Driving with the Devil

by Neal Thompson

  The 1950 season closed with the naming of a Yankee, a New Yorker named Bill Rexford, as NASCAR's champion.* Rexford had won only once, a one hundred-miler in Ohio, but had competed in all but two of the nineteen NASCAR races and thus accumulated enough points for the championship. Fireball Roberts finished second, followed by Lee Petty, who would have been the champ if France had not stripped away his points earlier in the year.

  None of the winning racers of 1950 drove a Ford. In nineteen Grand National races, a Ford won just once. Fords wouldn't return to NASCAR's winner's circle for another five years.

  At the end of 1950, during the off-season holidays, Byron and his wife welcomed a baby girl into the family. Parks opened a new sports car dealership, Overseas Motor Agency, which would sell expensive British Austins and other foreign sports cars. Vogt received a peacemaking offer from Bill France to take over a new Nash dealership in Florida and to be the mechanic for a racing team France wanted to finance. France had befriended folks at Nash after they'd loaned him a car for the Mexico race. But in the end, the Vogt-France deal fell apart, and Vogt went back to fixing cars at his Atlanta garage.

  Byron, Parks, and Vogt were each taking their first steps away from stock cars. And one another.

  * A champion from the North turned out to be a fluke. For the next thirty years, Grand National winners would come from one of four southern states: North Carolina (sixteen), South Carolina (ten), Georgia (two), or Virginia (two).

  Nothing stands still in the world.

  Things get better or worse, bigger or smaller.

  — BILL FRAN C E

  18

  NASCAR is here to stay: “Like sex,

  the atom bomb and ice cream”

  I n 1951, Detroit invited NASCAR to help celebrate the city's 250th anniversary with a race at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. NASCAR's first event in Henry Ford's hometown, on August 12, came exactly fifty years after Henry Ford had raced his one and only race at the nearby Grosse Point racetrack. But in a clear sign that Fords were no longer considered worthwhile racing cars, only five of the fifty-nine drivers piloted Fords.

  One of them was Red Byron, in a borrowed six-cylinder Ford “6.”

  Byron's friend Marshall Teague drove his Hudson Hornet to victory that day at Detroit. Byron's Ford just didn't have enough horsepower to catch the leaders, and he settled for fourth place—the last top-five finish of his NASCAR career.

  Despite his lackadaisical approach to NASCAR the previous year, Byron still had the racing bug and cherry-picked a handful of NASCAR's best races in 1951. He had raced in the season opener at Daytona and at Columbus, Georgia, the track of Roy Brannon's death. He finished eleventh and sixth in those races, earned two hundred dollars and a few NASCAR points. But then he raced in one of Bruton Smith's NSCRA races at Lakewood, and Bill France stripped away all his points once again. (France would go on to strip points from Curtis Turner, Bob Flock, Ed Samples, and others in 1951.)

  For Bill France, the Michigan Fairgrounds race was an important introduction to the power players of Detroit, men who in future years would help NASCAR grow into a behemoth. Although France had once declared that NASCAR should be a part-time hobby for weekend warriors, his new vision for a nationwide NASCAR no longer allowed a racer to participate casually. It was all or nothing, and that excluded family men such as Byron, men who didn't want to travel nonstop all year long, following the NASCAR banner up and down the East Coast and occasionally into the Midwest.

  For Byron, the Detroit race was more like a death knell, a warning from the racing gods that he was incapable of victory without Parks and Vogt, that NASCAR was no longer his sport, that stock cars were now completely and firmly in Bill France's hands.

  Three weeks later, Byron chose a swan song: Darlington, whose winner would receive eighty-eight hundred dollars. Byron towed his Ford there, hoping for one last bit of magic and cash. But his final NASCAR race ended in a violent collision with his friend and fellow “outlaw” Marshall Teague. Teague had been leading the race when a flat tire forced him into the pits. In his attempt to regain the lead, Teague came upon Byron's slower Ford and T-boned it, the nose of Teague's Hudson crushing the driver's door of Byron's Ford.

  It was the end of Byron's career. In less than ten years, he would be dead.

  Through the 1950s, meanwhile, France expanded his authority in big and small ways, further developing the power to make or break careers, shaping the sport into his image, shaving off the rough edges, always with an eye toward bigger, faster, more. He'd soon be the undeniable mogul of stock car racing and the king of American motorsports.

