Driven to the Past

S.D. Grady had a great column early this week about how Tony Stewart has grown into a better image and has expanded his fan base considerably. Not the first time this has happened, of course – think Darrell Waltrip. Maybe it’s the fact that the fans now have a new …

A fan asked me at the short track last week if I really had been hanging around racetracks since I was not quite 10 years old. As I’ve mentioned here before, I have indeed, except for a four-year tour in the U.S. Air Force – three of which were spent …

Watching all that rain and all the delays before they finally called the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last Monday took me back a few years. Somehow, I recall a time in the early 1960s when it started raining at a NASCAR race while they were fairly close to …

Some of the good memories and stories come from experiences off the track. This one has to do with a show car…. We used to make an effort to bring all kinds of show cars to Indianapolis in the week prior to our Busch Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. …

I’m getting a little tired of hearing Joey Logano referred to as “the best thing since sliced bread” as if it was something new. Understand me right, here – I don’t have anything at all against Logano. He seems to be a pretty darned good race driver who was thrust …

Sometime last year, our trivia guru here at Frontstretch asked a question about a former NASCAR driver with one win in, what is now, the Sprint Cup Series who had the same name as a current writer for this site. The answer was Tommy Thompson, and that brings up some memories …

Somebody asked me last week if I ever “lost” a car while I was in the flagstand. Well, I have to admit I did. Twice in about 30 years. First time was in an ARCA race at Campbellsville, Ky., a dirt (red clay, actually) high-banked quarter-mile, in the late 1960s. …

I hope all you stock car fans won’t get too mad at me for slipping into another memory about open wheel racing, but I like all types of racing, and I’ve been privileged to see some fantastic events. They hold a sprint car race at the Anderson Speedway in Anderson, Ind., on the night before the Indianapolis 500 which is called, appropriately, “The Little 500.” And if there are any questions, it’s two years older than the bicycle race using the same name over at Indiana University – so as far as I’m concerned, they had the name first.

I’m tired of hearing all these technical explanations about engine failures. It was much better when the driver and crew chief just said, “It blew up.” Besides, all of these technical terms are ignoring the real reason that the cars run. We suspected the truth back in the day, but I never heard it explained quite as well as an old mechanic did in telling my son about it one day. Forget all that stuff about pistons, rods, camshafts, crankshafts, bearings, etc.... What really makes a racing engine run is magic smoke.

ARCA has also progressed to the point where it is now a top-flight sanctioning body, and Marcum can be proud of what it has become. No more rolling into a track and letting the local officials handle things. One of my favorite memories of ARCA involves the last race on their schedule in the 1977 season. It was at Salem, and Moose Myers was leading the points by a slim margin, driving Jim Stovall’s No. 0 Chevrolet out of Fort Wayne, Ind. We didn’t have an ASA race that weekend, so I wandered over from Scottsburg to watch. That’s always been one of my favorite tracks, and it still is. I’d be there pretty often if I could still travel.