1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 areas were not clearly defined and were often overrun by non-paying customers. This was certainly true at the first Daytona Beach and Road Course event; the City of Daytona lost an estimated $22,000 promoting the inaugural beach stock car race. The Daytona Elks Club took over the promotion of the race in 1937 and suffered the same financial fate. For the 1938 race, local gas station owner Bill France Sr. took over the promotion of the Daytona race and charged a modest 50 cents a ticket. In an effort to sell more tickets and run off non-paying onlookers, France posted signs stating “Beware of Alligators” around various parts of the ocean-side Daytona Beach track layout. France sold 5,000 tickets and split the profits with promotional partner and race car owner Charlie Reece. Based on that success, France decided to continue his promotional events and the first thing he did for the 1939 Daytona Beach race was double the price of admission from fifty cents to one dollar.

       Race officials line up the competitors prior to the drop of the green flag at the first Daytona Beach Stock Car race March 8, 1936. (Photo Courtesy Ed Samples Jr. Collection)

       Chapter 2

       The 1940s: Let’s Get Organized

      The conclusion of World War II flew the green flag on a growth period of never before-seen economic prosperity and individual freedom.

      Americans were flush with confidence after winning World War II. Meanwhile, the economy, in the depths of the Great Depression at the onset of the war, was at full steam.

      People had money and were ready to spend it. Subsequently, families grew larger with the start of the Baby Boom while another boom in the construction of private homes also began.

      Meanwhile, Detroit’s Big Three (Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors) didn’t disappoint. Dated pre-war designs were ditched for new vehicles featuring updated stylish exteriors and more-powerful V-8 engines. In the four years prior to the end of the decade, these new, sleeker models boasted an array of improvements such as keyed ignition starting, hydraulic disc brakes, turn signals, and torque converter–based automatic transmissions.

      In addition, new cars were attainable to almost everyone as both GM and Ford pioneered in-house auto financing. Meanwhile, the first driver’s education classes made getting behind the wheel easier and less intimidating than ever.

       The shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean was flooded with cars prior to the running of a Modified race on the Daytona Beach Road Course. (Photo Courtesy Ed Samples Jr. Collection)

      Throw in a massive government initiative to build roads virtually everywhere in the United States, and the era of the American automobile took off on a journey that continues today.

      Of course, all of this was good for stock car racing. During World War II, racing was all but dead, but with new vehicles quickly coming to market, unwanted 1930s and early 1940s cars were available and inexpensive. This fueled a renaissance of the sport across America almost immediately after the final shots of the war.

      Meanwhile, forward-thinking impresarios such as Bill France Sr. envisioned organizing the sport on a more professional level and a new form of racing taking stock cars off the showroom floor and racing with little modification. This “Strictly Stock” idea was an immediate hit, but more important, the concept took racing from the track and put it squarely in the driveway of every American home.

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