1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close
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Not every early NASCAR race was a classic. The 1948 Modified Series 200-mile race at Langhorne Speedway (Pennsylvania) proved to be a snoozer as Al Keller won by one of stock car racing’s all-time largest margins, 18 laps, over runner-up Buck Barr. Keller’s Ford led 76 laps of the race covering the distance in a time of 3:17:05. Only 14 of the 48 starting cars finished the event.
Bill France Sr. promoted his first race outside the state of Florida, helping to reopen Greenville-Pickens Speedway July 4, 1946, with a National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC) event. (Photo Courtesy Gober Sosebee Family)
95 Greenville-Pickens Speedway in Greenville, South Carolina, is a long-time NASCAR track, tracing its roots back to NASCAR Modified Division races in the early 1950s. An early haven for Georgia and South Carolina racers, Greenville-Pickens opened as a half-mile dirt track in 1940 but quickly shut down with the start of World War II. Reconfigured to a quarter-mile, the track reopened July 4, 1946, with a Modified stock car event (the first promoted outside of Florida by Bill France Sr.) and won by Ed Samples of Atlanta. France and NASCAR were shut out of Greenville in the late 1940s and early 1950s when other Modified racing organizations, including the South Carolina Racing Association, were being featured at the track. On October 6, 1955, Tim Flock piloted the famous Carl Kiekhaefer-owned Chrysler No. 300 to a win in G-P’s first NASCAR Grand National event. Greenville-Pickens went on to host 28 Grand National races over the next 16 seasons, including the final race June 26, 1971, won by Richard Petty. Over the years, Greenville-Pickens hosted nine different NASCAR division events, the most recent being the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East. The track is also part of the NASCAR Home Tracks program and hosts weekly NASCAR late model stock car races each summer.
96 Enoch Staley was an early convert to Bill France Sr.’s vision of stock car racing, and decided to build North Wilkesboro Speedway in 1946 as long as France organized and promoted his races. With a budget of $1,500, Staley quickly ran out of money leading to the track’s odd and now-iconic shape with its downhill front straight and uphill back chute. France staged his first race at North Wilkesboro (a National Championship Stock Car Circuit Modified event) May 18, 1947, with Fonty Flock capturing the win in front of an estimated 10,000 fans. In 1948, North Wilkesboro hosted 6 of the 52 events in NASCAR’s inaugural Modified season tour. Curtis Turner was the early master winning 3 of the 6 events with Red Byron earning 2 victories and Marshall Teague winning 1. North Wilkesboro was one of the original eight tracks on the 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock tour, hosting the final race of the season. The October 16 clash on the then-half-mile dirt oval saw Bill Blair pace the 22-car field for most of the event. Unfortunately, his Cadillac suffered an engine problem allowing Bob Flock’s 1949 Oldsmobile to lead the final 20 laps to his first NASCAR Strictly Stock Series victory.
Weldon Adams (72) rolls his Plymouth stocker onto the track to practice for the 1951 Wilkes County 150 at North Wilkesboro (North Carolina) Speedway. Also identifiable here are the Hudson of Lou Figaro (33) and Ed Massey’s Plymouth (4). (Photo Courtesy R. W. Hopkins)
97 The 1946 American Automobile Association “Big Car” season featured events at the top racetracks of the post-war era including Lakewood, Trenton, Winchester, Reading, Langhorne, Williams Grove, Dayton, and Flemington Speedways. Located on the Erie County Fairgrounds site, Hamburg Speedway regularly hosted auto racing before and after the war. The AAA circuit was a regular visitor to Hamburg with four races from 1946 to 1948 before NASCAR came to town in 1949. The September 18 event, the fifth race of the inaugural NASCAR Strictly Stock season, drew a crowd of more than 11,000 fans to the town of just 6,938 residents. Jack White won the race. In the 1950 NASCAR Strictly Stock event, Dick Linder spun and won in front of 8,363 at Hamburg. The 1950 Hamburg race was held the week before the debut of Darlington Raceway and the Southern 500 changed the axis for small tracks such as Hamburg forever. Hamburg was left off the 1951 race schedule and never hosted a major NASCAR event again. The track stayed open for more than 40 years, hosting multiple divisions of car and motorcycle racing highlighted by the DIRTCar Modifieds in the 1980s and the Empire State Sprint cars in the 1990s. Hamburg Speedway closed in September 1997.
98 NASCAR’s inaugural 1949 season proved to be a big winner with the ticket-buying public as all eight-races reported attendance of more than 10,000 fans. The hands-down winner of the gate receipt race was the fourth event of the year at which more than 20,000 fans jammed Langhorne Speedway. That race also drew the biggest field of cars with 45 machines taking the green flag.
99 Lakewood Speedway wasn’t on the 1949 Strictly Stock schedule, but the track did host a pair of “new car” races that season with great success. Bill France Sr. allowed NASCAR drivers to race in the non-points event at Lakewood held one week after Red Byron won the NASCAR Strictly Stock title. An announced crowd of 33,452 jammed into the Atlanta track and watched Tim Flock steer his Oldsmobile past Curtis Turner with 27 laps remaining and take home $1,650 in first-place prize money. Because of the success of that event, a second race at Lakewood was scheduled for November 13. That day, 22,000 fans showed up only to be disappointed when rain cut the race short after just 39 laps. One week later, when the event was called again after 110 laps because of darkness, June Cleveland was declared the winner; it was Cleveland’s first win in any stock car event.
100 Built at a cost of $100,000 as part of a 1937 Great Depression works project, Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, originally hosted football games and trotting horse races on the quarter-mile track surrounding the football field. The track was paved for auto racing in 1947 and Bill France Sr. was among the first to take advantage of it, staging a NASCAR Modified race May 18, 1949, won by Fonty Flock. Bowman Gray went on to host 28 NASCAR Grand National Division races from 1958 to 1971. Bob Welborn won the first in a 1957 Chevrolet and Bobby Allison won the last in a 1970 Ford. Meanwhile, BGS also hosted NASCAR Convertible, Grand National East, Goody’s Dash Series, K&N Pro East, and Whelen Southern Modified Tour events over the years. Today, the weekly Saturday night NASCAR Whelan Modified Southern Series races draw massive crowds and are a bucket-list item for fans yet to attend a race there.
101 Before the formation of NASCAR at the end of 1947, Bill France Sr. promoted races under two different association names. The first was as series director of the National Champion Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC). France even had a slogan for the group, “Where the Fastest That Run, Run the Fastest.” France also promoted some events that season under the Stock Car Auto Racing Society. That title didn’t last long as a stock car tour named SCARS wasn’t exactly the image France wanted to promote.
102 After taking his idea of a national stock car championship to the American Automobile Association in late 1946 only to have the idea turned down, Bill France Sr. launched the National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC). France and the NCSCC announced a slate of 40 events to begin at Daytona Beach, Florida, in January end in Jacksonville, in December 1947. In between, the NCSCC hit every track it could from Columbus, Georgia, to North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, to Langhorne, Pennsylvania. In the end, Fonty Flock won the 1947 NCSCC championship on the strength of 11 victories in 24 series starts. In keeping with his vision of a structured, professional national series, France awarded Flock a $1,000 championship bonus and a 4-foot trophy. As promised, he also paid $3,000 in point-fund money to other drivers in the series.
Along with establishing the NCSCC’s structure as a new stock car racing standard, several 1947 NCSCC races significantly exceeded attendance and profit expectations. In the end, the overall success of the NCSCC proved to France that his ideas about organized stock car racing were on point and gave him the confidence needed to take the next step and schedule a meeting at the Streamline Hotel in December 1947 and begin the formation of NASCAR.