NASCAR :BILL FRANCE THE BEGINNING

NASCAR History "The Beginning"

Bill France Sr. was born in Washington, D.C. and lived there until his early 20s. His father was a teller at Park Savings Bank in Washington, and his son might have followed in his footsteps with the exception that he had a fascination with the automobile and how it performed. As a teenager, Bill Sr. would often skip school and take the family car to a nearby track and run laps until he had enough time to get the car, a Model-T Ford, back home before his father got home. He held several hands-on jobs until he eventually owned his own service station. He made a name for himself and built a customer base by getting up early in the wintry mornings and going out to crank the cars for white collar bureaucrats.
In 1934 the Frances loaded up their car and headed for the south with a total of $25. Where they were headed has never been clearly established but some say Tampa and others say Miami Beach. Two days later they arrived in Daytona Beach. Rumors say that they were broke and had to settle there while some say his wife had a sister in nearby New Smyrna Beach and still others say that their car broke down and they had no choice but to settle in and stay there. However years later Bill Jr. stated that his mother did not have a sister living in New Smyrna Beach and that a broken down car would never stop his father from getting where he wanted because he was an experienced mechanic.
The hard packed sand between Daytona Beach and its northern neighbor Ormond Beach was the site of the world-record automobile speed trials. They started in 1902 and picked up speed right up to the '30s. By then the speeds were approaching 300 miles per hour along the firm and smooth inviting sand. In the spring of 1935 Sir Malcolm Campbell was taking his Bluebird rocket car to Daytona Beach in hopes of running at 300 miles per hour for yet another land-speed-record. Along with this and the weather and the smaller hospitable and more affordable area maybe this is the reason behind the Frances staying in Daytona Beach.
Campbell never did get his record of 300 mph at Daytona, instead his best he could do was 276.82mph and on March 7, 1935 Campbell announced that he was moving the speed trials to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It was the shifting winds and changing tides that made Campbell realize that he would not reach his goal of 300mph if he kept working out of Daytona Beach. Campbell did beat the 300mph speed at Bonneville in late 1935.
Daytona Beach area officials were determined to bring in speed-related events after Campbell left and this was how Bill France Sr. got his start in race promotions in late 1935. City officials asked championship dirt track racer and local resident Sig Haugdahl to organize and promote an automobile race along a 3.2 mile course which included Highway A1A southbound from Daytona Beach and the same beach that had been used for the land speed record runs. The 78-lap, 250 mile event for street-legal family sedans was sanctioned but the American Automobile Association for cars built in 1935 and 1936. Daytona Beach posted a $5,000.00 purse, with $1,700.00 for the winner. The biggest problem was that people arrived there earlier than the ticket-takers and established their spots on the beach. The turns at each end very virtually impassable, leading to stuck and stalled cars which created scoring disputes and technical protests. Then the race was called after 75 laps with Milt Marion declared the winner. France finished fifth behind Marion, Shaw, Elmore, and Sam Purvis. Ben Shaw and Tommy Elmore both protested the race but their appeals were squashed. That was the first and last race the City of Daytona Beach ever promoted. Well how would you feel if your City lost $22,000.00 from one race promotion.
Haugdahl and France had become very good friends and were not about to give up. Together they talked the Daytona Beach Elks Club into helping promote a race over Labor Day weekend of 1937. Despite a paltry $100.00 purse and improved management, promotion, and track conditions the Elks lost money too. They also like the city lost their interest in motor sports promotion. With that Haugdahl decided that he too had enough and he bowed out of the motor sport promoting as well. This left France all to himself to try and get the area interested since he could still see a future for stock car racing, however he was a struggling filling-station operator and didn't have enough cash to cover a purse, advertise and promote the race plus pay the city to set up the course.
France was finally able to convince local restaurateur Charlie Reese, rich and well known, to post a $1,000.00 purse and let France recruit drivers and spread the word. Danny Murphy beat France in the 150-miler that generated just enough profit to convince the co-promoter to do it again. They managed another successful stock car promotion on Labor Day weekend of 1938. France beat Lloyd Moody and Pig Ridings in that race and then organized and promoted three more races in March, July, and September of 1939. They did it again in March , July 4, and September of 1940 France fared well in those three races of 1940 finishing fourth in March, first in July, and sixth in September. France was able to promote two races in March, one each in July and August of 1941 prior to the war breaking out. The war brought a stop to motor sport racing and France went to work for the Daytona Boat Works while his wife handled the family filling station.

