1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close
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car, the Duryea Motor Wagon. The high, thin-profile wooden-spoke carriage-wheeled car featured a 2-cylinder engine with tiller steering.
Battling near-freezing temperatures and overnight snow making roads nearly impassable, Duryea was the early leader before he hit a rut and broke the steering arm off his car. Undaunted, he found a blacksmith and had a replacement bar formed. Now in second place behind a Benz owned by Macy’s Department Store, Duryea regained the lead just before the halfway turnaround in Evanston. On the drive back to Chicago, Duryea’s car lost one of two cylinders requiring another near-hour delay for repairs. Despite that, Duryea crossed the finish line at Jackson Park more than an hour ahead of the Macy’s Benz, the only other car to finish. Duryea won $2,000 and great celebrity for his win as newspapers across the country hailed his amazing achievement for winning The Race of the Century.
55 The Ford Motor Company has scored more than 700 NASCAR Cup division wins, a foundation of success built when the first victory came in its first race. The October 10, 1901, contest pitted a then-unknown Henry Ford and his Sweepstakes car against Alexander Winton, already a major automobile builder. Considered one of the best race drivers of the day, Winton and his Bullet race car were clearly the favorite at the Grosse Point, Michigan, horse track located outside of Detroit. Winton quickly pulled away from Ford at the start of the race. Ford, a novice driver at best, eventually steadied his tiller-steered car and began closing the gap on Winton. When the Bullet slowed with mechanical problems in the 8th mile of the 10-mile event, Ford roared by and rolled to an easy win with a time of 13 minutes 23 seconds. The victory attracted investors to Ford’s new venture, Ford Motor Company, and signaled the beginning of the brand’s long participation in motorsports.
56 Named after Charles Goodyear, an American chemist who developed and patented vulcanized rubber in 1844, the Good-year Tire and Rubber Company was founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling. One year later, the Akron, Ohio, company produced its first automobile tire. In 1901, Seiberling provided Henry Ford, what is considered the first racing tires for his Sweepstakes car. Goodyear later developed and patented the first tubeless tire in 1903. When Henry Ford introduced his Ford Model T in 1908, it rode on Goodyears. Spurred on by early successes such as providing tires for Barney Oldfield’s world speed record run of 131.72 mph in 1910, Goodyear continued developing racing tires and won its first Indianapolis 500 in 1919. After another Indy 500 victory in 1920, Goodyear coined the phrase “Win On Sunday, Sell On Monday” in its advertising. Goodyear eventually came to NASCAR with a series of tire tests for the Convertible Division at Darlington in 1954 and, in 1955, team owner Carl Kiekhaefer used Goodyear “Police Specials” on his potent Chrysler 300 NASCAR champion race cars. In the 1960s, Goodyear survived a tire war with Firestone and fended off Hoosier Tires for NASCAR supremacy in the middle 1990s. Since 1968, every NASCAR Cup, and Grand National champion has raced on Goodyear tires.
57 As it is today, Detroit was a focal point for the American automobile industry and it makes sense for the city to be among the first having organized car races. In one of the first track-rental agreements in motorsports, a local automobile dealer leased Daniel Campo’s Grosse Point area track for Detroit’s first race. October 10, 1901, was practically a civic holiday as many businesses and even the local courthouse closed for the day. Meanwhile, the event attracted entries from all over the country. The first race was a 1-mile electric car test and was won by a Baker produced in Cleveland, Ohio. The second 1-mile race was a contest for cars weighing less than 1,500 pounds and was won by a Toledo Steam Car. The third event saw Henry Ford and his Sweepstakes racer score a stunning victory over Alexander Winton in a 10-mile clash.
