1001 NASCAR Facts. John Close
1906 American Grand Prize Race at Savannah, Georgia. There, Continental Tires and Bosch Magneto posted additional contingency money ($4,500 and $1,000, respectively) for the winner while Michelin Tire paid $1,000 to the winner.
22 The 1930s saw car designers literally switch gears. The emphasis from luxury and style to mechanical innovation and reliability. Improvements that became part of NASCAR vehicles in later decades were smooth shifting synchromesh transmissions, hydraulic brakes, power steering, and a sleeker, all-steel aerodynamic body shape. Two other 1930s innovations (a steering column–mounted gearshift and in-dash AM radio) never really caught on with the racing crowd but proved to be popular options with the buying public just the same.
23 Unlike today’s modern NASCAR driver who goes into battle with the highest-quality personal safety gear available, early racers wore little to protect themselves from injury. Stock car racing helmets in the 1920s and 1930s were often little more than replicas of leather football helmets or football helmets themselves. Usually a T-shirt, work pants and boots, goggles, and leather driving gloves completed the driver’s safety ensemble.
24 Although Goodyear and Firestone churned out racing tires for Indy Cars in the 1920s and 1930s, neither firm made an attempt to create a racing-specific tire for the emerging stock car market. That left the stock car, roadster, and Jalopy racers of the 1920s and 1930s to seek out the best production tires for their racers. These early tires featured an inner tube of compressed air inside a hard rubber outer casing reinforced with layers or plies of fabric cords. Initially made of cotton, the cords were replaced by rayon in the 1930s. The best of these bias-ply tires for racing proved to be harder rubber composition truck tires built to withstand the loads and long distances of commercial vehicles. At a cost of nearly $8 for a set of four, most Depression-era racers didn’t have money for new tires, which sent drivers and teams scurrying around the local junkyard for used tires. These racing scuffs usually cost 10 to 25 cents each.
25 There is no record of a NASCAR race ever being held at the Narragansett Trotting Park or Rhode Island State Fairgrounds racetrack, but the sanctioning body owes a tip of the hat to the 1-mile dirt oval just the same. The first automobile oval-track race in America was held at the Narragansett Trotting Park September 7, 1896. With an estimated 60,000 fair-goers on hand to watch the race, seven cars (five internal combustion, one steam, and one electric powered) entered the event. A Riker Motor Company Electric Car won the five-lap race in 15 minutes logging a top speed of 24 mph. Narragansett Trotting Park continued to be the hub for auto racing in the Northeast and hosted numerous events through 1913. The popularity of the races doomed the horse races there. Eventually, the facility was taken over by the state and renamed the Rhode Island State Fairgrounds in 1913. The track was paved and reconfigured with banked turns in 1915. Eddie Rickenbacker, who went on to be America’s top flying ace in World War I, won the first race on the new track September 18, 1915. The track continued to host racing events until closing for good after the 1924 racing season.
26 Located in Yonkers, New York, the Empire City Race Track was one of the first facilities in New York State to host auto races. Built in 1899 as the Empire City Trotting Club at a cost of $780,000, the half-mile dirt oval track featured a 7,500-seat grandstand. Closed for horse racing almost as quickly as it opened, the track began hosting select auto racing–related events including a world record speed run in 1902 by Barney Oldfield and the Ford 999. Oldfield covered the 1.6-kilometer distance in 55.54 seconds. Auto racing continued at Empire City until 1907 when the track was purchased and reopened as a thoroughbred horse racing facility. The last vestiges of Empire City Racetrack came down in 1950 when the track was renamed Yonkers Raceway. In 1972, the Rooney family (owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers) purchased the track. Today, it flourishes as one of the top horse trotting facilities in the United States, hosting nearly 250 events annually.
