#81 - The Southern 500 ~ The Granddaddy of Them All - Part 2 of 6
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08/27/2018 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
As speeds crept ever upward, it seemed inevitable that
frightening wrecks were bound to occur, and the Southern 500 at Darlington
became as much a test of a competitor's nerves as of his driving prowess. Such
was the case in 1958 and the winner was a young man with plenty of both the
above. There were several horrifying looking wrecks in that race, though
thankfully no one was badly injured. Eddie Pagan had the worst-looking wreck of
all on lap 136, going into and through the first turn wall, tearing his Ford to
shreds, with everything from the firewall forward simply torn off. The damage
to the track was so extensive it could not be repaired and NASCAR warned the
drivers to stay low in one to avoid shooting out the opening and going
airborne. 24 laps later, Eddie Gray lost control and went sailing out that very
same opening. Shortly after the halfway point of the event Jack Smith hit the
first turn wall just short of the gaping open, got airborne and flew out of the
race track. Most of the drivers were giving that devilish corner a wide berth
at that point. But there was one driver who kept running the very top line of
the track, the same line Marshall Teague had used to win the race in 1951.
Fireball Roberts ran that high groove, the right side of his 57 Chevy inches
from the gaping opening, but never lifting, flirting with disaster but safe in
the arms of Lady Luck. He came home the winner, five laps ahead of second place
Buck Baker. Such is the stuff legends are made of.
Not every race goes to the swift, and in stark
contrast to Roberts' win in 1958, the winner of the 1959 running of the
Southern 500 used a conservative strategy to see to it he was still around at
the end. The popularity of NASCAR stock car racing was growing by leaps and
bounds at that point, and corporate America took one of the first forays into
the sport. Joe Weatherly drove a '59 T-Bird sponsored by Coca-Cola. Also on
hand that weekend was a Hollywood film crew shooting scenes for an almost
forgotten "racing" movie called Thunder in the Carolinas. Rory
Calhoun starred as the morally challenged driver who never met a woman he
didn't make a play for. His crew chief was played by none other than Alan Hale
Jr., who would go on to become famous as the Skipper of a boat that went out on
an ill-fated three hour tour. There was drama aplenty on the track as well.
Richard Petty started his first Southern 500, but his Dad must not have had too
much confidence in the 22-year old lad's abilities to run a 500 mile race.
(Though Richard did all right in a number of them, particularly at Daytona,
later in his career, as I recall.) Richard did lead seven laps but when Marvin
Panch became available as a substitute driver after his Ford lost a camshaft,
Papa Petty ordered his son to the pits to be replaced. Joe Weatherly lost an
engine early in the going in his Coca-Cola Ford, and was given the nod to
replace another young driver, Bob Burdick. Panch took the Petty Enterprises
Plymouth to the front to engage in a hot battle with Jim Reed in a '57 Chevy
and seemed to have his number, but the blistering pace he set broke a wheel on Panch's car, spoiling his chances. Defending race champion
Fireball Roberts drove so hard that he was wearing the tires right off his car,
and the frequent pit stops for new rubber spoiled his day. Reed's conservative
strategy allowed him to take the win by two laps over Weatherly in the Burdick
Thunderbird.
The 1960 running of the Southern 500 was marred by
confusion and tragedy. The racing community got a graphic and chilling lesson
that the drivers were not the only ones who faced danger on race day. In those
days there was no pit wall to separate the track from the pits and what some might
think was an inevitable tragedy finally took place. On lap 25, Elmo Langley
spun out in his Thunderbird and went backwards into the pits. With two tons of
car moving at around 120 miles per hour when it hit the wall that separated the
garage area from pit road, the results were predictable. Concrete shrapnel flew
in all directions and a pit crew member was badly hurt. While they had all seen
their comrade hurt, it was the job of other pit crew members to be poised right
behind that same wall ready to leap over and service their driver if he needed
to stop. They maintained their posts. There was a second similar accident that
day, but the results were even more devastating. Bobby Johns got in a tangle on
the track and spun into the pits. He slammed the wall and flipped. Concrete
debris flew in every direction and two pit crew members and a track official
were killed by the shrapnel. Three others lay gravely hurt. Of course, the race
resumed and those same unsung heroes were back at their posts, waiting behind
the wall for their drivers to need them. Buck Baker, Richard Petty and Fireball
Roberts put on a great show battling for the lead, and a late race caution
bunched them together for a final show down. The results were somewhat
anti-climactic in that Roberts blew an engine with eleven laps to go, just as
he prepared to make his bid for the lead, and with three laps to run, Petty
lost a tire and had to limp to the pits. Baker seemed comfortably in command of
the race when he too lost a tire heading into the back-straight and went
spinning. Baker recovered and had a two lap advantage on Rex White running in
second, but a pit stop to replace the blown tire very likely would have cost
him the race. Instead, Baker drove as fast as he dared along the bottom edge of
the track, trying to complete a lap and a half before White could complete
three and a half laps. In all the confusion the track officials lost sight of
where Baker was running in the order and mistakenly gave the checkered flag to
White. Baker immediately filed a protest and the score cards were re-checked.
Hours later, NASCAR announced they had indeed made a mistake and awarded the
win to Baker. As a consolation prize to Rex White, the second place finish he
was finally credited with was enough to almost guarantee he would be that
year's Grand National champion.
