1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close
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for sanctioning supremacy. No less than four major groups, including the American Stock Car Racing Association (ASCRA), National Auto Racing League (NARL), National Stock Car Racing Association (NSCRA), and United Stock Car Racing Association (USCRA), all staged national championship events and tallied points systems in 1948. The glut of racing organizations staging the same basic events was said to have been the spark that ignited Bill France Sr. to try something different in 1949, the NASCAR Strictly Stock division.
112 Bill France Sr. and NASCAR ruled the fledgling sport with an iron fist. France saw the need for rules on the track and rules for behavior away from it. For the inaugural 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock race at Charlotte, France would not let Marshall Teague, Buddy Shuman, Ed Samples, or Jimmy and Speedy Thompson enter the race. Teague, NASCAR’s original treasurer in 1947, had multiple disagreements with France over prize money, campaigning for 40 percent of the gate receipts instead of a flat-dollar-number posted purse. He and Jimmy Thompson had also filed entries for a NASCAR race and then competed in another event that same day. Meanwhile, Shuman, Speedy Thompson, and Samples (all who ran races other than NASCAR-sanctioned events on occasion) all supported Teague’s prize money movement and were reportedly suspended because they were nabbed placing thumb tacks on the track prior to a NASCAR Modified race a couple of weeks earlier. In announcing his decision to deny the offenders entry in the Charlotte race, France indicated that the drivers exhibited “conduct detrimental to the best interests of the National Association of Stock Car Racing.” It is a phrase that countless drivers who run afoul of NASCAR have heard since then.
113 If you were interested in participating in NASCAR’s inaugural 1948 season events, you had to pay for it. For $10, NASCAR provided its members with an identification card, NASCAR membership pin, and newsletter. Also included were a NASCAR car decal and a $10 book of 20 coupons, each worth a 50-cent admission discount at 1948 NASCAR-sanctioned races.
The first NASCAR Strictly Stock race at Charlotte in 1949 included Sara Christian. Seen here are Christian and her husband/car owner Frank with their NASCAR SS Oldsmobile stocker. (Photo Courtesy Georgia Racing Hall of Fame)
114 Danica Patrick and all of the other female drivers who have graced NASCAR are spiritual descendants of NASCAR’s first woman driver, Sara Christian. Christian proved her 14th-place finish in the inaugural 1949 Strictly Stock race was more than a novelty; she notched a 5th-place finish in the sixth 200-mile Strictly Stock event on the ultra-tough Langhorne Speedway oval. The crowd was so awed by Christian’s effort that she was escorted to Victory Lane where Curtis Turner graciously stood aside to allow fans to cheer Christian. In her next race one month later, Christian posted an even better effort wheeling her 1949 Ford to a fifth-place finish in a race at Heidelberg Raceway outside of Pittsburgh. Christian finished 14th in the 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock points championship. Unfortunately, her career as a NASCAR driver was short-lived as she was seriously injured in an NSCRA race at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta after the conclusion of the 1949 NASCAR season. Christian broke her back in the wreck, barrel-rolling her car seven times. With urging from her family to quit, Christian raced just once more in 1950 running a NASCAR Strictly Stock 100-miler on the half-mile dirt Hamburg Speedway (New York), and finished 14th again, just as in her first race.
115 Sometimes, to beat them, you have to join them. That’s what Bill France Sr. decided to do when he allowed NASCAR to cosanction an event with the National Stock Car Racing Association (NSCRA) in 1949. The “Strictly Stock” concept wasn’t exclusive to NASCAR as Lakewood Speedway promoter Sam Nunis and NSCRA announced a 150-mile SS race for October 23. France worked with Nunis to permit a NASCAR co-sanction of the race, allowing top Georgia drivers to compete in the Atlanta race. However, no NASCAR championship points were awarded. Georgia’s favorite son Tim Flock didn’t disappoint the giant Peach State crowd of more than 33,000 fans and wheeled a 1949 Olds to victory.
