Editor’s Note: In a nod to our 90 years of history, each week SPEED SPORT will look back at the top stories from 15, 30 and 60 years ago as told in the pages of National Speed Sport News.
15 Years Ago — 2010
News: NASCAR CEO Brian France usually sits down in the lion’s den at Daytona in February and again in July, for a sort of “state of the sport” meeting.
On Friday, it was time for another session, and the third-generation leader of NASCAR touched on various items of interest for NASCAR fans and competitors alike.
First, there was the overall 50,000-foot view from the top floor of NASCAR headquarters.
“We were just talking about all the things that are going on this weekend with the new Nationwide car and bigger plates, a little activity yesterday in practice,” France said. “So the racing action, as you might think, certainly how we see things, has got a trajectory that it’s going in the right direction.
“We’re real pleased. There’s always an event here or there that, you know, you could be critical of. But by and large, some of the policies that we announced back in January feel good to us. And the drivers have been terrific, mixing it up differently, not being in most situations crazy about that, but giving our passionate fan base what they want most, which is the close, competitive racing action. So we’re pretty pleased.”
France mentioned the 2011 schedule and the recent talk that the Chase format would change for 2011 as well. One thing he didn’t want to talk about was the economy.
“I don’t want to have a big discussion today about the economy and all that,” he said. “The economy is what it is. It’s still difficult. It was difficult six months ago. It doesn’t appear to have improved much for our fan base, a lot of our corporate customers. That’s sort of the bad news.
“The good news is we’ve got 400 different sponsors within the sport Most of them are renewing their sponsorships. It may look differently, but they’re renewing their sponsorships. The car manufacturers, despite a very difficult climate for them, have made a lot of improvements in their own business models and are more stable. They, as well, are reinvesting in NASCAR for the long term. So that’s good.”
Winners: Brad Sweet scored a last-lap victory Sunday night, winning the 30-lap USAC Mopar National Midget Series feature at Angell Park Speedway.
The event saw six lead changes among four drivers. The race was brought to a halt on the second lap when an 11-car accident occurred, sidelining four cars, including point-leader Bryan Clauson.
Dave Darland passed Davey Ray on the restart for the lead. Two laps later Jerry Coons Jr. took over the top position. Coons maintained the advantage over the tightly grouped field of cars. At the midway point, Coons led Darland, Ray, Sweet and Tracy Hines.
Coons entered lapped traffic on lap 22 and two laps later Ray used the traffic to his advantage to take the lead. Ray paced two laps before Coons regained the lead. The next lap Ray slowed with a broken driveline, causing a caution.
Two more cautions for stalled cars in the final three laps gave the field a chance at Coons. On the final restart on lap 28, Sweet passed Darland for second and closed on Coons.
Sweet drove inside Coons entering turn three on the final lap.
Sweet, driving the Kasey Kahne and Mike Curb owned No. 49, finished one car length ahead of Coons, Darland, Hines and Darren Hagen.
“It’s great to finally win at this place: we’ve been close victory in the last three Pepsi Nationals. The car was perfect the last two laps,” said Sweet.
30 Years Ago — 1995
News: With the battle for the future of Indy car racing being waged between CART’s IndyCar series and the rival Indy Racing League, reaction from CART team owners was strongly against the qualifying rules for the 1996 Indianapolis 500, announced last week.
The major change to longstanding qualification procedure is that 25 of the 33-car places in next year’s 80th Indianapolis 500 will be reserved for the top 25 Indy Racing League participants based on car owner points.
This is a major change for the 500-Mile Race, which means those IndyCar participants who do not compete in Indy Racing League events will scramble for the eight at-large starting positions in the 33-car race. The lineup will still be determined by a four-lap qualification runs during 2 weekends.
Grave concern was the major emotion among the IndyCar team owners, and an emergency owners’ meeting took place Saturday morning at Road America-site of Sunday’s Texaco/Havoline 200 race won by Jacques Villeneuve. One team owner called the IRL move “extortion.”
Some say IndyCar is looking into anti-trust litigation against the Indy Racing League, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The creation of Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George over his dissatisfaction at the way the owner-based IndyCar series is operated.
“Tony George is trying to put CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams, the sanctioning body for IndyCar) out of business, which means he is trying to put people like me out of business,” said team owner Tony Bettenhausen.
