1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close

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СКАЧАТЬ events were held at the track from 1984 to 2009.

      28 It was inevitable that NASCAR would one day race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning with the first Brickyard 400 in 1994. More than 80 years earlier, the track opened on June 9, 1909. Ironically, the first competition at America’s motorsports Mecca wasn’t a car race but rather a National Hot Air Balloon Championship held on June 5, 1909. Organized by track founder, builder, and president Carl Fischer, the balloon event drew more than 40,000 people providing working capital to complete the unfinished 2.5-mile racetrack. Opened for car racing on August 19, 1909, the track’s original crushed stone surface couldn’t withstand the pressure of heavy automobiles, so in late 1909, Fischer had the surface repaved with more than 3.2-million bricks held together with grouted cement. After a series of 1910 race festivals featuring as many as 40 events over three days, Indy hosted its first 500-mile race May 30, 1911. A field of 40 cars took a five-wide start in front of an estimated 80,000 fans with Ray Harroun and his Marmon Wasp holding off Ralph Mulford for the victory. The event drew unprecedented exposure for the sport and new fans throughout the country, ultimately setting the stage for decades-long expansion of motorsports in America including the formation of NASCAR.

      29 Long before Richmond International Raceway hosted its first NASCAR event, racing was a mainstay at the Virginia State Fairgrounds. In August 1907, the 1-mile dirt oval at the State Fairgrounds hosted the first race in Richmond. The event drew 2,500 fans and set the stage for the Fairgrounds to host countless open-wheel races throughout the next four decades. By 1928, the Richmond Fairgrounds was hosting unmodified stock car races. Jalopy races made their debut at the track in the 1930s and on July 4, 1941, the track held its first sanctioned stock car race. After World War II, racing continued at the Virginia State Fairgrounds at a new site in rural Henrico County, now home to Richmond International Raceway. The track was a mainstay for stock car racing throughout the remainder of the decade and into the early 1950s, joining the NASCAR ranks on April 19, 1953, when Lee Petty won the track’s first Grand National event in a Petty Enterprises Dodge. Since then, the facility has hosted more than 200 races in seven different NASCAR divisions.

      30 Can you imagine a NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, or Truck Series race being run on a superspeedway made out of wood? Of course not, but that’s exactly what made up the racing surface of America’s first superspeedways. With both land and wood plentiful and inexpensive, giant wooden racetracks made their first appearance in America in 1910. That’s when the first of these Board Tracks (a 1.25-mile oval constructed of 2 × 4–foot wooden planks) was built in Playa del Rey, California. In addition to its unique construction, Playa del Rey also had 20-degree banking in the corners making it the first high-banked speedway in the country. Wooden superspeedway construction surged in 1915 with the addition of a 2-mile banked oval in Chicago, 1-mile banked ovals in Brooklyn, New York, and Des Moines, Iowa, and a 1.25-mile banked oval in Omaha, Nebraska. By far the most unique Board Track constructed in 1915 was a 2-mile Tacoma, Washington, oval banked 18 feet (more than 50 degrees). Eventually, a total of 19 high-banked, 1-mile or longer wooden-surface speedways were built through the late 1920s, most hosting AAA National Championship IndyCar-style races during that period. The Board Track era proved to be short, however, as weather played havoc with the untreated wooden surface. Heat, cold, rain and snow caused warping, cracking, and rotting surface conditions. In the end, most Board Tracks existed two or three years before figuratively rotting into the record books, but they remain a forerunner to Bill France’s NASCAR high-banked superspeedway dream that became a reality at Daytona International Speedway in 1959.

      31 While Charlotte Speedway on Little Rock Road was the site of the first NASCAR “Strictly Stock” race in 1949, another Charlotte Speedway circa 1924 was the original venue for the Queen City. A crowd estimated at more than 50,000 poured into the 1.25-mile banked oval October 25, 1924, to see an IndyCar-style race featuring top drivers of the day. The 200-lap, 250-mile AAA-sanctioned event featured 12 cars with Tommy Milton taking home the top prize of $10,000. In all, 15 races were held at the track, including 6 in 1926. After just three events in 1927, Charlotte Speedway closed due to the significant cost of maintaining the 2 × 4–inch green pine and cypress board surface that had deteriorated significantly in the hot North Carolina summer conditions.