The open-wheel crowd was the first to discover unique ways to get its racers to the track as evidenced by this heavy-duty Ford truck pulling double duty as a hauler and tow vehicle. (Photo Courtesy Steve Zautke Collection)
58 Long before NASCAR was established in 1947, the American Automobile Association (AAA) was sanctioning races. Formed in March 1902, the AAA Racing Board sanctioned its first race in 1904, the Vanderbilt Cup. A year later, AAA created the National Motor Car Championship marking the first time in American racing history that a points system was used to decide a national champion. A feud with the Automobile Club of America (ACA) spurred a name change to the AAA Contest Board in 1908 and, with the backing of the Manufacturers Contest Association (MCA), organized a set of rules that outlawed purpose-built European race cars in favor of American “stock configuration” cars. To ensure that stock vehicles were used, the AAA decreed that at least 50 cars had to be produced and sold during a calendar year to be eligible for competition. Many of these AAA types of rules can still be found in the NASCAR rule book. For the next 40-plus years, the AAA Contest Board ruled as America’s top motorsports organization sanctioning everything from the Indianapolis 500 to national sports car, midget, sprint, and stock car events. In 1955, the AAA abruptly ended all racing associations after 83 spectators died and more than 120 more injured when a car launched into the crowd at the 24 Hours of Le Mans event.
59 The 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race was the first major international automobile race held in America. Organized by William K. Vanderbilt Jr., “Willie K.” saw the event as a springboard for American cars to rival their European counterparts. The inaugural race took place on Long Island, New York, October 8, 1904. Seventeen cars from France, Germany, Italy, and the United States took the green flag in two-minute intervals. Disaster struck almost immediately, when George Arents Jr. rolled his Mercedes on the first lap killing his riding-mechanic Carl Mensel. George Heath won the 10-lap race, averaging 52.2 mph in his French Panhard. The Vanderbilt Cup remained one of America’s most important races through 1916 before going dark from 1917 until racing resumed in 1936. While several races since have been called the Vanderbilt Cup, none of them have ties to the original concept.
60 Considered the first sanctioning organization for competitive motor racing, the New York-based Automobile Club of America began establishing contest rules in 1904. The club staged the 1908 American Grand Prize race considered to be the first American Gran Prix. Perhaps the club’s most important achievement, however, was its tireless lobbying for public motoring safety, laws, and better roads. Its efforts drew the attention of President William Howard Taft, the first President to travel by automobile. Taft helped the group champion automotive expansion in the United States. The ACA continued its public and motorsports efforts until the 1930s when the Great Depression crippled the automotive industry. The organization was disbanded during World War II.
61 The American Grand Prize was the first Gran Prix race held in the United States. The watershed event was held November 26, 1906, in Savannah, Georgia, in front of an estimated crowd of 250,000. Twenty teams took the green flag in the 16-lap, 402-mile race with French Gran Prix driver Louis Wagner wheeling a Fiat to victory. Despite the success, the ACA didn’t sanction another American Grand Prize event until 1910 when David Bruce-Brown beat Ralph DePalma for the win. Bruce-Brown won the American Grand Prize race again in 1911 before the event was moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the 1912 race. Caleb Bragg won the 1912 race on the 7.88-mile course in an event marred by the crash death of Bruce-Brown during practice. No race was held in 1913 and the event moved again, this time to Santa Monica, California. Run on an 8.44-mile course along the Pacific Ocean, Eddie Pullen’s Mercer took the top spot in the 1914 race, which, for the first time, featured primarily American drivers and cars due to the outbreak of World War I in Europe. The 1915 American Grand Prize race was run in San Francisco, California, and won by Dario Resta while the 1916 Santa Monica Gran Prix saw Howdy Wilcox and Johnny Aitken co-pilot a Peugeot to victory. The 1916 race, part of the AAA National Championship series, proved to be the last Formula 1 Gran Prix–style race held in the United States until the 1959 United States Grand Prix at Sebring International Raceway December 12, 1959.
62 The preferred distance for many NASCAR races has become 500 miles, but one of the earliest stock production car races in America covered more than twice that distance. Many early races were 24-hour affairs and it was simply a matter of how many miles could be run in that time. On June 22, 1907, nine cars took the green flag on the Michigan State Fairground’s 1-mile dirt oval in Detroit. Henry Ford’s Model K won the race, covering 1,135 miles. The winning distance was 300 miles more than