senor honda

1953
1953 Darlington Southern 500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYgBqX0stB8

senor honda

1954

Excerpt from A Chat with JACK ETHERIDGE - by Eddie Samples

Author's note: Jack Etheridge raced for about 20 years. He retired in 1954 to find a real job. Samples: Tell us a little about the pre-war racing days.

Etheridge: Well, as a kid I would always go to Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta and watch them race. I fell in love with it and would just about do anything to drive one. Raymond Parks had Red Vogt fix up a car owned by Gilbert Daniels. AAA sanctioned a race at Lakewood with all of the big names. This little ole car did good and Daniels sold it on the spot for $700.

Samples: Speaking of Raymond Parks, did you ever drive for him?

Etheridge: I drove a midget at Lakewood for him once. His regular drivers, Bob Flock and Red Byron, had no interest in driving it. That car really flew just to have a Ford engine in it. Beat a many Offy's that day.

Samples: Offenhausers were the class of the day?

Etheridge: Pretty much so. The Ford engines could wind up pretty good though.

Samples: So Red Byron drove Indy type cars?

Etheridge: Yeah, they fooled around with them over at Vogt's Garage. Back in the 1930's those things were two seaters and the mechanics would ride with them. I know in the 1940's Byron went to Indianapolis a couple of times but never qualified.

Samples: What do you remember about starting in stocks?

Etheridge: I grew up with a bunch of those guys in Atlanta. I raced for Airline Auto Service over on Spring Street some of the time. A bunch of us guys would be there or over at Red Vogt's Garage on West Marietta Street. All the trippers and drivers and mechanics had some link with both places. They always worked on trip cars at Vogt's and it just overflowed over to Airline. Trippers and racers were in those days much one of the same.

Samples: What exactly is tripping?

Etheridge: Liquor was made in the mountains and transported to the city. The trippers provided the transportation.

Samples: I always had the image of these trippers as Robert Mitchem in the movie Thunder Road.

Etheridge: Trippers usually came out a lot better when they filled up their cars in the mornings to blend in with the morning traffic going to Atlanta. They called it sneak traffic.
Samples: What was the best car for tripping?

Etheridge: I was talking to Raymond Parks the other day and we both agreed it was hard to beat a '32 Ford. It would carry 125 gallons at 8 pounds per gallon real good. Best trip car there was in my mind.

Samples: Tell me the scariest moment you had in racing?

Etheridge: You mean the day I talked to the Lord? It was in a race in Orlando, Florida. I was on the pole and Roy Hall was on the outside. Every lap he kept pushing me further in toward the fence until finally he pushed me through the fence and out in a lake. When the car hit the water it felt like concrete. The car was sinking. The windows were up, and I had on leather gloves and couldn't unbuckle my safety belt which was a holding backstrap for a mule with a big iron hook. I was in trouble, and I asked the good Lord to help me. I made it to the top about the time the divers entered the water.

Samples: Did Roy Hall say he was sorry?

Etheridge: Yeah, but you know a professional driver knows what he is doing. And Roy was a pro. He seemed to spend more time in jail then on the track, but regardless, he could dirve a race car.

Samples: Who was the best woman driver?

Etheridge: There were some pretty good women drivers. Ethel Flock and Sara Christian were good drivers. I guess the best was Louise Smith. She could hold her own.
(reprinted with permission from Pioneer Pages, the official newsletter of the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association)

senor honda

1955

senor honda

1956
1956 Darlington Southern 500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzoVAh2zLqU

senor honda

1957
1957 Southern 500 at Darlington.....when car bodies were off the showroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBFQ-czndKo

Spencer Maze
Love how qualifying was 4 days long and inspections consisted of 2 guys with a tape measure. Awesome. Wish NASCAR was still like this. You know, when the cars were actually STOCK!! There's absolutely nothing stock about today's stock cars. What's with all the dirt and dust on the track? No blowers back then i guess.

galaxiexl500
Denny, would you have even had the opportunity to see this video clip without the help of Wynns Friction Proofing? Sponsors make sporting events possible to be seen on TV, heard on radio and played on the internet for years to come. Enjoy life and quit your complaining.

