Nashville 400 Backstory - Fifty Years Later
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My
previous article, “Nashville - One Giant
Step” discussed my first Cup race, the 1969
Nashville 400. This article is a follow
up, a backstory you won’t find in “The Tennessean” or other news sources. It’s an account from a twelve-year-old race
fan’s perspective, transcribed fifty years later. So, take a step back in time.
Our
start in NASCAR was supposed to happen the year before. I remember the
excitement hearing my dad tell us that for our summer vacation we’d be heading
south to camp, fish, sightsee and... take in our first Cup race. I couldn’t wait for the chance to actually
see the cars and drivers I had read about in the newspaper or listened to on
the NASCAR radio broadcasts. It was like
a summertime Christmas.
But
that was 1968 and it was a very volatile time.
In those days before social media, satellite TV or cable almost
everything we knew about what was going on was in the newspaper, on the radio
or on the evening news on one of three networks. Every night we saw footage of our young men
fighting in a war no one wanted in Southeast Asia. Faraway places with names like Gulf of
Tonkin, Khe Shan, Hue, Hanoi, Da Nang and Saigon came
into our living rooms and into our lives.
Civil
unrest at home shared the screens as we saw our leaders assassinated, demonstrations
held, and riots erupt. Faraway places to
a twelve-year-old Kentucky boy with names like Watts, Detroit, Birmingham and
Washington DC came into our living room and into our lives.
Those
unfortunately were our times then.
Just
a week or so before we were scheduled to leave for our first Cup race, tensions
raised in that area. Sanitation workers
were going on strike and marches were rumored for race weekend. Taking all that into account, Dad made the
decision to change our plans. We went to a different area. We camped.
We fished. We saw sights. We had
fun... but there was no NASCAR race that year.
After
our aborted first attempt, Dad decided to make our first big time stock car
race at one closer to home-Nashville at Fairgrounds Speedway. Like the promised race earlier, I was again
excited when I got this news. Now, I was
FINALLY going to see my driver, David Pearson.
Heck, Richard Petty was driving a Ford this time so it would even be OK
to cheer for him.
We
took our seats where we always did-near the end of the front straightaway-right
before where the drivers lifted. Dad
always sat there because that’s where the cars would be going their
fastest. I liked the speed but was
disappointed when I realized that due to Nashville’s unusual pit road
arrangement the top teams would be pitting on the opposite end from where were
sitting, at the end of the backstretch of the 1/4 mile infield track that
serves as pit road for the big race.
Having a huge interest in pit stops I guess I’d be bugging Dad for the
binoculars tonight.
Our
seats were right in front of the least desirable pit stall at the track. A driver pitting there had to slow down early
on the track to get whoaed down enough to stop in
their pit stall. When they left, they
had to pick their way through the other cars pitted on both sides of the 1/4
mile’s backstretch. It was easy to see
why no one wanted there.
But
a car took it. A ‘67 Ford. Number 34.
First time I’d ever seen it.
First time I had ever seen a pit crew made up of African Americans. It was a small crew. Three if I remember correctly. And after they got their tools and meager
equipment hauled to their site and set up, the hood went up on the car and the
crew started thrashing. They swarmed
over and under the car. Their bustling
drew attention from the other fans in our section and when they realized the
crew looked different than the rest of the field, boos and other venomous vocal
objections were hurled their way. Loud,
crude, ugly. The crew had to hear it,
but if they did, they never showed it. Their
focus was on getting the #34 ready to race using whatever they had to get that
done.
It
was tense time... or at least it was for this 12-year-old.
As
race time drew closer and the cars were lined up, the crowds attention shifted
to the other end of the track, where the “Big Dogs” were lining up. I couldn’t see much of what was going on with
Pearson, so I went back to watching the crew in front of me. Were they going to get done in time? When was the driver going to get in the
car... it was almost time!
Finally,
they buttoned things up, put their tools away and then the oldest crew member
grabbed a helmet, put it on, crawled in the car, buckled up and fired it
up.
Was
the crew chief really going to race that car?
