A few weeks later, Byron competed in another Lakewood race cosponsored by Nunis and the NSCRA. The field included other veterans who had decided not to abide by France's NASCAR-or-nothing edict and to race wherever and whenever they chose. Ed Samples and Gober Sosebee were there, along with Buddy Shuman, each of whom had at one time been reprimanded by France.
As with Nunis's popular races the previous fall, the grandstands were filled beyond capacity, another message to France that Nunis was a dangerously effective promoter. Byron drove a brand-new 1950 Cadillac that Parks had bought to replace the Oldsmobile 88 and, before twenty-four thousand fans, took the checkered flag. France was furious when he learned that Byron, his champion, was an unfaithful NASCAR defector.
Byron drove in yet another NSCRA race in Charlotte a few weeks after that, lured by a five hundred-dollar offer from Bruton Smith just to show up. Prior to that race, Tim Flock—in a naive effort to be forthright and conciliatory with NASCAR—had called France to ask permission to join the race. In pleading his case, Flock explained that there were no NASCAR races that weekend and that he “needed to feed my family.”
“No way,” France said.
Clearly, there was no upside to playing by France's rules.
When France learned about Byron's competing in “outlaw” races not sanctioned by NASCAR, he stripped away the points Byron had earned from his top-five finishes in NASCAR races earlier in the year. France also stripped points away from Lee Petty, who had ranked third in the Grand National race at the time, and from Tim Flock, who had been the leader of the modified division.
France felt that he couldn't back down at a time when drivers were testing the limits of his rule book. As an ex-racer, he understood why drivers wanted to compete in every available race. But he was no longer a driver, he was a businessman, and his primary goal was NASCAR's survival. He was also the boss, and not inclined to get his hands dirty by dealing directly with racers' insubordinations. So, as he often did at such times, he dispatched his number two guy, Bill Tuthill, to officially break the news to Byron, Petty, and Flock that they'd have to start accumulating points from zero.
The penalty would cost two of the men a championship.
It seemed that five thousand-dollar purses and end-of-year bonuses still weren't enough to guarantee drivers' loyalty to NASCAR. So France decided to prove that he knew just as well as Bruton Smith and Sam Nunis how to get the best drivers to his events.
France announced a new kind of race in South Carolina, a landmark event that would introduce stock cars to a new era of black asphalt instead of red dirt. But it wasn't just the first-ever stock car race on pavement that got every driver's attention. It was the twenty-five thousand-dollar purse.
Sam Nunis was a smart, slick, aggressive promoter who looked more like a Hollywood director or Wall Street broker than a race promoter. He heavily advertised his events in local papers and national magazines and hired savvy PR men to lure fans. At the start of the 1950 season, Sam Nunis had announced plans for a landmark Labor Day race at Lakewood that would be the longest stock car race in history: five hundred miles.
France initially scoffed at Nunis's five hundred-mile race. Strictly stock cars were having a hard enough time with one hundred miles and would likely fall to pieces if pushed to five hundred miles. But as Nunis's big race approached and created a buzz among stock car drivers, France—who could never resist a peer's challenge—changed his mind about a five hundred-miler and agreed to meet with a wealthy South Carolina peanut farmer-turned-lawyer, Harold Brasington.
Brasington had raced at Daytona in 1938 and had been smitten by the Indy 500 he attended in 1948. A year later, Brasington bought a farm in eastern South Carolina and began carving a misshapen oval racetrack into the dirt. He planned to call it Darlington Raceway. But unlike every other southern racetrack, it would be paved, just like Indy.
By mid-1950, with his speedway under construction, Brasington teamed with a lesser-known race-sanctioning organization—the Central States Racing Association (CSRA)—to help him promote his own five hundred-mile stock car race. But as race day neared, only one driver had agreed to compete, and the 1.25-mile track was still incomplete, even though twenty-five thousand dollars worth of tickets had already been sold.
Brasington was, in short, screwed. So he called Bill France. France had been seeking a venue for a five hundred-mile NASCAR race—to compete with Nunis's race—but didn't think Brasington's people could pull together such a big event quickly enough. Nonetheless, he agreed to fly to South Carolina and visit the incomplete track.