The high speeds, the heat and the tough Darlington
track could take its toll on any driver, no matter how tough, and it did so to
Fireball Roberts in the 1961 Southern 500. Roberts seemed on track to win,
particularly as other big name drivers suffered mechanical failure that
brutally hot afternoon, but the g-forces in the corner got so intense he wound
up with bad muscle cramps in his neck. Fireball tried to tough it out, but
finally had to signal for a relief driver. Once again the call went out to
Marvin Panch. The driver exchange, quick as it was, allowed Nelson Stacy to get
back into contention and with seven laps to go he passed Panch to take the
lead. He held on to win by 2.64 seconds. For Stacy, who always seemed to be in
the shadows of the primary Holman-Moody driver as the secondary driver, it was
one of the sweetest wins of his career.
If the ending of the 1960 Southern 500 was a bit
confusing, the finish of the 1962 event was a real disaster for NASCAR. Perhaps
it seemed fitting that what was actually the 13th running of the Southern 500
was officially billed as the "12th Renewal of the Southern 500." The
reason was, Joe Weatherly was so superstitious he refused to enter any event
dubbed the "13th" anything. Considering the mass confusion after the
race, that was only a minor detail. Larry Frank was certain that he had won the
race but didn't get the checkered flag as he completed the 364th lap. When he
wasn't flagged the winner Frank kept right on driving, despite the fact he was
badly dehydrated and close to passing out. On the extra lap he broke a wheel
and slid down onto the apron of the track, but gamely limped his way back
around to the start finish line. Meanwhile, Junior Johnson was flagged the
winner and motioned to victory lane. Frank crossed the start finish line and
stumbled out his car to the attention of the crew. He was rushed to the motel
he was staying at to be put in the shade and given fluids to treat his
dehydration. Meanwhile, protests were flying and every position in the top six,
including the win was seriously in question. Almost everyone but NASCAR (and
presumably Junior) thought Larry Frank had won. It took until Midnight for
NASCAR to announce that indeed Frank had won, and Johnson finished second. By
that point, an exhausted Frank was asleep in his bed. The embarrassing scoring
mishap had been unraveled by Morris Metcalfe. After a similar scoring mix-up
took place two races later, Metcalfe was hired by NASCAR to be official
scorekeeper. He is acknowledged as the master of the old mechanical scoring
system, and his word was the final one for years to come.
The 1963 running of the Southern 500 was one of those
great rarities at Darlington, a caution free event. While the outcome was never
in question, there was a bit of controversy in the pits and another
embarrassing lapse on the part of NASCAR officials. Jim Paschal was entered in
the second Petty Plymouth as a teammate to Richard. Lee Petty called the shots
in the pits. Lee seemed to think that Paschal had the faster car, so he called
both drivers into the pits during the race and had them swap cars. A while
later the engine in the car Richard was driving blew up and Lee ordered Paschal
back into the pits to hand over the running car to his Richard. Two days later,
Jim Paschal quit Petty Enterprises as a result. Early in the race, Billy Wade
tagged the wall, but there was a breakdown in communication and the flagman
never received the word from NASCAR's spotters there was a wreck on the track.
Thus no caution flag was thrown and Ned Jarrett, unaware of the incident ahead
of him, slammed into Wade's car. There was bad blood between the two drivers
for the rest of Wade's all too brief life. Other than that, the race went as
expected. As usual Junior Johnson, a student of Curtis Turner's old "Flat
out till she blows" driving school streaked into the lead. Also as usual,
he blew an engine. That left it to the two superspeedway superstars of the day.
Fireball Roberts and Fred Lorenzen to settle it amongst themselves. Lorenzen
powered his white Ford around Roberts on lap 314, but with 33 laps to go
Roberts regained the lead and went on to beat Lorenzen by 17 seconds. The
caution free event allowed Roberts to set a blistering pace unheard of in the
day, 129.784 MPH. Tragically it was the last Southern 500 Roberts would ever
compete in, before losing his life to injuries he sustained in a crash at
Charlotte in May of 1964.
The Fords had pretty much had their way on the high
profile big tracks in the 1963 season, but the Mopar camp had a new weapon in
its arsenal for 1964, the 426 Hemi. The speeds those cars attained, coupled
with the outdated tire and brake technology, took a dreadful toll in driver's
lives, and the Southern 500 of 1964 was a wreckfest,
though thankfully nobody was killed. There was a close call on lap 149 when
Junior Johnson spun out and Bud Moore slammed into the back of Junior's Ford
hard enough to push the rear bumper into the area where the back seat would be
in a street car. Miraculously, there was no fire. Richard Petty in his big blue
Hemi Plymouth seemed the driver to beat, but a spark plug wire fell onto the
roasting hot headers and burnt through. Petty lost two laps in the pits, and in
his frantic charge to get back up front, got into a wreck with David Pearson
that cost him another two laps to get repairs. Meanwhile, the cagey old veteran
Buck Baker, driving a Hemi Dodge and who knew a thing or two about how quickly
Darlington could bite, drove a heads up race, saved his car, and stayed out of
trouble to take the win by two laps over the second place finisher, Jim
Paschal. Paschal had made his peace with the Petty team and was driving for
them again that year. Still he must have felt somewhat vindicated to finish
second, one place ahead of Richard Petty, who recovered from his twin
misfortunes to finish third.
The awe-inspiring factory Hemis would not be back in
1965. Chrysler was sitting on the sidelines that year, staging a boycott after
NASCAR banned the Hemi engine. The stated reason was that the cars had simply
gotten too fast and it was a matter of safety. In light of that intention the
1965 Southern 500 served up a bitter irony.
*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.