      32 Early auto racing was dangerous and fatalities were then (as they are now) an unwanted outcome. One of the most dangerous and deadly tracks of racing’s early years was Ascot Motor Speedway (later Legion Ascot) in California. The 5/8-mile dirt track opened on Thanksgiving Day 1924 and hosted open-wheel and early stock car competitions through 1936. In all, 24 drivers died racing at the killer track with 6 perishing in 1933 alone. The deaths prompted an outcry from local newspapers printing headlines such as “Legalized Murder” and “Is It Worth It?” After driver Al Gordon and his riding mechanic Spider Matlock were killed in a January 26, 1936, crash, Legion Ascot was shut down. A fire four months later destroyed the track’s grandstand; the speedway nicknamed “King of the Grim Reapers” was now closed forever.

      33 Opened as a 1-mile dirt track October 17, 1931, Oakland Speedway was critical to the growth of auto racing in California. Located in San Leandro, the track was billed as “fastest dirt mile track in the country.” A half-mile dirt track was built inside the Oakland oval in 1935 and with it came “low-buck” stock car racing. Oakland stayed active throughout the last half of the 1930s helping to integrate short-track stock car, midget, motorcycle, and roadster races into the California car scene. Oakland Speedway shut down at the outbreak of World War II and the track’s grandstand came down in 1942. Never reopened, Oakland Speedway is now the site of the Bayfair Mall.

      34 Opened in 1916, Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway (a 1-mile dirt oval with a lake taking up most of the infield) hosted its first stock car race November 11, 1938. Lloyd Seay won the event in a 1934 Ford roadster owned by Raymond Parks, besting a top field of drivers including Roy Hall, Bob Flock, and NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. Shuttered during World War II, Lakewood reopened in September 1945 and stayed busy throughout the rest of the decade and into the 1950s with NSCRA-, AAA-, and, NSCCC-sanctioned events. NASCAR made its first appearance at Lakewood November 11, 1951, with Tim Flock besting brother Bob for the victory in the Strictly Stock event. NASCAR records show Lakewood hosted 13 events in the 1950s including a pair of Convertible Division races (1956 and 1958). Lee Petty is shown as the winner of the final NASCAR race at Lakewood in 1959 although his son, Richard Petty was originally declared the winner of the (now) NASCAR Grand National division event. The building of Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1960 marked the end of NASCAR at Lakewood Speedway, which eventually hosted its last auto race on Labor Day in 1979 when Georgia racing legend Buck Simmons took the checkered flag. While just a distant memory now, Lakewood Speedway proved to be one of the most important tracks of NASCAR’s early years; its big city Atlanta market and larger-than-most 1-mile length helped further legitimize the sport in the southern United States.

       Here’s a Milwaukee Mile photo, circa 1915, compelling fans to vote for good roads, something that grew both general motoring and the sport. (Photo Courtesy Steve Zautke Collection)

      35 With the departure of the land speed record runs to the Salt Flats in Utah, the city of Daytona Beach began looking for ways to continue both the excitement and the financial benefits of hosting auto racing events. In 1936, the city selected Sig Haugdahl to come up with a fresh concept. Haugdahl’s response was to create a new event, a race for stock cars on a track that combined both the beach and the paved surface of Florida Highway A1A. Haugdahl, a local racer who set the land speed record of 180 mph in his Wisconsin Special on the beach in 1922, designed a track that initially measured 3.2 miles. The oval track used one long paved straight on A1A and another running parallel on the beach connected by a pair of hairpin turns in the sand. Under Haugdahl and later Bill France Sr., the Daytona Beach Course hosted stock car races until closing down for the duration of World War II. After the war, France quickly went back to promoting races on the track, which had expanded to a 4.2-mile distance. That Beach Course has the distinction of staging the first NASCAR-sanctioned race of СКАЧАТЬ