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: After three years of competition, the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge will disband at the end of the 2010 season.
The series, formed through a partnership between Miller Motorports Park and Ford Racing in 2008, has received sanctioning from Grand Am since its formation.
The final race in series history will be Sept. 12 at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah.
“We are disappointed to not continue what we started with the Mustang Challenge,” said Series Director Lynda Randall. “But we should hold our heads high, as this was a tremendously successful program and we were fortunate to get to be a part of what really became a family.
“This was not the decision that we wanted to have to make, but we wanted to let our racers know what the future held and we want to close the year out With some very big races at Autobahn and of course at Miller,” Randall added.
Winners: Jamie McMurray won the Brickyard 400 with a late-race pass of Kevin Harvick and in the process gave team owner Chip Ganassi a historic triple.
McMurray won the Daytona 500 to open the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season and claimed NASCAR’s two biggest races with his victory Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Ganassi driver Daria Franchitti won the Indianapolis 500 in May.
“It’s unbelievable,” an excited McMurray said moments before being bear-hugged by Ganassi and Bass Pro Shops’ Johnny Morris. “I thought it was over when Kevin (Harvick) passed me
because my car got really tight. But he gave me the outside and that was what made my car better at the end.”
McMurray sailed past Harvick on the final restart of the day with 18 laps remaining and led to the finish.
The victory put McMurray into some exalted company. He joins Dale Jarrett (1996) and Jimmie Johnson (2006) as the only drivers to win the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 in the same year.
McMurray’s teammate, Juan Pablo Montoya, led 86 laps and had the best car of the day until the final pit stop on lap 139. Montoya came in with the lead, took four tires and left
Seventh, as the top six took right-side tires only.
In a near replay of last year’s Brickyard race, Montoya was stuck back in traffic and couldn’t
advance. He dropped back to 10th and was trying to get a charge to the front together when he got high in turn four and bounced off the wall.
30 Years Ago — 1995
News: Chrysler Corporation, a major factor in U.S. stock car racing in the 1960s and 1970, announced last week it is returning to NASCAR racing, effective immediately. The move broadens Chrysler’s motorsports programs from drag racing, showroom stock racing and its
Neon production-car Celebrity Race activities to include the widely popular Sears Craftsman SuperTruck series.
Before the legions of Mopar fans left over from the heyday of Petty Enterprises dominance in Chrysler products get too pumped up. however, the company’s announcement limits its latest involvement to NASCAR’s new SuperTruck series only, not the premier Winston Cup circuit.
Chrysler officials indicated support of Dodge Ram 1500 pickups· currently racing in the series would begin immediately.
The move marks Chrysler’s first involvement in NASCAR since it pulled out of stock car racing 25 years ago.
The new support program calls for Dodge and Chrysler’s parts and service subsidiary Mopar to post contingency money for podium (one-two-three) finishes. In addition, Dodge Truck and Mopar Performance engineers will develop engines, chassis and aerodynamic Items in preparation for expanded participation In 1996.
Chrysler has maintained a strong presence in drag racing, as several Top Fuel and Funny Car teams use Dodge hemi engines while the powerful Wayne County Speed Shop Pro Stock team of Dodge Avengers is sponsored by Mopar.
Recently, Chrygler announced it would begin concentrating on short-track racing, giving birth to the Mopar-backed True Value/USAC Silver Crown car fielded by Gary Stanton and driven by Jimmy Sills. Its engine, based on the Dodge Ram pickup truck V-8, is modified to burn alcohol.
Winners: Scott Pruett didn’t make the move that won Sunday’s Marlboro 500 IndyCar race because of a well-thought-out strategy or because he was brave. Pruett made the move that won the race because it was the only move he could make Pruett edged by Al Unser Jr. coming out of the final turn heading for the checkered flag to win his first PPG IndyCar World Series race in the second-closest finish in IndyCar history. Pruett, who surrendered the lead to Unser at the start/finish line of the white flag lap, finished 56/100ths of a second ahead of Unser after he zoomed high onto the rim of the third turn, pulled even with Unser as they hit the straight and eased ahead by inches at the checkered flag.
