turns out that he’d gone to the spring race with another friend and gotten the two trips kind of blended. Still, the parts in his memory that were from July filled in some gaps for me (like staying with a college friend of his in Roanoke the night before the race), so partially patched memories were achieved at both ends of our communication. We’re still a bit unsure about the UFO sighting.
He has a good theory about all this: He thinks that the noise and other unnatural elements of race attendance (perhaps including alcohol consumption) can affect race fans in the same manner that concussions affect athletes. I like that. It makes as much sense as Darrell Waltrip’s “vortex” theory about rain missing the track during races, and it would sure explain a lot.
When I remember more of what that “a lot” constitutes, I’ll let you know.
The crowd was announced at a little more than 20,000, which was good for those days. Interesting, it meant that each of us in the stands contributed about $1.25 toward the race purse – I’m pretty sure there was no TV money on the table. Think about this: last year’s late-summer Bristol race paid nearly $5.8 million in prize money and had somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people in attendance (maybe less; I’m in a generous mood). Even using the highest attendance figure (150,000), that works out to nearly $40 per fan toward the purse. If NASCAR’s TV revenues do decline with the next round of contracts, who’s going to make up those dollars?
A good friend is making her first pilgrimage to Bristol this year, and while she’s very disappointed that Dale Jr. won’t be racing, she hopes he’ll at least show up and she can see him. I hope so for her sake, and I hope she enjoys the race even more than I did the one 49 years ago. I also hope she’s in better shape for the trip home; traffic up the backbone of Virginia’s mountains has gotten a lot worse. At least she won’t have an exam Monday morning like Dave did.
(Author’s addition about racing, aging and rationalizing.)
When I asked Dave for his recollections for this story, he gave me plenty, but it was all about a different race – the Southeastern 500 at Bristol four months earlier. My photos were from July; his were from March. Turns out that he’d gone to the spring race with another friend and gotten the two trips kind of blended. Still, the parts in his memory that were from July filled in some gaps for me (like staying with a college friend of his in Roanoke the night before the race), so partially patched memories were achieved at both ends of our communication. We’re still a bit unsure about the UFO sighting.
He has a good theory about all this: He thinks that the noise and other unnatural elements of race attendance (perhaps including alcohol consumption) can affect race fans in the same manner that concussions affect athletes. I like that. It makes as much sense as Darrell Waltrip’s “vortex” theory about rain missing the track during races, and it would sure explain a lot.
When I remember more of what that “a lot” constitutes, I’ll let you know.