  One day in 1951, France walked through pit road before a race, his 6-foot, 5-inch frame looming above cars, drivers, and mechanics. His eyes scanned the garage until they fell upon a flask of whiskey sitting atop the toolbox of mechanic Smokey Yunick, Red Vogt's protege, whom France considered a rabble-rousing smart-ass.

  Not only had whiskey played a starring role in NASCAR's creation, but it had fueled many drivers through many laps. Some kept a pint under the driver's seat, within easy reach for a nip during races. Buddy Shuman once told a reporter that Lord Calvert, his favorite whiskey, was “my copilot.” Curtis Turner, the movie-star-handsome ex-bootlegger, had an ample appetite for Canadian Club and Coke. France himself was, according to Yunick, a known drinker—and womanizer. But when France saw Yunick's whiskey that day, he issued a puritanical decree.

  “No liquor in the pits,” he said.

  And just like that, NASCAR took another step away from its bootlegging origins. It was one more turning point in France's mighty struggle to distance NASCAR from its past, to refine it into a clean, modern, moonshine-free American family sport.

  With the horrible exception of the boy killed by Red Byron's Ford in 1948, fans were not dying with any regularity on NASCAR tracks. There had been many close calls over the years, especially at Daytona, where fans continued to crowd within feet of the track. A few unlucky accidents could have significantly altered NASCAR's safety record, and its future. But the sport, and France, had been very lucky. The same was not true elsewhere in auto racing, particularly at the more popular open-wheel events, and those fatalities gave a surprising boost to NASCAR's future.

  In 1952, a young boy sitting with his father watching a Grand Prix race at Watkins Glen, New York, was struck by an errant race car and killed. A year later, an Indy car flew into the grandstands at a AAA race in Syracuse, New York, landing upside down atop a boy who became jammed in the cockpit. He remarkably survived. Four drivers were killed in the Mexican Road Race of 1954. A year after that, two AAA drivers were killed at Langhorne Speedway, followed by the death of Indy legend Bill Vukovich at 1955's Indianapolis 500, exactly a year after he won the same race. Of the thirty-three men who had raced in the Indy 500 of 1955, seventeen would soon die violent racing deaths, including all of the top-five finishers.

  Then came the most tragic racing day of all. Two hours into the twenty-four-hour race at Le Mans in France, Pierre Levegh's Mercedes-Benz clipped the rear end of a slower car and launched into the air, spi-raling toward the grandstands at 150 miles an hour. Levegh's car exploded amid a throng of spectators, killing at least eighty and maiming hundreds.

  Afterward, a drumbeat of opposition to auto racing grew louder. Newsweek called race car drivers “motorized lemmings.” A senator from Oregon called for a ban on all racing: “I believe the time has come for the United States to be a civilized nation and stop the carnage on the racetracks.” Even the Vatican publicly denounced racing, and the American public began to wonder about AAAs dual role as proselytizer of safe highway driving and promoter of potentially deadly contests on the racetrack.

  Finally, in August of 1955, AAA president Andrew Sordoni announced that his group would end all involvement with motorsports. In the early 1950s, AAA had actually begun threatening France's dominance of stock cars by creating its own stock car circuit and luring away a few NASCAR drivers. But the recent racing deaths prom
pted AAA to end its stock car circuit, to sever its ties to the Indy 500, to dissolve the Contest Board, and to return AAA to its original purpose of helping motorists with broken-down cars, providing road maps and car insurance, and rating motels and restaurants.

  For Bill France, this was all good news. AAAs withdrawal opened wide the door for France to become the dominant racing promoter in America. And it happened at just the right time for NASCAR, whose veterans were stepping aside, to be replaced by a new generation of dynamic stars such as Junior Johnson, Fireball Roberts, Herb Thomas, and the ever-entertaining Curtis Turner, with names such as Petty and Earnhardt to follow.