****1957 Daytona Sand beach race course******************************
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXdQt8pW3ps

Kevin Peterson
im talking about the cup boys running dirt races not lower levels and todays nascar stock cars are nothing like the cars they ran on the beach, or for that matter other tracks in the early days because most of the cars they use to run were cars straight from the dealers lots or showroom and even the family car as well and most of them didnt have seat belts or roll cages and for the most part the motors and suspensions were totally stock. in todays racing even the lowest classes in nascar and all other racing venues all the cars have roll cages or bars to protect the drivers in some way and the motors of almost every car is highly modified with different heads, intakes,carberators, headers, and internal parts, like cams, cranks, pistons, valve springs everything that the rules allow and some they dont is modified for weight savings,or better handling, or horsepower, and aero dynamics a racer in todays sport does everything he can to make his car lighter faster and handle as good as it can in any class there are only really a few things that seperate the cup boys from the saturday night short track drivers.one is money without millions of dollars in cup you cant compete for very long at that level two is the sponsership again cup boys get more money because it costs more money for everything they do im not saying a guy couldnt build a car and compete against them but it would be tuff to do for more than a few races without good sponsership money to back them and three saturday night boys rarely race on anything bigger than a half mile track sometimes there are some that have raced on a threequarter mile and even one mile tracks but that is very rare for most saturday night racers so they never see the speeds the cup boys do and only a few lucky drivers get the chance to move up into even the leading ranks of nationwide or the trucks and even fewer yet get to be cup drivers

senor honda

1957
How the 'Black Widow' came to rule NASCAR in dark days

The 1957 Chevrolet dominated stock-car racing like no other under unusual circumstances.
http://a.fssta.com/content/dam/fsdig...80.high.35.jpg
By Tom Jensen Nov 25, 2016 at 9:34a ET

In 1957, Chevrolet set out to create a race car that would dominate NASCAR and establish Chevrolet as the car to beat in the minds of buyers across the country.

Known as the “Black Widow,” the 1957 Chevrolet was one of the most feared race cars of the decade.

The story behind the Black Widow is an interesting insight into how NASCAR and the automobile manufacturers functioned back in the day.

On June 6, 1957, the Automobile Manufacturers Association, a coalition of U.S. automakers, formally banned automobile racing, prohibiting advertising of race results, speed features of race cars, providing pace cars to tracks and other promotional activities.

This came in response to heavy Congressional pressure in the wake of a crash at the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans that killed more than 80 people when a car went off course and crashed into the stands, exploding in a ball of fire.

Rather than have Congress legislate a withdrawal from racing, the automakers did it themselves.

And at the same time, they were doing everything they could behind the scenes to get around their own restrictions. In the case of General Motors, they hired former Hudson lead race engineer Vince Piggins and moved him to Atlanta, where he established a business known as the Southern Engineering and Development Co., or SEDCO, which was run out of Nalley Chevrolet in Atlanta.

Under Piggins’ watchful eye, SEDCO built the first Black Widow for competition. The car was based on the economy Chevy One-Fifty Utility Sedan — or 150, for short — and featured a host of special go-fast items: a fuel-injected, 283-cubic-inch, 283-horsepower small-block Chevy engine, three-speed manual transmission, six-lug wheels, 20-gallon gas tank and no radio, cigarette lighter or arm rests.

In April 1957, Piggins put together a manual called the “1957 Chevrolet Stock Car Competition Guide,” which explained in great detail how Chevrolet dealers could build their own Black Widows. The manual, which was mailed to 411 Chevrolet dealerships, contained 170 individual GM-made parts that were needed to convert a stock Chevy 150 street car to a full-on NASCAR race car.

“This valuable brochure is provided to acquaint dealers, as well as performance-minded individuals, with the techniques that permit greatly safety and entertainment value for all who enjoy stock-car competition in the highest traditions of the sport,” GM wrote in the introduction of the manual.

The guide had some interesting details. On color choice, it noted “green is taboo in most American racing circles,” an old superstition about the sport.

And it recommended the 150 as the model to race because, “It is rugged and dependable, low in cost, with no unnecessary weight to hamper performance; and conforms with all (NASCAR) sanction requirements.”

GM ordered SEDCO to be shut down after the racing ban, but in private hands and with — allegedly — no factory support, the Black Widows were raced successfully all season long.