Despite the ongoing construction, France was impressed by the sprawling complex. It had the makings of stock car racing's largest track, and France envisioned a whole new future for NASCAR. A future of paved speedways, faster cars, huge grandstands, concession stands, campgrounds, and much, much more. France agreed to take over Brasington's race from the CSRA, as both sanctioner and promoter of the event, now scheduled for Labor Day—the same day as Nunis's big five hundred-mile race.
France advertised nationwide. The twenty-five thousand-dollar purse—the largest purse ever in stock car racing—lured so many racers away from Nunis's five hundred-mile race that Nunis eventually was forced to cancel it. He would curse Bill France the rest of his days.
With Nunis's race out of the picture, NASCAR's premier “Southern 500” at Darlington would be the longest stock car race in history and the first on asphalt. The promise of participating in motorsports history, not to mention an unprecedented $10,500 for the winner, lured seventy-five of the nation's best drivers.
Byron was still sore over losing all his NASCAR points and was not in contention for the year's championship. But he found he couldn't stand aside.
Vogt and Parks accompanied Byron and his powerful new Cadillac. Despite his debt to Henry Ford, whose cars had played such a vital role in his lucrative corn liquor career, Parks had always been partial to the more luxurious Caddy. When the carmaker finally introduced a race-worthy car in 1950, with a lightweight overhead valve V-8, Parks abandoned the Olds 88 that had carried Byron to victory earlier in the year and decided to attempt to give Cadillac its first NASCAR victory.
France, meanwhile, bought a secondhand Plymouth sedan for seventeen hundred dollars, a third the price tag of Parks's Caddy. He was on his way to Darlington and found the car at a lot in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Along for the ride were Curtis Turner, a NASCAR official named Alvin Hawkins, and a California-based AAA/Indy racer driver Johnny Mantz. They towed the Plymouth to South Carolina and parked it out front of the town's lone twelve-room Darlington Motel, where France and other race officials would be staying. The story that France peddled in subsequent years was that he'd purchased the Plymouth to use solely for errands and trips to and from the racetrack. In truth, France, Turner, and Hawkins all pitched in to secretly purchase it for Mantz to race.
Mantz had met France and Turner during the recent Mexican Road Race. In that race, even though he passed out and nearly died from a bad batch of Mexican food, Mantz recovered to finish an impressive ninth. During an after-race party, the NASCAR boys—particularly Turner— convinced Mantz to give NASCAR a shot, so Mantz decided to take a break from AAA and get his chance at Darlington. All he needed now was a car. He'd wrecked his Oldsmobile in a warm-up NASCAR race in Ohio a week earlier. France's purchase of the used Plymouth would prove to be a wise move.
On September 4, 1950, more than thirty thousand spectators fell upon rural Darlington, South Carolina (population six thousand), to watch a whole new kind of race. The journey began days before race time as fans by the thousands arrived early to stake out turf on the brink of Darlington Speedway or inside the oval. It was the first time that stock car fans came a day or two before the race, claimed prime real estate in the “infield,” and camped out there. That first pilgrimage to Darlington would evolve into an annual, near-religious ritual, a high holy day on the NASCAR calendar.
With only twelve motel rooms in to
wn, there was no place for fans to sleep, so France opened the gates and allowed the early arrivals to sleep in the infield of the track. Each morning, he detonated a small explosive device to wake everyone up and chased them back outside.
On race day, the alarm clock bomb created havoc as people who'd slept in the infield tried to get out while others tried to get in. With room in the grandstands for just eleven thousand, it bespoke the ingenuity of the thirty thousand fans that they were all able to find a spot from which to view NASCAR's first megarace. France collected so much cash on race day that he and his workers ran out of envelopes and began stuffing it into peach baskets.
Every other driver had arrived with a gusty eight-cylinder engine, including Byron in his spectacular new Cadillac. Johnny Mantz, however, had told France weeks earlier that a lightweight car had the best chance of winning at Darlington. “You know what can win this race?” Mantz told France. “A goddamn Plymouth can win it.” As an Indy racer, Mantz was more familiar with asphalt than any of NASCAR's dirt racers and had figured that the lightweight Plymouth—plus some heavy-duty racing tires he'd brought along with him to Darlington—would combine to make a reliable racing package.
