Phooey on
Fast at Talladega ~ Give Me Slow at Bowman Gray
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My
disdain for restrictor plate racing at Talladega is no secret, and I mention it
here only to explain why I’ve picked this week to focus on the exciting racing
and rich history of one of NASCAR’s slowest tracks, Bowman Gray Stadium in
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Since
it’s now fashionable to combine driver records in NASCAR’s top touring
divisions (Monster/Cup, Xfinity and Camping World Truck), I’ll do the
equivalent with Bowman Gray and say the little track inside what is now
Winston-Salem State University’s football field has hosted 49 events in past
variants (Grand National, Convertible, Short Track, Grand American and Grand
National East) of NASCAR’s upper tier. If you add K&N East, which I did
not, the total is 54.
Not
bad for a run that ended nearly 46 years ago.
In
those races, the competitors included nearly all the greatest names in NASCAR’s
“pre-Modern Era.” Here’s a sampling of what you missed.
Look at Bowman Gray packing them in for this
1955 Short Track Division race. That’s Fonty Flock (14) on the pole, with Lee
Petty (42) and Jim Reed (7) behind him.
Since
“Big Bill” France was involved in the track’s operation, you know it was NASCAR
from its start in 1948 (Tim Flock was the first track champion in modifieds),
but it wasn’t eligible to be on the 1949 schedule of the new Strictly Stock
division (now Monster/Cup), because the division was then limited to tracks
one-half mile in length or longer (BG is a quarter-mile). Therefore, its first
“big” race other than a modified championship was in the Short Track Division,
which was for Strictly Stock/Grand National/Cup cars on tracks of less than half
a mile.
On
July 21, 1951, Curtis Turner topped a field of 18 to win that first Short Track
race (200 laps/50 miles) at the Stadium. Turner’s name turns up often in BG
records in multiple divisions. In fourth place was the Short Track Division’s
first champion, Roscoe “Pappy” Hough, who is remembered as one of the greatest
midget drivers and owners of all time, and who competed at well over 500
different tracks during his long and illustrious career.
I
couldn’t find an average speed for that race, but when Lee Petty won in May of
1955, he averaged a hot 38.03 mph. The big crowds seem to indicate nobody
minded that the cars were scarcely going fast enough to get a ticket.
The information to go with this photo is
sketchy, but that’s Pappy Hough in the #81 (maybe Frankie Schneider behind
him), and the background sure looks like Bowman Gray.
Bowman
Gray ran one Short Track race annually until 1955, when it added a second
event. The next year it also got a race for NASCAR’s new Convertible Division,
and Turner again won, leading teammate and pal Joe Weatherly across the line,
three laps ahead of third place.
Lee Petty
(42) and Bob Welborn (49) battle in the ragtops with
Larry Frank (76) trailing. Welborn won the second of
two Convertible Division races in 1957, with Petty finishing second and Frank
fifth.
The
Short Track Division was fading out by 1958, and Bowman Gray’s race that year
was considered both Short Track and Grand National. Bob Welborn,
who had won a Convertible race at the Stadium six weeks earlier, got the
“combo” race win over Rex White and Jim Reed, all on the lead lap. (Those three
might be the most under-recognized drivers of NASCAR’s formative years.)
In
August, NASCAR “combo-ed” another BG race, this time
with the Grand Nationals and the Convertibles together – an indication that the
latter division was nearing the end of its run, too. Lee Petty dominated that
200-lapper and took the win over Shorty Rollins (the only other leader) and
Reed, with Fred Harb coming home a lap down in fourth
in the top Convertible in the field. Petty’s winning speed was a hair under 40
mph, but George Dunn had blistered the asphalt to earn the pole with a lap of
46.68.
For years Bowman Gray ran one of its Grand
National races on Easter Monday, then a holiday in North Carolina. (Thanks to
TMC Chase for this ad, from 1963.) The photo below shows action from that race,
which was won by Jim Paschal.
From
that point until the beginning of the so-called Modern Era in 1972, Bowman Gray
was a regular feature on the Grand National circuit. Some years it even had
three dates. In 1970 the Grand American Division (Camaros, Mustangs, AMC
Javelins, etc.) became part of the rotation, and the next year, when that
division started to fail, a combo race was held for Grand National and Grand
American cars, with Bobby Allison’s Mustang besting Richard Petty and the GN
boys; in fact, Grand American cars – no doubt aided by their size and weight –
took six of the top seven spots. Petty’s pole speed was a scorching 55.283;
Allison’s average for the whole race was 10 mph slower.
Bobby Allison (49) getting ready to beat the
Grand National/Cup racers.