Shortly after the war ended and things started returning to normal Bill France left the boat works. France was obsessed with the idea that a single, firmly governed sanctioning body was necessary if stock car was to be a success. He was well aware, as a driver and promoter, that the minor-league sanctioning bodies reeked of inconsistency. France wanted an organization that would sanction and promote races, bring uniformity to race procedures plus technical rules. He wanted an association that would oversee a membership benefit and insurance fund, and one that would promise to pay postseason awards, and crown a single national champion using a clearly defined points system.
At that time there were several organizations who claimed to sanction national championship races. One was the American Automobile Association (AAA), but they were more concerned with open-wheel, open-cockpit, champ car racing. The A.A.A eventually became known as the USAC/CART league (Indy-car racing). The other groups were the United Stock Car Racing Association, National Auto Racing league, and American Stock Car Racing Association. The Georgia based National Stock Car Racing Association was only interested with-in the state and so they didn't crown a national champion. The Daytona Beach Racing Association only promoted within the city so they made no claim to a national champion either. France was so devoted to creating a racing association that would adhere to the rules mentioned above. With that in 1947 he retired from racing so he could concentrate all his time and attention to organize that body.
The first meeting of the National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing was held on December 12, 1947 at the Streamline Inn Motel in Daytona Beach, Florida. The organization named Bill France Sr. as its first president. William Henry Getty France, aka, Big Bill France, gathered together a group of racing promoters, drivers, and mechanics with the dream of establishing an organization to set a standard set of rules and regulations to help promote stock car racing.
Incorporated on February 21, 1948, the organization hired Erwin "Cannonball" Baker to be the first Commissioner of Racing. The new organization sanctioned its first race on the Daytona Beach road/beach course in February of 1948, several days before it was legally incorporated. More than 14,000 fans watched that first event, a 150-miler that Red Byron won ahead of Teague, Raymond Parks, Buddy Shuman, and Wayne Pritchett.
France's original plan was for NASCAR to oversee three separate and distinct classes of cars: Strictly Stock Cars, Modified Stock Cars, and Roadsters. Perhaps surprisingly, the Modified and Roadster classes were seen as more attractive to fans than Strictly Stock. As things turned out, though, the audience NASCAR attracted wanted nothing to do with Roadsters, a "Yankee" series more popular in the Midwest and Northeast. It didn't take long for France to recognize that he didn't need the Roadster.
After the war was over the big automakers had to switch production from Tanks and Jeeps back to their makes of cars. This got France to thinking that the fans would want to purchase cars when they see them winning at the races and he knew that productions were going to be slow for a while. He decided that NASCAR would run pre '40s Fords and Chevrolets plus a handful of new Buick's were allowed. The 1948 NASCAR schedule covered 52 dirt-track races for modified's and Red Byron was the national champion that year.
In February of 1949 France staged a 20 mile exhibition race near Miami for his Strictly Stock division. Fearing he would lose out to a promoter in North Carolina, France decided to stage a Strictly Stock points race. This race took place in June and was scheduled as a 200-lap, 150 mile race around a 3/4-mile dirt track in Charlotte, North Carolina. It carried a purse of $5,000. for 33 street-legal family sedans that had been built since 1946. Pole sitter Bob Flock led the first five laps in a 46 Hudson, Bill Blair led laps 6 thru 150 in a 1949 Lincoln, and Glen Dunnaway led the remaining laps in a 1947 Ford. After the race Dunnaway's car was inspected and failed because he had altered the rear springs. He was disqualified and moved to the back of the field and stripped him of the win and money. This moved Roper to the first place spot followed by Fonty Flock in second, Byron in third, Sam Rice in fourth, and Tim Flock finished out the top five. Hubert Westmoreland owner of Dunnaway's car sued the new sanctioning body for $10,000. however a North Carolina Judge ruled that the officials had the right to make and enforce their rules without outside interference and dismissed the suit.
