1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close

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СКАЧАТЬ brand, Louis Chevrolet was a top race car driver. Born in France on Christmas Day 1878, Chevrolet first moved to Canada and then to Brooklyn, New York, in 1899. Initially a mechanic, Chevrolet began driving race cars in 1900 and by 1905, was beating Barney Oldfield, Henry Ford, and others in high-profile races. His victories drew the attention of William Durant, president at General Motors, who then hired Chevrolet to drive for his Buick race team. Chevrolet not only delivered on the track, but also in the shop where he designed a car under his own name. The vehicle featured an industry-first 6-cylinder, center-of-floor gearshift, and an emergency brake mounted under the dash. Launched in 1912, the new Chevrolet sold nearly 20,000 cars its first three years.

      Chevrolet was unhappy, often clashing with Durant, forcing him to leave the company in 1914. He then founded Frontenac Motor Corporation with his brothers, Gaston and Arthur. Using a Ford Model T as the base chassis, the Chevrolet brothers built three Frontenac race cars, one for each to drive in the 1915 Indianapolis 500. While none of the cars finished, Chevrolet was determined to build a winner, a feat he accomplished when Gaston Chevrolet and Tommy Milton won back-to-back Indy 500s in 1920 and 1921. Meanwhile, Louis competed in the Indy 500 four times, his best finish a seventh-place in 1919. Unfortunately, an economic downturn forced Chevrolet and Frontenac out of business in 1922. Chevrolet continued building cylinder heads for the now “Fronty-Fords” until the Ford Model A all but put him out of business. In the end, Chevrolet never cashed in on the financial success of the brand bearing his name although he returned to the company as a consultant in the 1930s. Chevrolet was forced to retire after suffering a brain hemorrhage in 1938. He lived out his final years in poor health passing away on June 6, 1941. He is buried across the street from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Holy Cross Cemetery.

      45 The career of Hall of Fame Driver Wendell Scott highlights the history of African-Americans in NASCAR. While Scott is a NASCAR pioneer, others laid the groundwork for his entrance into motors-ports. Dewey Gadsen, better known as Rajo Jack, was part of that group. Barred from top competitions in the 1920s and 1930s because of his color, Rajo Jack competed in “outlaw” races on the West Coast. He sometimes claimed to be Native American or a Portuguese driver named Jack DeSoto so he could be allowed to race. Among his biggest wins was the 1936 AAA National Championship 200-mile stock car event at Mines Field in Los Angeles. He also won 300-milers at Oakland and Ascot Speedways in the 1930s and raced into the 1950s before ending his driving career. Gadsen died of a heart attack in 1956 and his death certificate identifies him as Rajo Jack.

      46 Frank Lockhart had Daytona International Speedway grandstand named honoring him as one of the great drivers of the 1920s. Born in Ohio, Lockhart mastered the dirt and board tracks of California before moving to IndyCars in 1926; he promptly won the Indy 500, making him the fourth rookie to capture the event. Lockhart won four additional IndyCar events in 1926 and finished second in the AAA National Championship standings. During the off-season, Lockhart, along with John and Zenas Wiesel, designed and produced a manifold to cool the fuel between the carburetor and supercharger. Lockhart secured a patent for the part now commonly called an intercooler. The intercooler provided a significant jump in horsepower and propelled Lockhart to a new world land speed record of 164.02 mph during a pre–Indy 500 test on Muroc Dry Lake in California.

      Lockhart and his Perfect Circle Turbocharged racer then won the pole for the 1927 Indy 500 and led the most laps before the car broke a rod late in the race. He won nine Indy Car events in 1927 and again finished second in the AAA National Championship chase.

      Buoyed by his land speed record of 1927, Lockhart focused on a new project for 1928: the Stutz Black Hawk land speed racer. The car was plagued by bad luck, crashing on its first outing on the beach at Daytona in February 1928. Two months later, Lockhart and the Black Hawk returned to Daytona for another land speed attempt. This time, Lockhart, at just 25 years old, was killed in the crash, cementing his place as a Daytona and racing legend for all time.