Buck Baker would go on to win the 1957 NASCAR Premier Series championship in a Black Widow. This despite the fact that rules were changed in mid-season to outlaw fuel injection. Others who drove them included Speedy Thompson, Rex White, Bob Welborn and Fireball Roberts.

To this day, the Black Widow remains a subject of much discussion among Chevrolet fans, and intense debate as well.

No one knows exactly how many Black Widows were built or how many survived, and the details of the car are a source of endless discussion and fascination among the hard-core NASCAR fans.

But this much is certain: For one season in 1957, the Black Widows ruled NASCAR and were lethal to the competition.

senor honda

1958 Beach and Road Course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OStPTyU6dUs
************************
1958 Daytona Beach Race
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wrpoFgKGR8
by nascarallout moviecraft
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1958Daytona Beach NASCAR Race 1958
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY2tjAgDfIA
by sitkasails The Daytona Beach stock car race on the beach, before the current track was built.
Video produced by http://www.truetraveler.com/
************************************************** *********
1958 Darlington Southern 500 (9th annual) Fireball Roberts won it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEcqoL3xA0

1958 Vickie Wood
VICKI WOOD
There's a lot to be said for women drivers, and Vicki Wood has said quite a bit. But she knows what she's talking about. She has watched both men and women racers, and she has driven with them and against them.

Vicki stands 5'3" inches tall and weighs in at 136 pounds. Her start in racing followed a trip to the local track in Detroit. Vicki recalls that during the powder puff race she commented to her husband, Skeeter, "If I couldn't drive any better than that, I'd quit." The next trip to the track, Skeeter took her into the pit area, pointed to a car, and said, "That's your car." She finished ninth.

Skeeter also influenced Vicki's driving style. He told her that when she approached two cars if she could not get through on the inside or outside, she should go between them and they would move apart. "I did as he said," Vicki recalls, "but when they saw my car between them, they both closed in and all three of us sat out the race."

At the beach in 1958 Vicki drove the same car as a well known male driver. He drove the car to an average speed of 139 miles per hour with a one-way run of 142 mph. Then came Vicki's turn. Her average speed was only 136 miles per hour, but her top one-way run was 143.

Between 1955 and 1960 Vicki set records on the beach-road course. In three of those years she recorded times faster than any of the men. In 1960 she drove a one-way record speed of 150.375 miles per hour.

Vicki's name is still in the NASCAR record books. She was third in the two-way flying mile in 1955 with an average speed of 125.838. In 1956 she was second with a speed of 136.081. That same year she had the fastest one-way run in measured mile history -- 143.827. In 1958 and 1959 she won the Pure Oil Performance Trials in the passing test against male competition, and in 1959 set a new (all drivers) measured mile record of 147.420. She holds the woman's record for the measured mile (150.375), the woman's record at Daytona International Speedway (130.379) and the woman's record at Atlanta International Raceway (121.30).

Even today there is nothing slow about Vicki Wood. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, Vicki was riding with friends on a long, straight, modern highway. The husband of one of the women was driving 90 mph when this 81-year-old grandmother smiled and said, "I thought you said you could drive fast."

Vicki lives in West Palm Beach and can often be found at LLOAR eve
************************************************** ****
1959
REX WHITE
When NASCAR celebrated its 50th Anniversary it took time to honor what they considered the top 50 NASCAR drivers of all time. One of those men was Rex White.

Rex is hardly a household name to racing fans today but many older fans remember and respect his accomplishments. Rex was Chevrolets best drover from the late fifties through 1963 when GM came down hard on its divisions who were providing support to drivers and owners who raced in NASCAR as well as other sanctioning bodies.