That mid-summer race attracted 13,000 plus fans, far more than was expected. NASCAR promoted seven more Strictly Stock races that year: two each in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, one each in Florida, New York, and Virginia. Byron won the Strictly Stock class that year in what was to become the Grand Nationals and Winston Cup series. Lee Petty finished second in points followed by Bob Flock, Curtis Turner, and Jack Smith. Fifty drivers raced in at least one race each that year and between 16 and 45 drivers showed up for each race.
France wondered what was missing from his Strictly Stock division. He had to come up with a blockbuster event to draw more attention to his Strictly Stock cars. The USAC champ car circuit had the Indy 500, and NASCAR Modified and Sportsman division had their annual beach/road races in February at Daytona Beach. In 1950 Harold Brasington built a 1.25 mile, high-banked, egg shaped speedway just west of his hometown of Darlington. He stunned the racing world by paving it and saying that he wanted to someday host a 500-mile stock car race. Brasington himself a retired racer had known France from their old racing days at Daytona and other dirt tracks throughout the Southeast and Midwest. He was aware that France's new organization wanted to expand their image and he figured a 500-mile race would be the answer.
In the fall of 1949 Brasington bought a 70 acre farm from Sherman Ramsey and he began carving a superspeedway out of what had been a cotton and peanut field. Instead of developing his track into a true oval, he was forced to create an egg-shaped facility with one end tighter, more steeply-banked and narrower than the other end. You see he promised Ramsey when he purchased the land that the track wouldn't disturb the minnow pond on the property's western fringe. So that meant that Barrington could make the eastern end as wide, sweeping, and flat as he wanted but the western end had to be just the opposite because of the minnow pond.
It took almost a year to build and pave the new track. In the summer of 1950 as Sam Nunis spoke of promoting a 500-mile NASCAR race at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, Barrington and France were making the final arrangements to run a 500-miler at Darlington on Labor-day. The inaugural Southern 500 carried a stock-car record purse of $25,000. and was co-sanctioned by NASCAR and the rival Central States Racing Association. Over 80 cars showed up and it took two weeks to get them all qualified. The race started with a 75 car field aligned in 25 rows and three abreast.
After filling all 9,000 seats fans were directed to the infield where a sea of over 6,000 people watched the race. It took Johnny Mantz more than six hours to cover the full 500 miles. He drove a 1950 Plymouth owned by France, Westmoreland, and a couple more guys. Fireball Roberts finished second, Red Byron was third, and Bill Rexford was fourth. The Southern 500 was NASCAR's only paved track event in 1950. There were only four paved events in 1951 and they were two at Dayton, Ohio and one each at Darlington, and Thompson, Connecticut. Paved tracks didn't begin to gain acceptance until the late '50s. Darlington and the half-miler at Dayton each had two races in 1952. In 1953 Darlington and the new 1-mile asphalt track at Raleigh, North Carolina each had a Grand National race. In 1954 Darlington, Raleigh, and the paved road course at Linden, New Jersey Airport had a race each. In 1955 Martinsville, Virginia had one race, Darlington one race, and Raleigh had two races.
NASCAR's future began to come in focus in 1956. NASCAR sanctioned 11 paved-track races among 56 events. They had 14 out of 53 venues in 1957, and 24 out of 51 venues in 1958. Not only were they racing on oval tracks France also scheduled road course races at Watkins Glen, New York, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, and Bridgehampton, New York. Suddenly, almost overnight, it seemed NASCAR racing was becoming a national series rather than a regional series, Bill France's dream was heading toward the future. NASCAR history tells the real story.