Few NASCAR racers had a clue what it'd be like to race five hundred miles, more than twice the length of any race they'd driven. Byron had qualified with one of the fastest speeds, but on race day, he was skeptical about the ability of seventy-five allegedly stock cars to complete such a long race. “There won't be one of these cars at the finish,” he said. “Not a damn one.” Vogt and a few other mechanics installed jugs behind their drivers' seats, to be filled with each driver's favorite drink—say, whiskey— which they could sip through a straw during the circuitous marathon. But everyone soon learned what Mantz already knew: what drivers needed most wasn't liquid but rubber.
South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond's wife cut the ceremonial ribbon, and seventy-five cars began winding their way around Brasington's track. Byron knew, from his limited experience on the asphalt-and-brick surface at Indianapolis, that such driving required a very different skill set than dirt-track racing. The turns of a dirt track could be forgiving if a driver knew how to power-slide through them. But on asphalt, the tactic wasn't to slide but to find a groove, hold it tight through the turn, then slingshot into the straightaway, followed by a precise cut back into the chosen groove of the next turn. What Byron didn't fully expect was how quickly his chosen groove would chew up tires.
To soak up excess oil from the freshly paved surface, race officials had dusted sand onto the track. When the scorching South Carolina sun softened the blacktop, it clung to the sand, turning the surface into a sandpaper frying pan. Byron drove steadily, stalking behind early leaders Gober Sosebee and Curtis Turner, only to feel his right-side tires go mushy, then flat. He pulled into the pits to take on a fresh pair. Fortunately, Red Vogt had brought pneumatic wrenches to help quickly unscrew and rescrew the lug nuts. Parks also lent a hand during the furious pit stops, removing his linen jacket and straw hat to help Vogt and his crew change Byron's shredded tires.
Byron was always able to quickly return to the track, but after twenty or thirty miles, he'd have to pull back into the pits for new tires. It was maddening, and by the time the race passed its halfway mark, Byron had replaced dozen of tires, and Vogt was suddenly fresh out. Crew members were sent to the parking lot to buy tires off passenger cars. Parks even donated the tires off his personal Cadillac.
One sportswriter said that racers' tires were “popping like popcorn.” Meanwhile, Johnny Mantz had driven to nearby Myrtle Beach the previous night, partied until dawn, jumped into the Atlantic Ocean to sober up, popped a few aspirin, and drove back to Darlington to pick up Bill France's Plymouth.
According to the story that France and other NASCAR officials adhered to in future years, Mantz didn't even take apart the Plymouth's engine. He and his mechanic just tuned it up, and Mantz began driving. France felt that the story would prove that NASCAR's race cars were truly “stock” cars and, as France put it, “strictly assembly line products.” The real story was more complicated.
Mantz's mechanic was Hubert Westmoreland—the North Carolina bootlegger and whiskey mechanic who had owned the car that France disqualified from the first strictly stock race a year earlier. Mantz had qualified in the Plymouth earlier in the week, averaging seventy-three miles an hour, which put him in the thirty-fifth starting spot among seventy-five starters. But after qualifying, Mantz and Westmoreland took the Plymouth to Westmoreland's garage in North Carolina and began souping it up. The key addition was the hard-rubber racing tires that Mantz had brought with him.
On race day, Mantz's six-cylinder Plymouth was still among the slowest cars on the track. Curtis Turner or Red Byron regularly flew past him at one hundred miles an hour or more. But Mantz drove smart and steady, averaging seventy to seventy-five miles an hour in a calm and comfortable groove, away from all the wrecks and blowouts. By lap fifty, he found himself in the lead, the heavy-duty tires helping him avoid costly pit stops. He slowly built an insurmountable gap between himself and the others. The race lasted an incredible six and a half hours, during which Mantz stopped only three times to change tires, compared to Byron's two dozen pit stops. Only a third of the seventy-five starters lasted the entire race.
Despite all the blown tires and time-consuming pit stops, Byron still finished second—nine laps and more than eleven miles behind Mantz. But then, after studying their scoring sheets, NASCAR officials announced that a twenty-one-year-old former baseball pitcher named Fireball Roberts had actually completed one lap more than Byron.