Rex has teamed up in 1959 with Louis Clements and they became a very formidable force in NASCAR racing. Rex and Louis met when they were on the Chevrolet Factory Racing Team (see picture) racing the #44, a Black Widow Fuel Injected '57. Before the American Manufactures Association's (AMA) ban on supporting all forms of racing in 1957 you could go to your local Chevy dealer's showroom and order a stock car ready to race. Who built these race cars to order? SEDCO, the Southern Engineering and Development Company. Jim Rathman for Chevrolet ran SEDCO before the AMA's ban on racing. The SEDCO crew would take the model you ordered from the Chevrolet Lakewood assembly plant in Atlanta and modify it at the SEDCO shop. They only built seven racecars before the ban was put in place. An interesting Footnote is that after the '57 Daytona Beach race Fuel Injection was banned from Competition for the rest of the season thus the term "Black Widow". Not only that but Rathman moved his entire operation to Miami. Chevrolet quit providing made to order stock cars and went undercover with its support for NASCAR through Rex and Louis. The factory support for racing was hidden in Chevrolets Marin engine Division.
Part of the Chevrolet Factory Racing Team

Rex won 28 NASCAR Grand National races. That was more Grand National races than the more well-known drivers you often hear about from that era like Lee Petty, Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly and Fireball Roberts. It's nice to win more races than your contemporaries but this is where it gets good. Rex was not only Chevrolets best driver and NASCAR's Grand National divisions win-ingest driver he was NASCAR's most consistent. Rex entered 233 NASCAR Grand National races in his career and finished in the top ten 163 times. That's about 70%! Tim Flock is the only driver that is close to Rex in the Grand National event category. Those facts are easy to obtain if you have a copy of Greg Felden's "Forty Years of Stock Car Racing" and know how to work a calculator. That's a record that is not likely to be broken because today's drivers have such long careers.

There are a lot of memories attached to Rex White's career. Just to name a few.


In 1961 Rex White was going for his second Grand National Championship
in a row when fellow Chevrolet driver Ned Jarrett nosed him out by 830
points, that was the closest points race of the early sixties.

Rex and Louis performed the first tests for Chevrolet on the 427 Cu in
Mystery Motor.
By - Harold Doherty
*********************
Richard Petty won 200 races. He won his first by beating Rex at Charlotte
on February 28, 1960.

Rex was the only Chevrolet driver to win on a Super-speedway with the
409 V8. The 409 and 348 were designed to be a truck engines. The "W" block as it was called won
two Grand National championships one as a 348 V8 in '60 and the other as
a 409 in '61. the RAT 396/427 motor, which started out as a pure racing
engine never won a NASCAR Championship and became a truck engine.
Go figure.

*************************

senor honda

1959 Daytona Speedway opened for Business. 47,000 fans for first race.
1959 Daytona 500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCXbtWcUHY

By Graham Clayton
This was the only Daytona 500 to feature both the Grand National and Convertible divisions running in the same race. The Grand National cars started on the inside line, while the Convertible cars started on the outside line.
************************************************** *********
1959 Daytona 500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTAUxYHjSgU
I do not own the copyrights to this video. This is the 1959 Daytona 500 that I had on a VHS. It comes from a VHS set called "The Golden Era of Racing". If you know anything about this set please tell me because I would like to buy more volumes from the set.
**************************************
1960
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB8Q1xMAXUE

Daytona International Speedway- Daytona Beach, FL
February 14, 1960

senor honda

1961
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7VrygkrD1c

Marvin Panch wins the third running of the Daytona 500 held on February 26, 1961. Noticeably absent from the race was both Lee Petty and his son Richard who were injured in their respective qualifying races. Lee suffers life threatening injuries in his wreck and the inaugural winner of the Daytona 500 would never race the high banks of Daytona again. Lee Petty passed away at 86 in 2000.
***********************************************
In separate races, Richard Petty and Lee Petty flew over the single guard rail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohw7OMMAgUw

From his hospital bed, lee Petty said: "Y'all go on up to the Plymouth dealer and buy a new car."

Fireball Roberts is the fastest qualifier and is leading the field by a full lap when his engine lets go with just 13 laps to go. Marvin Panch inherits the lead and goes on to his only Daytona 500 victory.

Time of race: 3:20:32
Average Speed: 149.601 mph
Pole Speed: 155.709 mph
Cautions: none
Margin of Victory: 16 sec
Attendance: 51,287
Purse: $21,050

senor honda

1962
1962 Daytona 500 but first a bit of stock car history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggpquAEgNgc

by Michael Barr I do not own the copyrights to this video. This is the 1962 Daytona 500 that I had on a VHS. It comes from a VHS set called "The Golden Era of Racing". If you know anything about this set please tell me because I would like to buy more volumes from the set.