  The NSCRA remained France's only real opposition. It wouldn't last long. In 1950, he had met with Bruton Smith, the NSCRA's twenty-three-year-old president, to discuss a merger of NSCRA and NASCAR. “Doesn't sound like a bad idea,” Smith said. But a few months later, with the Korean War pulling southern soldiers back to battle, Smith was drafted into the army and trained as a paratrooper. When he returned home to Charlotte two years later, Smith found that the NSCRA had disintegrated amid mismanagement, financial misdeeds, and internal squabbles. France was no longer interested in a merger and, in fact, considered Smith “a pain.” Smith would eventually build a vast racing empire of his own,* but during the mid-1950s, he watched from the sidelines as France took absolute control of stock car racing.

  Sam Nunis, the scrappy AAA promoter and sometime NSCRA partner, ran short of cash at a few races and was unable to pay drivers. That was a promoter's worst nightmare and, combined with AAA's departure from racing, ended his career. Nunis lived out his days promoting smalltime fairgrounds races in Trenton, New Jersey.

  Other potential rivals stepped aside or were shoved aside by France. “Outlaw” drivers who'd relied on NSCRA or other racing groups returned to NASCAR, begging France to let them come back. France required men such as Gober Sosebee, Ed Samples, and Buddy Shuman to pay fines or post bonds as assurance that they'd race exclusively for NASCAR.

  After AAA's departure in 1955, France went on the stump to tout and overemphasize NASCAR's role in contributing to safety improvements in the automotive industry. His newspaper friend Bernard Kahn at the Daytona Beach News Journal helped, awkwardly cheering AAA's departure from racing as a chance for a “blood transfusion in automotive racing… from energetic Bill France.” In Kahn's words, “automobile racing is here to stay: like sex, the atom bomb and ice cream.”

  Drivers lucky enough to be allowed along for the ride simply had to abide by Bill France's rules.

  “Stock car racing has boomed beyond anyone's wildest dreams,” France once said. Before World War II, he'd been a decent racer and an occasional winner, known more for bluster than skill. He matured into a remarkable salesman, a fearless authoritarian, and a shrewd businessman. And if anyone questioned his authority, he attacked.

  In 1961, efforts by Curtis Turner, Tim Flock, and Fireball Roberts to create a drivers' union infuriated France, who called a mandatory meeting before a race.

  “Gentlemen, before I have this union stuffed down my throat, I will plow up my track at Daytona Beach… and plant corn,” he said. “After the race tonight, no known union members can compete in a NASCAR race.” France handed out sheets of paper for each of them to sign, rejecting the union. “If you don't sign this form, don't go back and get in your cars,” he vowed. “And if that isn't tough enough, I'll use a pistol to enforce it. I have a pistol, and I know how to use it. I've used it before.” France quashed a similar attempt to create a drivers' union in 1969, led by Richard Petty.

  France and NASCAR got an unintended boost from a 1970 federal ban on televised tobacco advertising. Ironically, it was moonshining racer Junior Johnson who introduced France to the folks at R. J. Reynolds Company, and it was love at first sight—tobacco needed a place to promote its product, and NASCAR needed a sponsor with cash.

  Over the years, France expanded his control of stock car racing by building his own racetracks: the Daytona International Speedway in 1959 and, ten years later, Talladega Superspeedway, near the Alabama town where Red Byron once lived.

  One of NASCAR's savviest—and more controversial—moves was to create a separate, publicly traded company, called International Speedway Corporation, to buy and run racetracks. ISC grew to own a dozen tracks and acquire part ownership in a few others, along with a radio station, food and beverage concessions, and merchandise operations.

  ISC's officers and major shareholders were all France family members, as were NASCAR's top officers and shareholders. Because NASCAR decided which racetracks were allowed to host NASCAR races, the France family essentially controlled the fortunes of racetrack owners, including ISC. Some outsiders complained that there was a built-in conflict of interest and that France-controlled NASCAR favored France-controlled ISC, whose racetracks today host roughly half of NASCAR's top Nextel Cup events. The most vocal opponent has been the France family's only significant rival in stock car racing—Bruton Smith, whose Speedway Motorsports Inc. owns six racetracks.

  More than fifty years after his first battles with Bill France Sr., Smith remains as feisty as ever. He has lobbied NASCAR officials to schedule more Nextel Cup races at his tracks and has complained that NASCAR has rebuffed him in favor of ISC racetracks. But those are relatively minor, internal squabbles. For the most part, everybody makes money in today's NASCAR.

