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Oldest NASCAR Race Winner and Race Car Will Reunite

by Cyndi Paceley Share
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EmailPonce Inlet, FL — Catch a special Facebook Live broadcast of the Legends of Racing Radio Show with host Buz McKim at noon (ET) Thursday (Aug. 20) when he welcomes 93-year-old Paul Goldsmith, the oldest NASCAR race winner. McKim is the former historian at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C.



Goldsmith, a former USAC and NASCAR driver, will be reunited with NASCAR’s oldest surviving race car that he drove more than 60 years ago. He won the final auto race at the famous Daytona Beach Road Course in 1958 and was the only driver to win that course both in a stock car and on a motorcycle.

Goldsmith will reminisce about his experiences from that era before the car is presented for permanent display at the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America Museum in Daytona Beach.

The Thursday program is in addition to McKim’s weekly "Legends of Racing" show

Legends of Racing show

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each Friday, and will take place at Racing’s North Turn restaurant — on the site of the beach course’s North Turn.

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Louise Smith: Racing pioneers weren't always men...Louise Smith, NASCAR's First Lady

Louise Smith: Racing pioneers weren't always men

Louise Smith, NASCAR's " First Lady in Racing" stands in her room of memorabilia in Greenville, S.C. Credit: AP (199
By JASON STEINWheelbase MediaOctober 23, 2012Racing has always been chock-full of "good ol' boys."

But what about the "good ol' girls?"

What about the wild woman from Barnesville, Ga., who used to show her passion for driving fast by outrunning the police in her hometown? What about the woman who loved hanging it out there so much that she nearly broke every bone in her body . . . and was darn proud of it?

There are pioneers who break new ground, and then there's Louise Smith, a woman who took dynamite to conventional thinking.

"I was just born to be wild," Smith told the Baltimore Sun daily newspaper more than a decade ago. "I tried to be a nurse, a pilot and a beautician and couldn't make it in any of them. But from the moment I hit the race track, it was exactly what I wanted."

And how.It was the early 1940s. Racing promoter Bill France Sr., the eventual founder of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), was looking for a woman driver who might attract more women to his local track in South Carolina.

Someone knew someone else who also knew Smith, a woman who had become legendary for outrunning the law.

Even though she had never seen a race - much less driven in one - Smith finished third in a modified 1939 Ford. Not realizing that the checkered flag meant the end of a race, she kept driving around the track until someone threw out a red flag, forcing her to stop.

"They told me if I saw a red flag to stop. They didn't say anything about the checkered flag," she said.

Smith was bitten by the bug.

A year later, she borrowed her husband's new maroon Ford and said she was going on vacation. Instead, she drove to Daytona Beach, Fla., entered a race and wrecked the car.

On the bus ride back home, she created a story she would tell about the car breaking down on her trip.

"Where's the car, Louise?" her husband, Noah, asked when she returned.

"That ol' trap broke down in Augusta (Ga.)," she said.

Noah then showed her the front of the Greenville, S.C., newspaper that carried a picture of her wreck in Daytona.

"That's the greatest story of all," said the late Benny Parsons, a former NASCAR star and a TV analyst, in an interview in 2006 after Smith's death.

From that point on, despite her husband's objections, Smith became a regular on France's new NASCAR circuit. Using Smith as a bit of a novelty act, France would send her to Canada and the U.S. northeast in hopes of drawing more attention.

"We didn't think (NASCAR) was going anywhere," Smith said in an interview with the Associated Press in 1998. "So if we got the chance to go out of the state, it was like we went to heaven."

In a decade of racing, Smith made a name for herself, by winning races - 38 events in all - and producing spectacular crashes with her aggressive style. In one race her car overturned, a crash that gave her 48 stitches and four pins in her left knee.

On the circuit, driving against some of NASCAR's early legends, she was dubbed the "Good Ol' Gal" by the other drivers.

"We traveled in a gang," she told the Associated Press. "If one of us had a hot dog, we'd all get a bite."

But it was hardly easy being the first woman driver.

"Then men didn't like it to start with and they wouldn't give you an inch," she said.