“What is disappointing for me is I’ve been in CART since 1981. I bought my franchise in 1987. It took me a year to pay for it. I struggled for years and years. Hospitality was sitting on a cooler eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich. We have worked hard to get to where we are.
“This is unfortunate, it’s unnecessary and it will cause the sport of Indy car racing some serious damage. The fans are going to be disgusted with the sport. There are already fans who are disenchanted with what they are seeing for qualification rules at the Indianapolis 500 next year.
Winners: Championship contender Jeff Gordon made only one mistake all weekend at New Hampshire Int’l Speedway, but emerged unscathed to dominate Sunday’s Slick 50 300 at the flat 1.058-mile oval.
Gordon’s second straight Winston Cup victory and fifth of the season came before the largest crowd in New England sports history (81 ,000) as the 23-year-old driver took the series point lead and won $160,300, including a $50,000bonus from Gatorade for holding the point lead at the halfway point of the season.
Gordon’s only weekend miscue came when he crashed qualifying on Friday. But his crew repaired his Chevrolet and he qualified the following day.
“What a car and what a crew chief,” Gordon said following the 13th triumph of the
year for a Chevrolet Monte Carlo driver. “We had to guess on everything on the set-up and he (Ray Evernham) had everything perfect. “We fought back from a wrecked race car, and it started immediately when I crashed,” Gordon said.
“I shouldn’t have crashed, but I bounced off the wall and the guys told me to keep on crashing them. They told me they’d fix it and do everything they could and stay behind me. That pumped me up.”
60 Years Ago— 1965
News: Wow is what patrons of Trenton Speedway are bound to say when they see the detailed lineup for the fourth annual 150-mile Indianapolis car national championship race at the track.
Race director Sam Nunis has 36 bona-fide entries with time trials trimming the number to 24 which will vie for the cash.
The guaranteed purse is $20,650, including money from Firestone, Goodyear, Champion, Autolite and Perfect Circle.
The 1964 Trenton 150 paid over $35,000 as an all-time record crowd for the July presentation jammed into the big grandstands at the N.J. State Fairgrounds.
Car and driver changes have been numerous and in some cases downright surprising. Just a few, to mention, are A.J. Foyt continuing in the Sheraton-Thompson Lotus-Ford with Parnelli Jones’ chief mechanic Johnny Pouleson, replacing the departing George Bignotti. Bignotti will head up Rodger Ward’s crew, with Texas millionaire oilman John Mecom furings a new rear-engine Ford that could start Ward back on the winning path.
Ward’s former mount, the Moog Special, a rear-engine Watson Ford, will be tried out during the week by Greg Weld and if this team works out, it will go in the Trenton 150, giving the sensational young Midwesterner his first Indy car ride.
Billy Foster, the first Canadian to ever qualify for an Indianapolis 500, will drive one of the rear-engine Fords entered by the RobbinsVollstedt team, Bob Harkey goes in a Federal Eng. rear-engine Offy, one of several of this type entered.
Jim McElreath is all set with the Zink-Urschel-Slick rear-engine Offy in which he’s been able to score two Indy car wins, only man to do so this year. Red Riegel is to wheel the Calif. Speed Shop front-engine Offy.
Winners: Johnny Rutherford led a fast field to the checkered flag at the Winchester Speedway here Sunday in the 30-USAC sprint car feature, shattering the track record for the distance in doing it.
Two other track records fell as the USAC sprinters put on a lightning fast, safe show of speed for more than 5,000 fans.
Rutherford, who started in the outside spot in the front row, took the lead in the first turn from polesitter Gordon Johncock and urged his white-and-orange Competition Engineering Chevy to victory in 9:00.32, eclipsing Bud Tingelstad’s old mark of 9: 05.92 by more than five and a half seconds.
Johncock, fastest qualifier of the afternoon with a lap at 17.42 seconds in the Weinberger Homes Chevy, took second about eight car-lengths back after dogging Rutherford for the first 25 laps.
Sprint division point-leader Greg Weld and second-place driver Jud Larson both had their problems in keeping up with the blistering pace. Larson worked himself up from his seventh-place starting position In the A. S. Watson Offy to fourth at the finish behind third-place Bobby Unser in the K.E. Y. Chevy.
Weld, who started alongside Larson in the fourth row wound up ninth in the Meadowbrook Water Softener Chevy.
Fifth behind Larson was 1963 national sprint champion Roger McCluskey in the H and H Tool machine, the same car he drove under the Konstant Hot banner in 1963.