The only Indy car finish closer than Sunday’s was in the 1992 Indianapolis 500. Ironically, Unser won that race by 43/100ths of a second over Scott Goodyear.
Not only was the victory the first in Pruett’s IndyCar career, it was also the first for Firestone since Al Unser Sr., won at Michigan in 1974 after which the company quit racing only to return at the beginning of this season.
It was also the first victory for team owner Pat Patrick since Emerson Fittipaldi won at Nazareth, Pa., in 1989.
60 Years Ago— 1965
News: Curtis Turner, often called the “Babe Ruth of stock car racang,” is back in NASCAR, free and ready to run in the big circuit he once dominated. In a completely surprising move, NASCAR president Bill France, in Atlanta on the eve or Sunday’s USAC $80,000 Championship 250, said, “We feel that Curtis Turner has paid the penalty for his actions by sitting out four years of NASCAR racing.”
Turner, who found out the news minutes later in the middle of a soggy infield at Concord, N. C., said over the distant phone: “You bet I have. This is the best news I’ve had in those four years. You can bet even money that I’ll be back-and back winning.”
Turner, from Roanoke, Va., and already a member of stock car racing’s Hall of Fame at Darlington, S. C., will probably come back in one of the most prized rides in all of NASCAR. That would be a 1965 Ford prepared by the famed Wood Brothers Racing Team of Stuart, Va.
The first Grand National race which Turner will drive is the Southern 500′ at Darlington on Labor Day.
Wood now builds Fords racers for Marvin Panch (victor in both the Atlanta 500 and the Dixie 400 here at Atlanta International Raceway this year.) Turner’s ride will be in the companion car to Panch, prepared by the team that is called the fastest in pit work in all of NASCAR, and the same team which manned the pits for Indianapolis winner, Scotland’s Jimmy Clark, and the Indy’s No. 8 finisher, Bobby Johns.
It would have been four years next week that Turner was barred from NASCAR by France, the same man who had once pinned the “Babe Ruth” label on him. Turner, busy with financing the then-new Charlotte Motor Speedway, allegedly had tried to organize drivers with the help of the Teamsters Union. There were also rumors of pari-mutuel betting.
Winners: Young and determined Johnny Rutherford, a driver who had never won a “big car” race, Sunday jockeyed a car which had never finished anything to claim the inaugural Championship 250-mile grind for open-cockpit machines at Atlanta International Raceway.
Driving steadily but unspectacularly, the 27-year-old Fort Worth, Texas, charger eased his rear-engine Ford-the Moog St. Louis Spl.-to a one lap victory over rookie phenom Mario Andretti of Nazareth, Pa. and another touted rookie, Bill Foster of Victoria, B. C., Canada.
Rutherford’s time for the 167 laps was 1:46.287. His speed— a track record — was 141.728 miles per hour, netting him the $17,450 first place check.
The spectacular was provided by polesitter A. J. Foyt, generally regarded as the robot of racing.
The four-time USAC point champion and twice Indy 500 winner, bolted from the pole and held complete command of things until the fateful 108th Lap when a broken rear suspension system retired the firebrand from competition.
Until that point, the Houston, Texas, maestro had darted down the straightaways like a rocket, slid through the turns with effortless motion and in general used the 29-car starting field for his personal slalom course.
Rutherford momentarily took the lead after Foyt pitted on the 88th lap. Foyt quickly closed the gap and on the 97th circuit used football tactics — Andretti providing the interference — to slip under Rutherford and regain command.
With Rutherford trailing by six seconds, Foyt went high and outside on the second corner of the 108th lap. His left rear suspension suddenly collapsed and his car began spinning.
Rutherford took charge and was never in trouble until three laps from the finish when his rear sway bar failed. He was forced to throttle down and ease it home to victory, while Andretti and Foster valiantly tried to make up the lap defecit.