116 NASCAR’s early female drivers got their start in racing thanks to a rival sanctioning organization, the South Carolina Racing Association. The series, founded by former Bill France Sr. supporter Joe Littlejohn, started racing at Greenville-Pickens, Columbia, and Hub City (Spartanburg) in 1949. The schedule of events often featured a 10- or 15-lap “Powder Puff” race for the women prior to the stock car feature event. Sara Christian won several of these early girl-power races, beating out other women racers including Louise Smith, Ruby Flock, and Mildred Williams.
117 Bill France Sr. knew Louis Ossinski played football for Georgia and also coached the nearby Seabreeze High School football team. France also knew Ossinski was a lawyer who just happened to have an office across the street from his filling station. When France needed a lawyer to attend the meeting at the Streamline Hotel and later file the documents to incorporate NASCAR, it was a short walk to find him. Ossinsky proved to be the man for the job and on February 21, 1948, he completed the necessary paperwork making NASCAR a private corporation. For handling the legal part, Ossinsky was given 10 percent of the new company. France owned 50 percent while Bill Tuthill, NASCAR’s new secretary, had 40 a percent share in the venture. France later bought out Tuthill and partner Ed Otto. Ossinsky was the last outstanding NASCAR shareholder until his death in 1971 when France bought up the remaining 16.6 percentage owned by Ossinsky’s heirs, giving France 100 percent control of NASCAR.
118 Erwin “Cannonball” Baker made a name for himself by making more than 140 cross-country motorcycle and automobile speed runs during the 1920s and 1930s promoting early brands and products. A champion dirt track motorcycle racer from Indiana, Baker also drove in the 1922 Indianapolis 500 and held more than 100 land speed records. Baker had all the criteria Bill France Sr. wanted in a person and was chosen to serve as the first NASCAR “National Honorary Commissioner of Racing” in 1947. Baker served until being replaced by Harley Earl, GM’s design wizard and friend of Bill Sr. Baker died of a heart attack in 1960 at the age of 78. The now-famous Cannonball Run transcontinental motor race and Hollywood movie of the same name were attributed to Baker. He is enshrined in the Automotive Hall of Fame, the Motorcycle Hall of Fame, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame.
119 At the inaugural 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock race in Charlotte, the job of “Top Cop” (NASCAR Head Technical Inspector) fell to Al Crisler. A noted and well-respected mechanic and motorcycle racer, Crisler was a Piedmont Airlines captain and lived near the airport and Charlotte Speedway. Crisler had strong character and was often called “Captain” or “Major” by those around him. In the first race at Charlotte, it was Crisler’s pre-race job to make sure all the cars were as stock as possible and checking for any slight modifications. His post-race tech was to make sure the stock integrity of the vehicle was still intact. Unfortunately for Glenn Dunaway, who won the race, Crisler found the rear springs on Dunaway’s Ford had been altered. Several hours after the event, Crisler disqualified Dunaway. That decision meant that Jim Roper would forever be known as the winner of NASCAR’s landmark event.
Hollywood actor and nationally syndicated radio host Edward Everett Horton (right) presents Ed Samples with the 1949 National Stock Car Racing Association (NSCRA) championship trophy. (Photo Courtesy Ed Samples Jr. Collection)
120 One of the top moonshine runners of the day, Georgia’s Ed Samples almost didn’t have a racing career. Shot three times in 1944 over a moonshine deal gone bad, Samples (who had dabbled in stock car racing prior to World War II) proved to be one the sport’s biggest stars after the war. Samples’ biggest wins included first race at Greenville-Pickens Speedway on July 4, 1946, and the National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC) on the Daytona Beach Road Course on June 30 that year. Samples, the 1946 National Champion of Stock Car Racing, finished second in France Sr.’s fledgling modified stock car circuit in 1947.
While Samples attended the famed Streamline Hotel NASCAR organizational meeting in December 1947, he wasn’t an early supporter and instead chose to race in the South Carolina Racing Association (SCRA) in 1948, winning the division’s championship on the strength of 10-straight victories at one point of the season. A year later,