  * Smith now owns six huge speedways, which host dozens of NASCAR races a year. Like France, he became a billionaire and one of America's richest men.

  It ain't the money. Nor the glory. I just like to drive.

  It's that simple. It's my thing. I like the feel of the metal

  around me, the feel of the tires under me.

  — R emphasis PETTY

  19

  “I had to start making a living”

  POSTSCRIPT: WHAT BECAME OF THEM ALL?

  THE FLOCKS

  B ob broke his neck in the 1951 season finale—allegedly the only race in which he didn't superstitiously touch the track with his,' knuckles. He came back in 1952 to beat little brother Tim at the new AsheviUe-Weaverville Speedway, a North Carolina track that Raymond Parks briefly owned. In the mid-1950s, Bob and Tim raced Chryslers for a race team owned by Carl Kiekhaefer, who sold Mercury boat motors and early on saw the potential for turning NASCAR cars into moving billboards. But Kiekhaefer once jokingly tweaked Bob's chin after a race, and Bob, who hated to be touched, popped his boss in the face. He was fired on the spot. Bob died in 1964 of a heart attack at age forty-six.

  Tim, who sometimes drove with a monkey named Jocko Flock strapped in the passenger seat, won NASCAR's 1952 championship. Two years later, France disqualified his victory at Daytona due to an alleged infraction and gave the race to Lee Petty, driving a new Chrysler. Tim suspected the move was France's way of luring Chrysler into racing, and he quit NASCAR in disgust. But a year later, Tim returned to NASCAR when Carl Kiekhaefer offered him a spot on his team. Tim won the 1955 championship, on his way to becoming one of the win-ningest drivers of the 1950s. In 1961, concerns about increasing speeds, followed by a few drivers' deaths, inspired Tim and a few other racers to create a drivers' union. Bill France angrily banned him from NASCAR for life. Flock quit racing for good in 1962 and died in 1998 at age seventy-three. He is among the few NASCAR pioneers to be named by NASCAR as one of the sport's top-fifty drivers.

  Fonty won the big Southern 500 race in 1952 at Darlington (later renamed the “Rebel 500”) and afterward jumped onto the hood of his car. Wearing a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts, he led a crowd of thirty-two thousand in singing “Dixie.” He raced in several non-NASCAR events in 1954 and was blacklisted by France. He was allowed to return to NASCAR in 1955 after paying a fine and a one thousand-dollar bond. A year later, he joined Tim and Bob's Chrysler-driving team. At Darlington in 1957, he had a blowout, spun and stalled, then got slammed head-on by another driver, who was killed. Fonty retired on the spot. He would never race again but couldn't stay entirely a
way from NASCAR. In the 1960s, Fonty began working with France on plans to build a new paved speedway in Talladega, Alabama. Fonty also worked for NASCAR's new insurance and road service department (created to compete with AAA) and helped start a fan club program. France later brought in Alabama governor George Wallace (on whose presidential campaigns he served) to help with the Talladega speedway, allegedly shoving Fonty aside. After a long bout with cancer, Fonty died in 1972, at age fifty-one.

  LEE PETTY-AND FAMILY

  Petty didn't start racing until he was thirty-five. He hit his stride at age forty, when he won NASCAR's 1954 championship, a feat he'd repeat in 1958 and 1959. In 1959, he won the inaugural five hundred-mile race at France's new Daytona International Speedway, in a remarkable two-way finish. It took NASCAR three days of studying photos to declare Petty the winner, by an inch. That same year, Petty protested his second-place finish at Atlanta's Lakewood Speedway. The officials sided with Petty and gave him the victory, taking it away from Lee's own son, Richard, who had begun racing that year and was named NASCAR's rookie of the year. “I would have protested even if it was my mother,” Lee said. Richard took the loss in stride and went on to become NASCAR's winningest racer. Richard's son, Kyle, and grandson, Adam, followed him into racing, making the Pettys NASCAR's first four-generation family—until 2000, when Adam was killed practicing for a race in New Hampshire, just a few weeks after Lee, the patriarch, had died. A few other NASCAR family dynasties would emerge, but the only one to rival the Pettys would be the Earnhardts, whose story would also result in tragedy.