      47 While best known as a top official for the Automobile Club of America (AAA) West Coast Region during the 1920s and 1930s, Art Pillsbury made a then-unknown giant contribution to NASCAR and the construction of its banked speedways. Pillsbury was the first to apply the Searle Spiral Easement Curve to racetrack building. The concept was pioneered in the railroad industry; the rails were placed at different heights on a gradual incline in the turns, easing the transition from the flat straights into the banked corners. This allowed for greater overall speed. Pillsbury and speedway construction manager Jack Prince first applied this spiral banking formula when building the 1.25-mile Beverly Hills Speedway in 1919.

      At the track’s first event in 1920, cars held the track at record race speeds averaging in excess of 100 mph for the entire event, an astonishing mark considering that was faster than the average qualifying speed for the Indianapolis 500 at that time. Thanks to Pillsbury, racing not only got faster, but race car geometry and set up changed forever. Pillsbury went on to build or consult on most major banked superspeedways of the Board Track era. His crowning achievement was a 45-degree banked track at Culver City, California, in 1924. Since then, “Pillsbury’s Principles” have been used in the construction of virtually every banked track in America, including those on the current NASCAR tour.

      48 Without a doubt, Englishman Sir Malcolm Campbell was the all-time king of the Daytona Beach world land speed record, setting a new record five times from 1928 through 1935. Campbell’s Bluebird land speed cars were famous worldwide and the 1933 version was the first to break the 250 mph barrier with a 272.465 mph record run. Two years later, Campbell slightly bettered the mark with a 276.710 mph clocking. As Campbell helped put Daytona on the map as the World Center of Speed, he also nearly destroyed that distinction when he moved his land speed record runs to the dry lake beds near Bonneville, Utah. It was there that Campbell realized his dream of becoming the first to break the 300 mph barrier with a 301.129 mph world speed record in September 1935. He promptly retired and never made another land speed record attempt. He passed away from a stroke in 1949.

      49 As stock car racing’s first great team owner, Raymond Parks’ accomplishments are often overlooked. Born in 1914, Parks, the oldest of 16 children, grew up in hardscrabble Georgia. He left home at 15 to work in the illegal moonshine business and began fielding race cars for local Atlanta drivers Roy Hall and Lloyd Seay in 1938. Wrenched by legendary mechanic Red Vogt, Parks’ immaculately prepared Fords, with Hall, Seay, and sometimes Bill France Sr. behind the wheel, dominated stock car racing in the south prior to World War II. After the war, Parks returned to racing and his cars won the first two NASCAR championships contested: the modified title with Fonty Flock in 1948 and the first NASCAR Strictly Stock title with driver Red Byron in 1949. Parks, always dressed in a coat, tie, and hat, kept NASCAR alive in its early years, often bankrolling the enterprise for a struggling Bill France. After scoring a fourth-place finish with driver Curtis Turner at Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Parks curtailed his support of racing and bowed out as a NASCAR team owner. A member of the International Motorsports and the NASCAR Halls of Fame, Parks passed away in 2010 at the age of 96.

      50 Considered by many as the best natural-talent stock car driver of the pre-World War II era, Lloyd Seay’s life was cut short in September 1941 when his cousin shot him to death during an argument over an order of sugar for their moonshine business. Before the tragedy, Seay had translated his “whiskey tripper” driving skills to the racetrack, capturing the first race at Lakewood Speedway in 1938. Driving for his cousin Raymond Parks, Seay won multiple events throughout the South in 1939 and 1940 before scoring one of his biggest victories on the beach at Daytona in August 1941. Two weeks later, Seay again won, this time lapping the field twice in a race at High Point, North Carolina. On Labor Day, September 1, 1941, Seay earned his biggest win to date capturing the 100-mile National Championship Stock Car race at Lakewood. Sadly, the next day, he was shot dead, a premature end to the life of stock car racing’s first great driving star.

      51 Considered the greatest mechanic of the early stock car era, Louis Jerome “Red” Vogt is also remembered as the man who gave NASCAR its name. Working out of a small garage in Atlanta, Vogt organized and chartered the National Stock Car Racing Association (NSCRA) in 1929, one of Georgia’s СКАЧАТЬ