1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close

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      82 After moving his family to Daytona Beach, Florida, Bill France Sr. took the job of operating a gas station at 316 Main Street. The station featured full drive-up service and an open-air service bay. Today, known as Main Street Station, a popular bar and music venue in Daytona Beach, the site is a popular attraction for NASCAR history buffs as well as a place to grab a long, cool one.

       Bill France Sr. promoted the first stock car race at Jacksonville (Florida) Speedway Park March 23, 1947. France strides to the front of the starting field as a huge crowd looks on prior to Bill Snowden’s win. (Photo Courtesy Ed Samples Jr. Collection)

      83 It’s no secret that even today, many Georgia racing fans believe Bill France Sr. “stole” NASCAR and shifted the epicenter of the sport from the Peach State to North Carolina. While there’s no real validation of the claim, the fact is that France scheduled 26 of 52 Modified Division races in the inaugural 1948 season in North Carolina. Meanwhile, only 12 races were held in Georgia. France later scheduled the 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock debut race in Charlotte, the backyard of NSCRA honcho Bruton Smith.

      84 Lakewood Speedway was one of the first racetracks to reopen after the conclusion of World War II, hosting its first post-war race on Labor Day, September 3, 1945. The event, featuring a National Hillbilly Jamboree and holiday fireworks show, was met with immediate resistance by the editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Ralph McGill. Backed by local Baptist and Methodist religious organizations, McGill campaigned to not allow “unsavory” moonshiners and racketeers to participate in the race, and went so far as enlisting Atlanta mayor William Hartsfield to ban five drivers (Roy Hall, Glen Hall, Bob Flock, Howard Farmer, and Jack Cantrell) from the race at Lakewood, the publicly owned Southern Fairgrounds property.

      A giant debate played out in the pages of the AJC as fans voiced their displeasure over the fact that their heroes would not be able to race. The chorus got even louder when 30,000 fans showed up on race day as Mayor Hartsfield presented race promoter Mike Benton with a formal city protest. When Benton caved to Hartsfield’s pressure, the remaining drivers unanimously voted to not race unless the banned drivers were allowed to compete. The event was delayed for more than an hour and when the crowd grew restless and began chanting “We Want Hall, We Want Hall” Hartsfield and Benton, fearing a riot and backlash at the mayoral election polls the following day, agreed to allow all drivers to complete regardless of their police record. Ironically, Hall won the race. Great public fallout and a crackdown on activities at the Southern Fairgrounds site ultimately kept Lakeland Speedway from hosting another stock car event for more than a year.

       Here’s a shot of Florida State Highway A1A just before the cars headed into the South Turn and back onto the beach at Daytona. (Photo Courtesy Georgia Racing Hall of Fame)

      85 Seminole Speedway in Casselberry, Florida, hosted some of the first events promoted by Bill France Sr. after World War II. Shortly after the war ended, a group of local investors graded a quarter-mile track on the Orlando track property. With France on board as the promoter, Seminole Speedway held its first race December 2, 1945. France competed in the event and finished second to Atlanta’s Roy Hall. The track was quickly converted to a 1-mile dirt oval in January 1946 with its first event, (another Bill France production), taking place in February. War hero Red Byron wheeled a Raymond Parks Ford to a win over a star-studded field featuring Bob and Fonty Flock, Hall, France, and Marion McDonald. Over the next seven years, Seminole Speedway hosted numerous stock car and motorcycle racing events. Although the facility doesn’t show up in the record books as ever hosting a NASCAR-sanctioned race, the track (closed in 1954) played an important part in giving NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. the footing needed to launch the organization.

      86 The Daytona Beach Road Course (DBRC) was up and running after World War II as Bill France Sr. staged and Roy Hall won a 33-lap, 100-mile stock car race in early 1946. France promoted several races on the same pre-war 3.2-mile DBRC layout before the 1948 season, when the course was changed and moved south to the less populated Ponce Inlet area. The new 2.2- and 4.2-mile tracks used the beach as its front straight and the Florida Highway A1A as the back chute, joined by a pair of treacherous hairpin turns. Initially, cars were to run the shorter track and motorcycles the longer oval, but due to the tendency of the short course to form sand dunes, it was abandoned after just one season. Red Byron won the first NASCAR-sanctioned event (the Rayson Memorial) on the short course on February 15, 1948, while Fonty Flock grabbed a second at the 1948 Buck Mathis Memorial 150 on the 2.2-mile track on August 8. All stock car races held on the Daytona Beach-Road Course from 1949 until it closed after the 1958 season were contested on the 4.2-mile layout.

      87 Fans attending early NASCAR races at the Daytona Beach-Road Course knew exactly where to go to see most of the action; the South Turn. Located at the end of the paved Highway A1A back straight, cars at high speed often had trouble negotiating the sandy South Turn hairpin. Despite stripes painted on the highway to give drivers an idea of braking points, car after car overshot the turn and flipped over the sand dune at the top of the corner. As the race wore on and the ruts in the sand grew worse, the South Turn became littered with race cars. The fans watching from this area had to be on their toes and constantly scramble to stay out of the way at NASCAR’s first “calamity corner.”

      88 While the Daytona Beach-Road Course is listed as the first race of the 1948 NASCAR Modified season, Bill France Sr. actually introduced his new organization with a non-points exhibition race at Pompano Beach Speedway in Florida January 4, 1948. Buddy Shuman won the event on the original 1¹⁄4-mile dirt Pompano Harness Track, built at a cost of $1.25 million in 1926. According to NASCAR records, Pompano Beach Speedway never hosted an official points-paying race, relegating it to a footnote as the track that hosted the first “unofficial” NASCAR event in 1948.

      89 Built by moonshiners Pat and Harvey Charles during the summer of 1948, Charlotte Speedway was the site of the first NASCAR Strictly Stock race on June 19, 1949. The three-quarter-mile СКАЧАТЬ