1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close
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allowed multiple drivers and cars, drivers Frank Kulick and Bert Lorimer used two different Model Ks to win the event. Herbert Lytle’s Pope Toledo finished second with 1,109 miles completed; seven of the nine starters completed the marathon race.
63 From the 1992 through the 1997 Winston Cup seasons, NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Darrell Waltrip sported sponsorship from Western Auto/Parts America. The association represented the peak in motorsports marketing for the company formed by entrepreneur George Pepperdine as Western Auto Supply Company. Pepperdine quickly realized Henry Ford’s 1908 Model T was an automotive aftermarket opportunity waiting to happen and formed a mail order business that same year catering mainly to Model T owners. Pepperdine made a fortune selling Model T and other parts and opened Western Auto’s first retail store in 1921. Along with other retail giants of the 1920s, including Piggly Wiggly, J. C. Penney, and F. W. Woolworth, Western Auto helped develop today’s modern franchise business concepts. Eventually, Western Auto grew to nearly 1,600 outlets providing parts to generations of racers over the next six decades. In 1988, Western Auto was purchased by Sears and rebranded in 1996 as Parts America. Sears sold off its shares of Western Auto/Parts America in 1998 ending its association with Waltrip, but the company has stayed an active NASCAR marketer under its new name, Advance Auto Parts.
64 Each year, NASCAR updates its rulebook with performance and safety initiatives. Prior to the 1914 season, a new rule prohibiting the consumption of alcohol during the Indianapolis 500 was instituted. The edict was deemed necessary after Frenchman Jules Goux reportedly drank up to six one-pint bottles of champagne (one at each pit stop) during the 1913 Indy 500. The bubbly apparently had little effect on Goux; he won the race in a Peugeot. Later, Goux credited the champagne with helping him secure the victory. Race officials didn’t quite see it that way and the next year they implemented the first rules against drinking and driving in auto racing.
65 The American Automobile Association and its Contest Board sanctioned one of the first stock car circuits in 1927. Races were held in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Altoona, Pennsylvania; Salem, Indiana; and Charlotte, North Carolina, that year with some events in support of the AAA National Championship Indy Car events. Among the cars that competed were Stutz Bearcat, Auburn, and Studebaker, all roadster-type stock models with few enhancements. Early top drivers Ralph Hepburn and Frank Lockhart also participated in the races. Unfortunately, few records of the events remain today as the AAA abandoned the series after 1928.
Early auto races drew giant crowds, treated to great spectacles on the track and in the air with balloon ascensions and flyovers such as this. (Photo Courtesy Steve Zautke Collection)
66 On October 28, 1919, the United States passed the Volstead Act prohibiting the production, storage, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages in America. Little did Congress know that the 18th Amendment to the Constitution would be a boon to stock car racing as law-breaking moonshiners and whiskey trippers would become some of NASCAR’s earliest driving stars. This was especially true in the Southern United States where Roy Hall, Lloyd Seay, Jimmy Lewallen, Bill Blair, Junior Johnson, and others honed their driving skills running “moon.” The act also spurred a technological boom for stock car racing as moonshiners modified their pedestrian-looking cars into lightweight, high-powered vehicles capable of outrunning the fastest police cars of the day. With local and regional bragging rights at stake, the moonshiners headed to local fields, makeshift tracks, and fairground ovals to prove who had the hottest iron in head-to-head competition. These early events drew large crowds of spectators and eventually led to more formalized races in the South during the latter 1930s. The repeal of the Volstead Act on December 5, 1933, did little to slow stock car racing as moonshiners/racers continued to make illegal alcohol, modify their cars, and thrill racing crowds well into the 1960s.