Here is what’s left of Frank Day’s Ford Arrow after he crashed at Milwaukee Mile’s inaugural event in 1903. Day was the first driver to perish in a race. (Photo Courtesy Steve Zautke Collection)
27 Opened in 1903, The Milwaukee Mile, on the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in West Allis, today stands as America’s longest continuously operating speedway. The Mile first came on the scene as a privately owned, 1-mile horse racing track in 1876. It was then purchased by the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society as part of the property used to create a new, permanent site for the Wisconsin State Fair in 1891. A decade later, interest in staging automobile auto races on the dirt oval sparked the first race. Thousands of spectators flocked to the track on Friday, September 11, to witness the two-day event highlighted by match races between Henry Ford’s 999 and Arrow racers. Both cars had mechanical trouble on the first day allowing William Jones of Chicago to wheel a Columbia to victory in the speedway’s first auto race. His time of 8 minutes, 21 seconds in the five-lap event was good enough to beat four other competitors including the second-place driver, an unknown African-American racer simply known as Black Jack. Unfortunately, no motorsports events of any kind were scheduled for the Milwaukee Mile in 2017. In all, nearly 40 different NASCAR-sanctioned events were held at the track from 1984 to 2009.
28 It was inevitable that NASCAR would one day race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning with the first Brickyard 400 in 1994. More than 80 years earlier, the track opened on June 9, 1909. Ironically, the first competition at America’s motorsports Mecca wasn’t a car race but rather a National Hot Air Balloon Championship held on June 5, 1909. Organized by track founder, builder, and president Carl Fischer, the balloon event drew more than 40,000 people providing working capital to complete the unfinished 2.5-mile racetrack. Opened for car racing on August 19, 1909, the track’s original crushed stone surface couldn’t withstand the pressure of heavy automobiles, so in late 1909, Fischer had the surface repaved with more than 3.2-million bricks held together with grouted cement. After a series of 1910 race festivals featuring as many as 40 events over three days, Indy hosted its first 500-mile race May 30, 1911. A field of 40 cars took a five-wide start in front of an estimated 80,000 fans with Ray Harroun and his Marmon Wasp holding off Ralph Mulford for the victory. The event drew unprecedented exposure for the sport and new fans throughout the country, ultimately setting the stage for decades-long expansion of motorsports in America including the formation of NASCAR.
29 Long before Richmond International Raceway hosted its first NASCAR event, racing was a mainstay at the Virginia State Fairgrounds. In August 1907, the 1-mile dirt oval at the State Fairgrounds hosted the first race in Richmond. The event drew 2,500 fans and set the stage for the Fairgrounds to host countless open-wheel races throughout the next four decades. By 1928, the Richmond Fairgrounds was hosting unmodified stock car races. Jalopy races made their debut at the track in the 1930s and on July 4, 1941, the track held its first sanctioned stock car race. After World War II, racing continued at the Virginia State Fairgrounds at a new site in rural Henrico County, now home to Richmond International Raceway. The track was a mainstay for stock car racing throughout the remainder of the decade and into the early 1950s, joining the NASCAR ranks on April 19, 1953, when Lee Petty won the track’s first Grand National event in a Petty Enterprises Dodge. Since then, the facility has hosted more than 200 races in seven different NASCAR divisions.
30 Can you imagine a NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, or Truck Series race being run on a superspeedway made out of wood? Of course not, but that’s exactly what made up the racing surface of America’s first superspeedways. With both land and wood plentiful and inexpensive, giant wooden racetracks made their first appearance in America in 1910. That’s when the first of these Board Tracks (a 1.25-mile oval constructed of 2 × 4–foot wooden planks) was built in Playa del Rey, California. In addition to its unique construction, Playa del Rey also had 20-degree banking in the corners making it the first high-banked speedway in the country. Wooden superspeedway construction surged in 1915 with the addition of a 2-mile banked oval in Chicago, 1-mile banked ovals in Brooklyn, New York, and Des Moines, Iowa, and a 1.25-mile banked oval in Omaha, Nebraska. By far the most unique Board Track constructed