The
car wasn’t the fastest nor was it the slowest-it lined up mid-pack in the 24-car
field. As the field rolled off to take
its pace laps, my attention changed to the shiny new Ford #17 of David
Pearson. He was starting in third,
behind pole sitter Richard Petty. Bobby
Isaac in the orange K & K Insurance Dodge sat just to Petty’s outside. As Petty brought the field down for the green
flag, I couldn’t wait to see Pearson’s Holman-Moody Ford blow the doors off of
Petty’s Ford and Isaac’s Dodge.
Much
to my surprise, my first Cup race didn’t play out as I had hoped. It would be 128 laps before Pearson would get
around Petty... and that was only because Richard had to pit. Pearson led two laps before Petty retook the
lead and held off the rest of the field, including a ferocious charge by Bobby
Isaac to take the win by half a car length.
Petty
and Isaac were the only two cars on the lead lap. Third place was thirteen laps down.
But
while my driver was racing at the front of the field that night in Nashville
against Petty, Issac, James Hylton, John Sears, “Soapy” Castles and local
favorite Coo-Coo Marlin, I couldn’t help but sneak looks back through the field
to see how the #34 was running.
That
old Ford, it kept plugging along. It
wasn’t long before it was lapped and later lapped again. When pits-stops came I had to take my eyes
off the action just to watch. The first
time in it was just the two-man crew servicing the car. In a sport where pit stops were then measured
in seconds, theirs seemed to take minutes.
The crowd around me pointed and howled at their struggles. The next time they pitted, I think the driver
got out of the car and helped service the car, which drew even more points and
howls.
But
the team never gave up.
Stock
car racing that night in Nashville was as much about attrition as
competition. Ahead of the #34, the
leaders kept up their frantic pace.
Behind him, the official records will show Wayne Gillette, Bill Siefert
and Henley Gray just quit, and parked their cars. Ignition problems took out fifth place
starter, Dave Marcis on lap 40. Bill
Champion who had started inside the #34 crashed out on lap 200. Vibrations, oil leaks, suspension issues and
engine failures claimed their victims.
But that night in Nashville the #34 kept plugging along.
There
were more pit stops. Each time the car
came in, the determination to press on became more apparent. These men were here to race and race they
did. The crowd could make fun of their
execution but with each stop the admiration for their efforts grew. The little team may have been on the opposite
end of the pit speed spectrum of the likes of Petty Enterprises or
Holman-Moody, but no team showed more determination than that team did that
night in Nashville. With each pit stop
more fans stopped to watch. With each
stop, the cat calls and ugly remarks diminished and were eventually silenced.
Lap
after lap, the #34 continued on. It
wasn’t anywhere near the fastest, but it steadily pressed on, hugging the
bottom line, giving the leaders room to race by. If Hollywood was writing this script, the #34
would have made a miraculous comeback for the win or at least finish the race,
being there to take the Checkered Flag.
Unfortunately,
we were not racing in Hollywood that night but in Nashville. The #34’s night came to a bitter end in a
lap 237 crash. It was bittersweet for me
as I hated for their night to come to an end and to end that way. They had worked so hard and raced so
hard. Plus, I hate wrecks. Wrecks cost money. Wrecked cars have to be fixed to race
again... even if there are only three to do it.
I
guess the good thing was that with the #34 on the sidelines now I could focus
all my attention on my driver, David Pearson to see if he could run down the
leader, Richard Petty, unfortunately a coil issue dropped Pearson from
contention.
The
record books will show that Richard Petty won the race in front of some 15,000
plus fans. David Pearson finished sixth, twenty-four laps down to the leader
and nineteen laps ahead of the next finisher, local Legend Coo Coo Marlin. They’ll
also show the #34 finished 11th, one spot up from its 12th place starting
spot. He finished ahead of two cars that
started ahead of him-Dave Marcis and Bill Champion and only one car who started
behind him, J. D. McDuffie, got by him.
#34
netted $440 for their efforts that night.
Nashville,
July 26, 1969 was a night of firsts for me.
It was my…
- first Cup race,
-
first
time to see David Pearson race,
-
first
time I saw Richard Petty win... in a Ford no less,
-
first
time I ever saw African American race car driver, Wendell Scott race.