67 Held on August 26, 1933, in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair, the Elgin Road Races gave stock car racing a giant boost on a grand scale. The Elgin site of many area road races from 1910 to 1920, the 1933 event featured top national driving stars Wilbur Shaw, Mauri Rose, Fred Frame, Ralph DePalma, and Lou Moore. A crowd estimated at 35,000 showed up for two races, the first a 200-mile Indy-car event won by Phil Shafer in a Buick Special over Frame’s Miller Duesenberg and Rose’s Studebaker-powered Russell 8. The second race was limited to stock roadsters with a maximum engine displacement of 231 ci. The 15-car field included 2 Chevrolets, 1 Plymouth, 1 Dodge, and 11 new 1933 Fords powered by improved Flathead V-8 engines that had been tooled by a new young talent named Harry Miller. The 200-mile stock car event proved to be an all-Ford show as Frame and Jack Petticord’s Fords swapped the lead before Frame won in a time of 2 hours 32 minutes 6.1 seconds (80.22 average mph). At one point, Frame’s Ford was timed at more than 100 mph on the front stretch as Fords dominated the finish by taking the first seven spots. While Ford and Miller went on to motorsports history, the 8-mile Elgin track was shut down after the race and never opened again.
68 Hailed as a new era for automobile racing by the Los Angeles Times, the Gilmore Gold Cup is considered to be one of the very first series for stock cars. Sponsored by Gilmore Oil Company, the four-race series began in 1933 with the Elgin Road Races. The second race of the series was held on February 18, 1934, at Mines Field, a local airport located near what is now Los Angeles International Airport. Sanctioned by the AAA, the race between mostly Ford Flathead V-8 powered roadsters drew a crowd estimated near 75,000. Each paid $1.50 admission to watch some of the top drivers of the day (Pete DePaolo, Louie Meyer, Rex Mays, and Wilber Shaw) race on a specially created “B-shaped,” 2-mile airport oval.
Despite the star power, Hartwell Wilburn “Stubby” Stubblefield drove to the win, but only after a four-day recheck of the scoring to confirm his victory. The Gilmore Gold Cup was completed with two additional 1934 events, one at Ascot Speedway and the other at Oakland Speedway. The Ascot race was run on both the track and roads surrounding the speedway, leading to an epic financial failure because fans could watch the action without buying a ticket. While it was a monetary success, the final event at the 1-mile Oakland dirt oval proved to be the end of the Gilmore Gold Cup as William Pickens (the driving force behind the series) contracted blood poisoning after stepping on a rusty nail at the first Mines Field race and died later in 1934. Despite the demise of the series, the Los Angeles Mines Field event laid the groundwork for municipalities to become involved in stock car racing, a concept that eventually played out on the shores of Daytona Beach two years later.
69 Sponsorship in today’s NASCAR is essential to a team’s success. The initial marriage of a stock car team and a company sponsorship is believed to have happened at the 1936 inaugural Daytona Beach-Road Course race. Winner Milt Marion’s 1936 Ford convertible had sponsorship from Permatex, a northeastern-based sealant company. The idea behind the promotion was to have Marion take a 10,000-mile trip around America to prove the reliability of an engine sealed with Permatex Form A Gasket #2, a shellac-based adhesive designed to repair gasket leaks. For this event, Permatex had Bill France Sr. replace 28 solid gaskets in the car’s engine (standard clearances required keeping the cylinder head, fuel pump, and rear end gaskets).
Marion left New York City March 1, 1936, and headed for Daytona where, a week later, he and the “Permatex Form A Gasket Test Car” won. That would be a great ending, but the promotion continued the next day as Marion headed to Texas for the remainder of the trip. Marion made stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and Chicago before the journey ended back in New York City. With the engine still in perfect nick, he drove the car on a daily basis, even racing it throughout the summer of 1936.
In September, when finally disassembled, it had run a full 22,297 miles since being sealed with Permatex Form A Gasket #2. The company used the event to fulfill the sponsorship at the consumer level by featuring it in its advertising, including a 16-page promotional brochure complete with “how-to” shots and a first-person account by Marion. In 1975, the company replicated Marion’s drive/promotion with Bobby Allison running a 300-mile test at Talladega Superspeedway. His stock car featured an engine sealed with Permatex products and averaged 157.094 over the 300-mile test with no breakdowns.
70 Despite costing as little as 10 cents, attempts to make money by selling tickets often failed because spectator