EVOLUTION 3

While a "superspeedway boom" occurred from 1959 to the early 1960s -- with no less than four major speedways being built in Daytona Beach, Fla.; Hanford, Calif.; Concord, N.C.; and Hampton, Ga. -- the automobile manufacturers gradually realized that to sell new cars it certainly helped to win races. Despite accruing the knowledge of what it took to win Grand National races, the period was interesting in that both engine and body configurations went through several "generations" and radical changes as race cars, by and large, matched what was pushed in the showrooms by the manufacturers.

One of the most interesting occurrences in 1959 came when the Ford Motor Company abandoned its top of the line Galaxy model to use its Thunderbird as the race car of choice.

The Galaxy was a fairly bulky car that year, so Holman & Moody, Ford's acknowledged racing arm, built a fleet of T-Birds to compete in Grand National racing, the forerunner of the Cup Series. The T-Bird was lower and sleeker than the Galaxy but it still fell within the dimensional parameters set in the NASCAR rules ... even though the car had been created as a sports car that was designed to compete with Chevrolet's Corvette.
Although the T-Bird continued to compete, Ford returned to its premier Galaxy Starliner model in 1960. Conventional, full frame cars were still the norm as purpose-built tube frame race cars were still out on the Grand National horizon. Stories of race teams -- as Ray Fox's did in 1960 to win the Daytona 500 -- picking up cars from showrooms only days before races and converting them to race cars were commonplace. In the General Motors' camp, teams had figured out the coil spring rear suspension setup that was introduced in 1958 and virtually everyone was running the 1959 Chevrolet on the big tracks, where it was particularly effective.
This "light bulb" effect certainly led some to believe that the racers must have gotten some suspension geometry help from Detroit, but the manufacturers were still laying pretty low due to the Automobile Manufacturers Association agreement that had disassociated them from the sport. Through this period, of course, innovation often was the answer to necessity, and with many races still conducted on dirt tracks and with pavement tracks sometimes coming apart, screens, grillwork and other protective devices were often de rigeur.
The early days found race teams not necessarily locked-into a particular manufacturer's model or even make. They were able to do some amazing things with cars that looked particularly unwieldy to the naked eye. Witness the monstrous Oldsmobile with which Lee Petty won the inaugural Daytona 500, which was a somewhat tank-like ride.
Petty jumped back and forth between Chrysler and Oldsmobile in that time, depending on which car was more suited to the task at hand. As the superspeedway boom era continued, manufacturers began to pay more attention to aerodynamics.
The 1963 Ford Fastback Galaxy was used in the manufacturer's literature and was advertised as a race car. The 1960-61 Starliner had what was actually an effectively aerodynamic roofline. In fact, with the 1962 car a pretty boxy proposition, Fred Lorenzen ran a 1962 Galaxy with a 1961 Ford roof in a one-shot deal for the Atlanta 500 -- and won the race in the car's only appearance. General Motors had a grip on the Grand National championship in the early 1960s, with Rex White and Ned Jarrett winning titles in 1960-1961 in Chevrolets and Joe Weatherly copping the titles in 1962-1963 primarily in Pontiacs. In the 1961-1962 season Pontiac won more races than any manufacturer in the history of the Grand National Division in consecutive years (52).
Mercury added a twist to the manufacturers' battle when it entered racing in a bigger way in 1963 with its Marauder model. Bill Stroppe, the West Coast's answer to Holman & Moody, handled the Mercury competition program with a similar assembly line approach. Unknown newcomer Billy Wade swept four consecutive races in 1964 driving a Mercury. Mercury prompted the switch of legendary car owner Bud Moore to the Ford Motor Co. camp when Moore -- in the absence of significant support from General Motors -- switched from Pontiac to Mercury. Weatherly took the 1963 championship but had to pick-up rides for most of the year. Ford scored another coup when it grabbed Fireball Roberts, who won his first race for Ford in 1963 at Bristol. The swapping of personnel is one part of stock-car evolution that has been around since the beginning. Shock development, which today is acknowledged as critical to race car performance, also experienced more emphasis in the early 1960s. The popular "Air Lift" shocks were being phased out and Monroe and Gabriel became heavily involved in shock development for racing applications. Tire development also continued. Firestone was the dominant tire company, but Goodyear was involved to a limited degree. Increasing speeds made these developments important. Another significant advance during this period occurred as roll cage structures began to become a more integral part of the car and as such, were used to stiffen the chassis and improve a car's handling as well as serving as vital protection. A variety of triangulated bars, from front to back, across the mid-section of the car and also in the doors were as much to stiffen and strengthen the cars as they were to serve as protection.

