Editor’s Note: In a nod to our 92 years of history, each week SPEED SPORT will look back at the top stories from 20, 40 and 60 years ago as told in the pages of National Speed Sport News.
20 Years Ago — 2006
News: Lake County Sheriff Chris Daniels Sr. was killed Saturday night during a charity school-bus race at New Smyrna Speedway.
Florida Highway Patrol and New Smyrna Speedway officials are investigating the accident Daniels, who was racing on his 47th birthday, was reportedly struck by another school bus on the half-mile paved oval.
Witnesses said Daniels had either left or had fallen out of his disabled bus after it and a bus driven by Seminole County Sherriff Don Esslinger collided on lap 12.
First-time driver Daniels, defending race champion Eslinger and law-enforcement officers from five central Florida counties were taking part in NSS’s fifth annual Battle of the Badges. The 15-lap headliner and demolition derby’s proceeds benefit the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches.
NSS General Manager Terry Roberts cancelled the remaining program and asked fans to leave.
Michelle Outlaw Daniels, who the sheriff married on July 21, was in attendance. Daniels’s death was the first at NSS since Oct. 26, 2004.
Roberts told The Orlando Sentinel that the drivers were wearing helmets and that the buses had racing seat belts and governors limiting speeds to 50 miles per hour.
Daniels, who was elected sheriff in 2004, started his departmental career as a dispatcher while a Eustis High School senior.
Winners: Late model driver Billy Moyer didn’t remember his last trip to The Dirt Track @ Lowe’s Motor Speedway, and with good reason. He was knocked out when hit by debris during a heat race for April’s Colossal 100.
Moyer left the track without racing in the feature. But he returned to the four-tenths-mile oval for the first time since and won the Oct. 11 Jani-King Southern Showdown.
While Moyer was not pre-entered and was not eligible for the $1,000 per-car-passed bonus money; he still won $10,000 for his third Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series triumph of the season.
With lightning flashing all around the speedway and a light mist in the air, the World of Outlaws Late Model Series regular started the 100-lap race third and chased Mike Balzano through the first 19 laps.
However, on lap 20, Moyer powered under Balzano and controlled the remainder of the event.
“I think starting Up front had a lot to do with it,” said Moyer, who won for the first time at LMS. “We drew lucky up there, and that was some of the work done for us. It’s a great crowd (more than 14,000) tonight and a great field (67 cars) of cars. Everything worked out good for us.”
Shannon Babb finished second, while Earl Pearson, Jr. worked his way from 12th starting spot to finish third. Balzano and Rick Eckert rounded out the top five.
40 Years Ago — 1986
News: American-Canadian Tour director Tom Curley says “it’s time for show and tell” among Eastern racing teams to choose between the controversial Stock Car Connection rules or the NASCAR North series for 1987.
“It’s not a war, because there are casualties in a war,” Curley said on the day before the All-American 400 for All Pro and American Speed Ass’n drivers. “The teams must weigh the facts and make an intelligent decision.”
Curley, whose ACT forms one-third of the SCC foundation with ASA and All Pro, believes the “facts” favor the SCC instead of NASCAR North which has a cornerstone with Bob Bahre’s Oxford Plains Speedway.
The break between Curley and Bahre was made official after the Sept. 28 Coors Tour race. Bahre announced the formation of a new northern NASCAR late model sportsman tour with Oxford Plains as the anchor with six of the 11 races. Curley’s tour was bounced out of NASCAR last year and made an alliance with ASA and All Pro for 1987.
Curley, ASA’s Rex Robbins, and All Pro’s Bob Harmon met the press to review the rules and the overall atmosphere going into 1987 last weekend.
The cornerstone for each member of the SCC consists of similar rules for ASA, All Pro, and ACT. As announced earlier, the SCC car is to have: a 105-inch wheelbase, a 358 V-8 9:1 engine, 56 percent leftside weight, and a tread width of 63 1/2 inches.
Essentially, ACT teams will have to shorten their cars by five inches and go to the 9:1 engine. Curley contended those modifications would cost about $3,800. Approved body styles are Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, Olds Delta 88, Buick LeSabre, Ford Thunderbird and Dodge Daytona.
Perimeter frame rail classes with a minimum of 56 inches between main rails will be allotted a 75-pound weight break over the straight frame car.
All Pro cars will have to be lengthened in 1987.
Winners: One year ago, Bob McCreadie finished third in the nation’s richest modified race despite having the fastest car. Sunday, he came back to the Syracuse mile with a completely different pit strategy and handily won the Miller American 200 over polesitter Billy Pauch and two-time winner Jack Johnson.
“Barefoot Bob” timed his U.S. Linens Systems Hutter-powered Kneisal chassis No.9 into the outside second row starting position and easily maintained that position until a lap 31 pit stop, and then began a steady march to the front that put him on top to stay on lap 51 of the 125-mile (200-kilometer) event.
Ironically, he lost the race in 1985 by staying on the track to claim the bonus for leading at halfway and after his pit stop could only get back to third. This year’s early stop not only gave him the victory but let him lead again at the mid-point for a $1,500 bonus from Skoal and Cam2 Racing Fuels.
Winner Bob McCreadie was exhausted and near collapse following the event. Attributing his physical problems to the sheet metal that flowed air through his car so efficiently that all the engine heat was trapped In the cockpit. As for his pit stop strategy, “That won the race for us. I screwed up badly last year, but I don’t usually forget what I learn.”
60 Years Ago— 1966
News: Jerry Richert earned 3,655 points to win his third consecutive International Motor Contest Association sprint car championship.
A team effort made the third championship possible. Frank Wagner and Les Johnson, co-owners of the white and blue Wagner-Johnson STP Special No. 63, and Bill McDonald, chief mechanic of the Chevy powered sprinter, share the credit along with Richert.
Final audited figures show Jim Moughan in second with 2,410, while Bill Puterbaugh finished the season third with 2,213.
Grady Wade, ninth-place driver, has been named rookie of the year.
Winners: Fireball Roberts once said Lee Roy Yarbrough would become the greatest driver to get behind the wheel of a stock car.
Yarbrough took the giant first step toward proving the late Roberts right by outracing the most impressive field ever assembled to win the seventh annual National 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Yarbrough pushed his 1966 Dodge Charger to a record speed of 130.576 mph before a record crowd estimated at 65,000.
Starting 17th despite establishing a four-lap qualifying record of 151. 101 mph on the third day of time trials, Yarbrough picked off his competitors like clay pigeons.
Yarbrough finished 19 seconds ahead of slumping Darel Dieringer in a 1966 Ford. Paul Goldsmith was third in a 1966 Plymouth. The first three were on the same lap.