Smith was a true barnstormer, running for $100 prizes and some extra appearance money.

After retiring in 1956, she remained active with the racing community, helping at tracks and sponsoring cars.

"I enjoyed every minute of it," she said. "Didn't make a whole lot of money, but if I could do it again today, I'd do it. And I think I'd make it."

Smith would be remembered as "the first lady of racing," and was the first woman inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1999.

She died at age 89, but not before leaving an indelible legacy.

Perhaps the late Benny Parsons said it best.

"If we could find a Louise Smith here in 2006 to get in there and finish fourth in the Daytona 500, imagine what that would do for NASCAR racing."

Just imagine.

Jason Stein is a writer with Wheelbase Media. He can be reached on the Web at shiftweekly.com Is for Sale by using the contact link.

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Click anywhere in the mass of letters and numbers....really

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Paul Goldsmith

Motorsports racing driver
Paul Goldsmith is a former USAC and NASCAR driver. He is an inductee of the Motorcycle Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, and the USAC Hall of Fame. Later in life Goldsmith became a pilot and, flying primarily a Cessna 421, transported engines and parts to and from races. Wikipedia
Born: October 25, 1925 (age 96 years), Parkersburg, WV

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Richard Petty Museum and Petty's Garage

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Mark Batson
3.41K subscribersA tour of the Richard Petty Museum and Garage in Level Cross, North Carolina.

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Looking back on NASCAR’s founding, 75 years on

I know where the hotel is and it still stands on A1A...

https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/e...h-florida.html
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emailBy Vintage Motorsport | December 23, 2022 12:14 PM ET Follow @http://twitter.com/VMMagazine

On December 14, 1947, Bill France Sr. gathered 35 people for four days of meetings (Dec. 14 – 17) at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach. The distinguished group represented the most influential names in the racing industry at the time and included drivers, mechanics, promoters, car owners, journalists, businessmen and a recording secretary.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was born from that meeting and though he knew what was needed, not even France himself could envision what the sport would become.
“Stock car racing has got distinct possibilities for Sunday shows and we do not know how big it can be if it’s handled properly… It can go the same way as big car racing (Indianapolis), I believe stock car racing can become a nationally recognized sport by having a National Point Standing. Stock car racing as we’ve been running it is not, in my opinion, the answer… We must try to get track owners and promoters interested in building stock car racing up. We are all interested in one thing — that is improving the present conditions. The answer lies in our group right here today to do it.”
– Bill France Sr., speaking at NASCAR’s organizational meeting at the Streamline Hotel .

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February 21

1948

The National Association for Stock Car Racing—or NASCAR, as it became widely known—was officially incorporated. NASCAR racing is one of America’s most popular spectator sports, as well as a multi-billion-dollar industry. In 1950, the first NASCAR-based track, the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, opened. More new raceways followed, including the Daytona International Speedway, which opened in 1959.

The driving force behind the establishment of NASCAR was William “Bill” France Sr., a mechanic and auto-repair shop owner from Washington, D.C., who in the mid-1930s moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. After witnessing how racing rules could vary from event to event and how dishonest promoters could abscond with prize money, France felt there was a need for a governing body to sanction and promote racing.

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1959 FEB 22

Lee Petty, father of fellow NASCAR legend Richard Petty, defeated Johnny Beauchamp in a photo finish at the just-opened Daytona International Speedway in Florida to win the first-ever Daytona 500. The race was so close that Beauchamp was initially named the winner by William France, the owner of the track and head of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). However, Petty challenged the results and three days later, with the assistance of news photographs, he was officially named the champ. There was speculation that France declared Beauchamp the winner in order to intentionally stir up controversy and generate publicity for his new racetrack.

senor honda

NASCAR’s West Coast roots are almost as deep as those in Southeast

By Reid Spencer



NASCAR Wire Service

Published: 3 days ago

4 Minute Read


NASCAR Research & Archives Center Getty ImagesAccording to conventional wisdom, NASCAR stock car racing was a regional sport born in the Southeast and confined to that geographic area until its explosion of popularity in the late 20th century.