There was a tremendous amount of flex inherent in the "x-frame" cars used in the 1958-60 period. Smokey Yunick was one of the first car builders to use the roll cage as an integral part of the car's chassis. Ford had unleashed the flow of relatively open factory support when it repudiated the AMA agreement in 1962. While General Motors remained mostly silent, within a few weeks Chrysler announced it would develop high performance parts for stock-car racing. Another big issue of this period was in the engine compartment.

Noted mechanic Fox was the mastermind behind Chevrolet's so-called "mystery engine," a 427-cubic inch "high lift" high performance piece that would replace the 409-cubic inch engine that was often referred to as a "boat anchor" because of its weight. Yunick, the other half of the legendary mechanical pair that lived in Daytona Beach, was also involved in the development of that engine. While much of the mystique of this engine was as much hype as it was fact, at the time Ford claimed it spent $1 million chasing the development curve on Chevy's powerplant. Junior Johnson, driving Fox's 1963 Chevrolet, sat on a lot of front rows with the combination, but as had often been the case with other potent mixes, in most cases the car was either a top-five finisher or it broke. Among the team's accomplishments in 1963 was sweeping the front row for the Firecracker 400 at Daytona, with Johnson and G.C. Spencer doing the honors.
The engine wars reached a peak when in 1964 Richard Petty brought a Plymouth hemispherical combustion chamber engine, or "hemi," and cleaned house at Daytona, including winning the first of seven Daytona 500s. The Plymouth and Dodge body styles had been streamlined. The hemis -- Plymouth's Super-Commando and Dodge's Hemi-Charger -- now had an appropriate platform in which to sit. The engine had first been produced in the early 1950s, but had been shelved with the AMA ban in 1956. Chrysler engineers also came up with a double rocker arm system used in conjunction with the hemi heads. This combination, which created a free-breathing combustion chamber, produced a good bit of top end horsepower, particularly on high-speed facilities.
Ford came back with its tunnel port 427-cubic inch engine. And Ford had a well-handling race car. Following the Daytona 500, the fourth points race of the season, Ford won 11 out of the next 15 races -- 13 of which were on short tracks. Plymouth and Dodge won two races apiece in that stretch. As was the case in many other aspects of racing, NASCAR kept a close eye on these developments and took action, as it became necessary.

EVOLUTION 2

The variety of race tracks in use and the intensity of the competition level necessitated various modifications to the "strictly stock" cars. While many of these changes were instituted in the interest of safety, manufacturers found that there were ways to integrate high performance parts and pieces into their mainstream production line, thereby making these "hot" parts eligible for use in Grand National racing, the forerunner of the Cup Series.
One of the first items produced specifically for stock-car racing was a racing tire manufactured and distributed by the Pure Oil Company in 1952. Prior to that time, street tires were all that were available for racing applications. Not everything that was developed through this period was an integral part of the cars themselves. Two-way radios were first used in a NASCAR race at the 1952 Modified-Sportsman race on the beach/road course at Daytona Beach, Fla.
Their use developed until they became an indispensable piece of equipment on a Grand National race car. In the early 1950s roll cages also made more of a widespread appearance. Tim Flock won the 1952 Modified-Sportsman race in Daytona Beach, but was disqualified due to his roll cage being made of wood. Although some novel uses of bed frames and other iron devices were created for roll bars, their use stiffened the chassis and improved the cars' performance. One of the first major changes in race car development came in 1953, when the Oldsmobile, Lincoln and Hudson car companies introduced "severe usage" kits, primarily composed of suspension parts, in response to an alarming spate of failures to spindles, hubs, axles and other suspension pieces. The manufacturers also were discovering that they could introduce high performance options in their street cars that would make them eligible for the race track.
Hudson's Twin-H carburetor setup was one such tweak that Hudson drivers used to win 22 of 37 races in 1953. In 1955, Chevrolet and Ford, mirroring their intense spirit of competition that's still displayed today, also had factory-backed programs. But it was Chevrolet's introduction of the 355-cubic inch small-block V8 engine that was one of the most significant developments in the history of stock-car racing. That engine, with very minor changes, is still in use by General Motors race teams across the country in most racing series.
Through this period, Marshall Teague of Daytona Beach, one of racing's true innovators who was largely credited with bringing the Hudson Motor Car Company and Pure Oil into racing, pioneered the use of Chevrolet truck spindles and suspension parts when he was competing in AAA stock-car racing. The giveaway that a car was running the heavier axles and beefier suspension components was a six-lugged wheel, not the typical five-lugged version.
Buick unveiled a major coup in 1957 when it had finned aluminum brake drums on its Roadmaster. The car, made famous by Fireball Roberts, used a braking system that dissipated heat more efficiently due to the use of aluminum and the finned design. As the decade of the 1950s began to come to close and the superspeedway era was about to dawn GM made a major change to the frame design of its cars in 1958. It debuted an X-frame design with a coil spring rear suspension, departing from the box frame with leaf spring rear suspension that was more popular and better understood by the racers. Consequently, very few 1958 Chevrolets were used, particularly early in the season, as the racers chose to go with what they were familiar with. However, innovative mechanic Henry "Smokey" Yunick had the system figured out and driver Paul Goldsmith won the final beach/road course race, using a 1958 Pontiac with the new design. The newer setup would prove to be the hot tip on the big tracks that would begin to open with the advent of Daytona International Speedway in 1959. It was the next step in the ongoing evolution of the stock car. •

