Thirty years ago Friday–on July 2, 1974–I first set foot inside a NASCAR garage as a working reporter.
It was here, at Daytona International Speedway.
And I was lost. It’s a wonder I didn’t get hit by a car as they rumbled in and out during practice.
I remember standing in the middle of the garage area, looking around, wondering which driver to approach and what to ask him.
The race in question was the Firecracker 400. Commercial race names had barely been thought of then. They were used only at such exotic venues as Riverside, Calif.
They ran on the 4th of July then, no matter what day of the week it was, starting at 10 a.m. to beat the thunderstorms that always rise over central Florida on summer afternoons.
Lighting this place would have been out of the question, if it even had been brought up. Nobody had thought of it even remotely.
There was no television coverage, let alone live, let alone prime time. That a network might preempt its Saturday night programming to show a NASCAR race live, flag to flag, was beyond the dreams of even the visionary Big Bill France. He was NASCAR’s founder and still walked these grounds authoritatively, a courtly figure with a resounding, musical, deep voice.
Corporate sponsorship of cars was new. The Detroit manufacturers only recently had abandoned their “factory teams,” necessitating outside funding.
Richard Petty had acquired the first one, STP, in 1971.
And here he came, rumbling back into the garage in the red-and-blue Dodge with the fabled number 43 on the side.
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Right behind him, the red-and-black Chevrolet of the little man with the best name ever in stock car racing, Cale Yarborough.
Then the red-white-and-blue AMC Matador (they don’t make those anymore) of Bobby Allison.
And then the red-and-white Mercury of David Pearson.
Where to start? Maybe with Yarborough. At least I had interviewed him on the phone a few weeks earlier for a story on how big-time NASCAR drivers had started out.
He had talked about racing on dirt on the Carolinas against some tough old boys. One he had named was Ralph Earnhardt. I had asked him how to spell Earnhardt. He said, “I don’t know.”
That’s how obscure the Earnhardt name was. Ralph, who never hit it big, had died the year before. Neither Yarborough nor I had any idea of the struggling of Ralph’s 22-year-old son Dale, who had yet to win even a Sportsman (many years later, Busch) race, and who “probably should have been on welfare” at the time, Dale Earnhardt told me 13 years later.
On July 2, 1974, Dale Earnhardt’s second wife, Brenda, was six months pregnant with a son they would name Dale Jr. Jeff Gordon was a toddler near San Francisco, not quite 3. Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne would not be born for years.
NASCAR’s new president, Bill France Jr., was suspect. The few NASCAR pundits of the time wondered whether he could rule with the iron hand and velvet glove his father had displayed, much as we wonder now about third-generation Brian France.
The youngest, brashest gun among drivers then was Darrell Waltrip, 27, a hot dog off the short tracks of the South but still a nobody in NASCAR. He was an independent, meaning he had little sponsorship, and even that came from his wealthy father-in-law.
Where to start? Maybe Waltrip. But his best finish in a NASCAR race to that point had been fourth. Who cared?
So here I stood, looking around, wondering who and what. Then I turned one more time and suddenly was staring into an STP logo on a driving uniform. I looked up into a big grin, the sunglasses, topped by the red-and-blue STP cap.
“Richard!” I said to stop him as he walked.
He stopped and grinned some more, glancing down at the pen I had poised, the blank notebook.
“You writing a book?” he said.
“No, but I sure would like to do a story about you.”
“Well,” he said, “go on over yonder to the back of the truck and have a seat. I’ll be over there in a little bit.”
July 2, 1974, was Petty’s 37th birthday. He was in his prime, truly and very actively the King. Not for another 10 years and two days, here, on July 4, 1984, with President Ronald Reagan in attendance, did Petty record his monumental 200th NASCAR victory.
He lost that Firecracker 400 of ’74, by a nose, to David Pearson, who faked a blown engine at the white flag and forced Petty to go around him. Pearson thus put himself in position to slingshot past Petty just before the checkered flag.
To this day, I have not seen a better race among the 600 or so NASCAR events I have witnessed, the 2,000 or so days I have spent inside NASCAR garages.
Looking back at 30 years of NASCAR
Highlights
– Richard Petty and David Pearson wreck within sight of the checkered flag at the 1976 Daytona 500. As Petty’s Dodge sits steaming in the grass, Pearson nurses his wrecked Mercury over the finish line.
– Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison wreck on the backstretch dueling for the 1979 Daytona 500 victory, then get out and fight, while Petty edges Darrell Waltrip at the checkered flag.
– Dale Earnhardt finally wins the Daytona 500 in 1998, on his 20th try, and breaks motor racing’s most notorious jinx.
– David Pearson fakes a blown engine at the white flag of the 1974 Firecracker 400, forcing Richard Petty to go around him. Then Pearson slingshots back past Petty on the final lap to win the race.
– Jeff Gordon wins the 1999 Daytona 500 with the most masterful job of restrictor-plate driving ever. Forty-two other drivers worked against him all day, and on the final lap, he had to hold off Earnhardt.
Lowlights
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– The relentless tragedy of the Allison family: Donnie suffers career-ruining injuries at Charlotte in 1981; brother Bobby at Pocono in 1988; Bobby’s son Clifford is killed at Michigan in 1992; his son Davey dies after a helicopter crash at Talladega in ’93.
– Dale Earnhardt is killed in the final turn, on the final lap, of the 2001 Daytona 500. My hardest day ever at Daytona is followed by months of controversy over fatality prevention in NASCAR.
– Unknown driver Ricky Knotts is killed in a 125-mile qualifying race before the 1980 Daytona 500, but the partying continues unchecked that night in Daytona Beach. This was my hardest lesson in the lack of value of human life, when the driver happens to be a nobody.
– Dale Earnhardt dominates the 1990 Daytona 500 until almost exactly one mile is left, then runs over metal debris and shreds a tire. Nobody ever deserved a victory more, only to lose.
– Bill France Jr. is diagnosed as having cancer in the winter of 2000, and loosens his iron grip as ruler of NASCAR. France survives, but the sport never will be the same.