1958 Beach and Road Course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OStPTyU6dUs
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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/
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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
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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
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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.

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