NASCAR THE EVOLUTION PART 1

Throughout the history of NASCAR, its race cars have been transformed from road-going, lumbering true "stock" cars into the sleek, technologically advanced machines that we see today on ultra-modern speedways. In tracing the evolution of the cars that we know today as the Cup Series, it's necessary to go back to the beginnings of NASCAR and its "Strictly Stock Division.

" It all started with races on the famed Daytona beach and road course in the late 1940s.

When NASCAR was formed in 1948 there was a definite shortage of new cars in the post-war era. The feeling was that race fans wouldn't stand for new cars being beat up on a race track while they were driving a rattletrap pre-war automobile, so "Modified" cars were the early staple of NASCAR racing. However, in 1949, NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. re-visited the idea of racing the cars that people actually drove on the street -- late model family sedans.

Since no other racing organization had seized the idea, France figured it might take root and create added interest. The success of the modern Cup Series proves he was correct. From the racers' perspective, putting a race car together was not a high-dollar deal. If a brand-new Buick sold for about $4,000, due to the lack of modification that could be done to it, the car could be raced for very little more of an investment. In some instances, rental cars were actually used as race cars by point-chasing drivers who had no locked-in ride for an event.

Cars typically were either driven to the track or towed behind pick-ups and family sedans. Other than tweaking and tuning of the engine, nothing could be done to these early Strictly Stock cars. The window glass -- front, back and sides -- was intact. Ropes and aircraft harnesses were used as seat belts. Roll bars -- which were mandated in 1952 -- were neither required nor often installed. One thing the strictly-stock designation encouraged was a great diversity of manufacturers on the track.

The first official Strictly Stock Division race had nine makes come to the line: Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford, Hudson, Kaiser, Lincoln, Mercury and Oldsmobile. Some of the biggest problems were tires; wheel and suspension failures brought on by stresses that were atypical of normal road use. These concerns brought about novel solutions such as one detailed by two-time Grand National (forerunner of Cup Series) champion Tim Flock, who described a trap door in the floorboard of his race car that he could open with a chain to check right-front tire wear. "When the white cord was showing, we had about one or two laps left before the tire would blow," Flock said. Due to the rough-surfaced dirt tracks that were predominant in the early days of the sport, the only modification that was allowed was a reinforcing steel plate on the right front wheel to prevent lug nuts from pulling through the rims on conventional wheels. Otherwise, racing stock cars in the early days of the sport was very much a seat-of-the-pants endeavor.

But it was one that spawned innumerable legends of drivers who created them, literally, with their own hands, feet and indomitable wills and courage.