That conventional wisdom, however, ignores the flourishing activity in the sport on the West Coast, activity that closely paralleled the rise of NASCAR in the South.

The official “born-on” date of NASCAR is Dec. 14, 1947, when Bill France Sr. called the sanctioning body’s formative meeting in the Streamline Hotel’s Penthouse Club in Daytona Beach.

RELATED: NASCAR 75 coverage | Relive NASCAR’s origin story

But France was widely traveled, and in 1950 — a year after NASCAR ran its first season in what was then called Strictly Stock — he met Oregonian Hershel McGriff at the Pan-American Road Race in Mexico.

“He (France) was there with Curtis Turner to run the race,” McGriff recalled in his induction speech at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in January. “My neighbor had bought me a 1950 Olds for that five-day, 2,132-mile race through Mexico. I found a sponsor to pay the $600 entry fee …

“Bill noticed me because I was competitive throughout the race with him and Curtis. I think out of 132 entries, at 22 years old, I ended up winning the race. There were other NASCAR drivers there, too — Red Byron, Raymond Parks, Fonty and Bob Flock, and Johnny Mantz …

“After the race, Bill invited me to come to the first Southern 500 at Darlington, which was four months later. We drove the car from Portland (Ore.) to Darlington, raced 500 miles and then we drove it back home.”

The race attracted a field of 75 drivers competing for the $5,000 winner’s share, a colossal prize at the time. Driving the 1950 Oldsmobile, McGriff started 44th and finished ninth, 26 laps down. Mantz won the inaugural crown-jewel event by nine laps.

McGriff’s presence at the Southern 500 was more than just cross-pollination between East and West. It fueled France’s vision of creating a national — even international — sport.

By 1951, NASCAR’s top series, by then known as “Grand National,” had California on its schedule. Marshall Teague won the debut Golden State race in front of 9,000 fans at Carrell Speedway in Gardena, a half-mile dirt track.

France’s vision also included the establishment of a West Coast series that could serve to develop the talents of drivers unable to make costly trips to the South.

The Pacific Coast Late Model Circuit, founded in 1954, has evolved into what is now the ARCA Menards West Series after competing under the NASCAR Winston West Series label from 1971 through 2003 (though there were variations of the nomenclature during that period).

During the inaugural season, McGriff won the Pacific Coast Late Model Race at Bay Meadows Speedway in San Mateo. From a nine-race schedule in 1954, the series grew.

France entrusted two key figures with the health and prosperity of the West Coast racing — Les Richter, an all-pro linebacker with the Los Angeles Rams who managed Riverside International Raceway and later became vice president of special projects for International Speedway Corporation; and Ken Clapp, now-retired NASCAR vice president who, by his own estimation, promoted more than 4,800 single-day racing events during his illustrious career.

As the West Series was growing, so was the presence in California of NASCAR’s top division. The NASCAR Cup Series raced 48 times on the road course at Riverside, starting in 1958. From 1970 through 1981, the Riverside race was the opening event on the NASCAR schedule.

From 1971 through 1980, Cup drivers plied their trade at Ontario Motor Speedway, a 2.5-mile behemoth touted as the “Indianapolis of the West.” Appropriately, perhaps, A.J. Foyt won the first two races at Ontario, in 1971 and 1972.

Clearly, NASCAR had established a strong presence in California long before the opening of Auto Club Speedway in 1997. In celebrating NASCAR’s 75th anniversary this season, it’s prudent to remember that NASCAR’s association with the West Coast is almost as venerable.

It wasn’t until 1995, however, that the NASCAR Cup Series had its first West-Coast-born champion — Jeff Gordon. But in the 21st century, drivers born in the Pacific Time Zone have won 13 of 22 series titles.

Racing in the Los Angeles area continues to evolve. Riverside and Ontario are defunct, with Ontario Mills Mall now occupying the site of the large oval. The 2.0-mile configuration at Fontana will leave the Cup schedule in 2024, as NASCAR contemplates its conversion to a half-mile short track.

Anticipating that change, the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum already has brought two years of no-holds-barred short-track racing to Los Angeles proper — and has brought NASCAR racing to a new, broader audience in the process.