Wendell Scott
Wendell
Scott would go on to finish 9th in points that season, a season that would see
David Pearson beat Richard Petty for the points championship. Scott had entered Cup in 1961 at age 39, a
time when many drivers were calling it a career. There he began his climb up the points
standings. By his third season he was
15th in points, then 12th, 11th and in 1966 finished 6th. He’d remain in the top 10 for four straight
seasons. I didn’t know it at the time
but that night in Nashville I saw Wendell Scott race in his last top 10 points
season. That night I didn’t realize it,
but I had seen an incredible racer. I had no way of knowing that four seasons
later his 13-year Cup career would be over after being involved in a 21-car
wreck at Talladega that severely injured him physically and ruined him
financially.
That
night, I didn’t know that I had watched a future NASCAR Hall of Fame driver in
action.
There
was so much I didn’t realize when I watched that race in Nashville. I didn’t realize what he and his family went
through to compete in Cup. Nashville was
probably no different from the 391 Cup races they had completed in before.
At
twelve years old, I had this idyllic view that racers raced. Later, I realized that wasn’t always the case
as limited finances and resources often forced drivers, especially those
independents of that day like Scott, to race below their talent level just to make
sure they could make the next race.
Later still, I realized that not only was the #34 one of the oldest cars
on the track that night, but it was filled with used parts that had been cast
off by other teams as worn out. Wendell
had taken them, remade them serviceable and was using them to compete against
others with newer cars loaded with brand new parts.
Those
were all lessons later learned.
I
also learned that what I saw that night was exactly what his son Franklin Scott
described in his speech given at his father’s 2015 induction into the NASCAR
Hall of Fame.
"The
legend of Wendell Scott depicts him as one of the great vanguards of the sport
of NASCAR racing. Daddy was a man of
great honor. He didn’t let his circumstances define who he was. The Bible
teaches that before a person can have honor, they must first have integrity and
humility. In addition, another one of his great attributes was
perseverance. There were two words that were forbidden for us to use
growing up in the Scott household: Those words were ‘can’t’ and ‘never.’ "
Every
lap turned, every pit stop made “can’t” and “never” we’re never displayed,
instead it was words like “grit”, “determination”, “tenacity” and
“perseverance.”
What
I experienced that night in Nashville was exactly what son Wendell Scott, Jr. described
later at the HOF ceremony.
“Wendell
Scott Jr. said the crowds at the race tracks eventually turned supportive of
his father.
‘Daddy
had a thing about when we got to the track and we sort of judged the mood of
the crowd as we signed into the track, and when we crossed the track, if you
can imagine this picture, and the boos and sometimes the boos were worse than
boos, but he told us to listen to the fans that we don’t hear, and I thought
that was so immaculately said because those were the fans that really supported
us,’ said Wendell Jr.
‘Over
the years there came to be more of them than we realized,’ said Wendell Jr.
‘There were more fans supporting us probably during some of the worst periods
or epochs of our history of this country. The boos weren’t really that much
proportionately speaking.’
But
they were real nevertheless.”
Son
Franklin best summed up who I saw that night in Nashville in his final comments
at the Hall of Fame.
"There
were a lot of detractors and there are always going to be detractors, but he
didn’t let them make him less determined at what he wanted to do. Death threats, he was poisoned, he went
through all kinds of stuff, but he came back. Tonight, hopefully will be
motivation and inspiration to anyone who has a dream for
greatness and a vision for greatness. That’s pretty much what I have to
say."
That
night in Nashville overcame my disappointment from not making the first Cup
race when we originally had it planned.
This was an incredible race that gave me many fond memories for the
start of my Cup career. But one memory I
hope sticks with me alongside those of Pearson, Petty and Isaac is that of
Wendell Scott and his family crew doing whatever it took to run their race to
their very best. Seeing firsthand their
drive and determination made them winners in my eyes no matter what the
finishing order and was an inspiration going forward in my life.
I
didn’t need to wait for Wendell Scott’s Hall of Fame induction for motivation
and inspiration-I saw it first hand, at my first Cup race, at that hot night
fifty years ago in Nashville.
If
you never knew Wendell Scott, here is a brief look back by Wendell Scott with
Ned Jarrett and Steve Byrnes.
Inside NASCAR-Wendell
Scott Part 1
Inside NASCAR-Wendell
Scott Part 2