They gave Roberts second place, worth $3,500, and Byron third, worth $2,000.
Mantz earned an incredible $10,510 for his victory, offset slightly by a $2,500 fine imposed against him by AAA for defecting to a NASCAR race. Few could believe that a hungover driver who'd crashed in his only prior NASCAR race, who had driven a car with three-fourths the piston power and at slower speeds than all the others, had somehow won. Tops among the disbelievers were Red Vogt and Red Byron, who angrily demanded that NASCAR inspectors tear apart every nut, bolt, belt, and gear of Mantz's Plymouth, in search of what they assumed would be bla-tent signs of cheating. Vogt, Byron, and the other top-five finishers knew that Mantz's mechanic, Westmoreland, was a whiskey tripper and mechanic, and they formally protested the legality of Mantz's car, variously claiming it had a nonstock camshaft, shocks, springs. As a virtuoso cheater himself, Vogt knew when to be suspicious. “I know there's something phony,” Vogt told Bill France's sidekick, Bill Tuthill. “No way a Plymouth can beat a Cadillac. No way.“
France refused to tear apart his own car. But then he realized it wouldn't look good, especially since Mantz's mechanic was a bootlegger. France finally sent Tuthill to instruct NASCAR's chief inspector, Al Crisler—the same man who'd taken victory away from Glenn Dunnaway and Westmoreland the previous year—to inspect “anything Red wanted checked.”
Tuthill called Crisler at the garage first thing the next morning, to ask how the postrace inspection had gone.
“Go?” Crisler shrieked. “It's still going. I think you better come over.”
When Tuthill and France arrived at the inspection site, Red Vogt was pacing back and forth, muttering to himself. Spread across every inch of the floor were parts of France's Plymouth—the carburetor in tatters; the valves strewn asunder; the pistons lying like six disused limbs; and even the exhaust, wheels, brakes, and gas tank sitting turdlike around the garage. Vogt, having clearly shunned sleep, strode maniacally back and forth. “No way a Plymouth can beat a Cadillac,” he said, again and again. “No way.”
After a brief consultation, France gave Tuthill the tricky job of telling Vogt that the inspection was, in fact, over, and that they'd found nothing illegal. “It's all there for you to see,” Tuthill said quietly, as if speaking to a petulant child. They'd awakened the local Plymouth dealer—twice— and the man had verified that Johnny Mantz's winning vehicle was, af
ter all that, stock.
“I know, I can see,” Vogt growled, breathless, grasping for some other explanation. “But I'm still not satisfied.”
Tuthill told the inspectors to dump all of the dismembered Plymouth parts into the backseat, his way of telling Vogt the fight was over.
Vogt was right, though. The car wasn't totally stock. The specialized, hard-compound Indy racing tires had helped earn Mantz his victory. But since the rule book didn't specifically prohibit racing tires, they were legal. France wasn't about to revise his rule book this time. Not if it took victory away from his own car.
Vogt's lost battle with NASCAR inspectors that long night at Darlington signaled the beginning of the end of his reign as NASCAR's top mechanic. There were so many rules now, which Vogt felt suffocated his mechanical ingenuity. By ushering in the era of blacktop tracks, Darlington became a turning point for masters of dirt-track racing such as Vogt. It didn't help that Vogt's best driver was veering further away from NASCAR.
Byron's third-place finish at Darlington earned back enough of the points he'd lost earlier in the year to put him in fourth place for the year's championship race. But then he competed in another NSCRA race, and Bill France stripped his points a second time.
Byron wasn't too upset and in fact had expected it. Just as Barney Oldfield had shunned the restrictive AAA Contest Board to race on his terms, Byron seemed willing to let his short-lived NASCAR fame slip away. Byron competed in just four NASCAR races in 1950, but his performance in those events would have been worth fourth place in the year's championship race—if he hadn't lost all his points. Twice. He ended the 1950 season with zero points. For the first time since World War II, he was no longer a dominant force on the stock car circuit. And he would never again win a NASCAR race.
Driving with the Devil Page 35