As
it turned out, that would make a kind of sad ending to Grand National/Cup
racing at the Stadium, because the Modern Era began in 1972, and the little
200-lappers at weekly tracks were dropped from the schedule. As a crumb to the
weekly tracks, the Grand National East Division was created to continue those
smaller races, but it lasted only two years, with the second one being in
effect a “combo” effort with ARCA.
On
August 12, 1972, the NASCAR top touring division days at Bowman Gray ended with
a Grand National East race won by Max Berrier,
ironically not a regular in the class but rather a regular modified competitor
at the Stadium. Jim Paschal, Jimmy Vaughn, Elmo Langley and Baxter Price
rounded out a Top 5 for the history books.
Several
Dash Series and K&N races have been run since then, but the Stadium has
remained known best for its NASCAR Modified racing, with that reputation
enhanced by a reality television show portraying BG in a pretty
rough-and-tumble way.
Wouldn’t any other short track love this
exposure? BTW, the Burt Myers mentioned by Speed Sport in the photo above (the
track’s 2017 Modified Champ) is the grandson and grand-nephew of the Myers
Brothers, in whose memory many of the track’s Grand National races were named.
No
matter how it’s portrayed, though, Bowman Gray continues to earn almost
unprecedented popularity. The Stadium’s 17,000 seats are largely filled every
week. (Trivia: The original football stadium seating was 10,000 – and Wake Forest
was the original tenant – the additional 7,000 seats were added to meet the
demand on race nights.) The family of the late Alvin Hawkins, who was Bill
France’s partner in 1948, still runs the place.
Maybe,
considering the Stadium’s success relative to NASCAR’s current situation with
its “premier” series, it’s too bad that somebody from Daytona isn’t involved in
Winston-Salem today.
Sadly
for me, I’ve only made it to Bowman Gray once, but that visit – more than 30
years ago, was well worth the effort. The racing was first-rate, and it was one
of the best-organized tracks you’ll ever attend. In those days, they had a
novelty division called “Blunderbusts,” which were
old full-sized luxury cars with pure-stock-type rules. The regular race was a
riot – think about watching a mid-‘60s Lincoln Continental slide across the
football field’s 50-yard-line after being punted off the track - but it was
nothing compared to that night’s Blunderbust Powder
Puff for drivers’ wives and girlfriends, who seemed to have quite a few scores
to settle: “This is for when your Larry wrecked my Butch three weeks ago –
BAM!” The Hawkins clan, and the late Hank Schoolfield,
who handled PR at BG and North Wilkesboro while publishing Southern MotoRacing newspaper, knew the right balance between
serious, top-level racing and serious-but-a-little-goofy entertainment (kind of
like the reality show more recently).
I
really wish we could see a Monster/Cup race there today.
Frank’s
Loose Lug Nuts
Oh,
the tangents you can wander into while researching online. That first NASCAR
Short Track race at Bowman Gray in 1951 was dominated by Fords and Plymouths,
but there were also three Henry Js in the field, one
of which finished seventh.
Henry Js got used a
lot in drag racing, but here’s one that looks ready to go ‘round in circles.
That
got me looking for info on the short-lived Kaiser-Frazer Motor Company, which
made the Henry J (also sold through Sears under the Allstate name). Among the
brand’s other models was the Darrin, the first fiberglass production sports car
made in the U.S. (it came out one month before the Corvette) and a hatchback
called the Traveler. Even though the Kaiser brand bit the dust in 1955, it
continued in business through its acquisition of Willys-Overland,
which made Jeeps. That entity sold out to American Motors in 1970.
Wouldn’t this Kaiser Traveler have been just
the thing to have in the ‘50s?
Here’s
even more obscure trivia: When Kaiser
Frazer began after WWII, it bought the assets of another car company called
Graham-Page, of which Joseph Frazer had been president. With no car-making to
be done, Graham-Page tried its hand briefly at farm equipment, then settled on
real estate and morphed into the company running Madison Square Garden in New
York City. Funny how things can turn out when you don’t know how to make a
successful automobile.
For a company I don’t think I’d ever heard of,
Graham-Page made a lot of different car models. I kind of like this one (it was
popularly called “sharknose”), but nobody else did
back then, and it had a lot to do with the company’s failure.
QUICK RANT – Doesn’t Ryan Preece’s Xfinity win at Bristol – his second victory in
only seven series starts – show how incredibly stupid the developmental driver
programs are? There are awesome drivers out there winning races at weekly
tracks or in smaller series, but we still have to find attractive 15-year-olds
running Legends to create NASCAR’s future stars. Ryan, on behalf of
paid-your-dues racers everywhere, keep going out there and kicking butt.
CREDIT – This week’s research
was largely done on Speed51’s TheThirdTurn.com, which includes some results not
available on Racing-Reference.info. I used the latter a bit as well, and went to
Wikipedia several times. As always, Google Images was invaluable.