Unforgettable

          There are some things you never forget.

          We always remember our first car, first book by an author we eventually come to follow and our first kiss. Remember your first rock concert? How about your first trip to a big league ballpark?

          Your loyal blogger has never forgotten his first stock car race. It was the first race of any kind I saw in person and it was a life changer. Looking back at it now, the stats testify that it was really a heckuva show.

          It was November 24, 1974 at Ontario Motor Speedway in California, a race in what we now call NASCAR’s Cup division and believe me when I tell you, the stars were there.

          You want to talk about a Hall of Fame front row? Richard Petty started on the pole and the guy on the outside was A.J. Foyt. Petty’s pole-winning lap was clocked at 149.94 mph around Ontario’s 2.5-mile oval.

          A lot of people don’t remember the Ontario track, which is a shame. It was built to be a duplicate of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s racing venue and I guess it was pretty close to the original. The Ontario track benefited from better weather than Indy, obviously, and could hold races at the end of the year. That November event was the final race of the season for what was then called the Grand National Series.

          I sat in the grandstand nearest the first turn, in the section closest to the start/finish line, and you need to understand that when those dudes went running by after taking the green flag, my life changed. The cars themselves were preceded a rolling noise (which sounded a bit like an earthquake). Then the field came screaming by, just coming up toward full song, the 40 cars lined up by twos all bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper.

          Petty and Foyt leading them.

          How competitive was this race? Bobby Allison started fourth and he led the first lap. Got by both Petty and Foyt to lead lap one.

          I remember vividly that newspaper articles leading up to the race said that the heavy stock cars would not be able to pass in the flat corners the way the Indy cars could at Ontario and the stock cars would find it especially impossible to pass on the outside on Ontario’s relatively flat corners.

          Stock car racers, the media opined, put on a great show on the steeply-banked tracks in the South. But the passing at Ontario would have to be done on the straights. There was no way around it, so to speak.

          And I believe to this day that the reason A.J. Foyt passed Bobby Allison on the outside of turn one during the start of the second lap of that race was to be sure everyone understood that when Super Tex heard something was impossible, he went and did it anyway. By passing Allison in turn one, Foyt could be sure that everyone saw him do the impossible.

          Again.

          In all, there were 39 official passes for the lead that day and probably twice that many unofficial lead changes. An unofficial lead change comes when a driver passes another to take the lead but is not leading at the start/finish line, where the leader is officially recorded.

          The official leader list is pretty impressive. The first few were Allison, Foyt, David Pearson, Foyt again and Petty, then Foyt and Cale Yarborough. Petty eventually went out with an engine problem. Foyt and Allison went at it for the lead toward the end of the race before Foyt had to pit unexpectedly (I don’t remember why he had to pull in) and Foyt lost ground. Allison led the last 31 laps and won the race, only to have NASCAR discover that he had illegal rocker arms.

          Allison kept the win and NASCAR fined him a hefty sum.

          The leader averaged 134.963 mph for the 500-mile distance. The average speed was fast because there were only three caution periods and they combined for just total 17 laps. That’s just 8.5 percent of the race completed under the caution flag, a terrific 91.5 percent of the race under green flag conditions. All in all, a great show.

Yours truly has attended hundreds, if not thousands, of races since then at dirt tracks, short tracks, road courses, street races for Indy cars and F-1 cars, street races for stock cars, drag races, off road races for both cars and motorcycles. Even speedway bikes, which are really cool. Basically, I’ve seen everything from a 24-hour sports car race to a 3.8-second drag race.

But in all that time I don’t think I’ve seen a better race than that NASCAR show at Ontario in 1974.

 

Thanks for reading.