“It was such a great track to drive and a great place for fans to see a race. There was no bad seat in the house. For me, it was one of those places that I couldn’t wait to get to. I felt I was going to win there every time the green flag fell because Junior’s cars were so good. A lot of them I did win.”
Jeff Hammond served as crew chief for Waltrip and the Johnson team.
“You almost had a sigh of relief but you also felt the pressure as well. It was Junior’s home race track,” Hammond recalled. “I know how personal it was to Junior and his wife, Flossie, at that time and everybody in Wilkes County took it hard if the No. 11 car didn’t run well there. That went back to when I was working with Cale and (crew chief) Herb Nab and people like that. It’s always been one of those tracks where you’d better run well or have a dang good excuse why you didn’t.”
Terry Labonte won four times at North Wilkesboro, twice for Johnson and twice for Hendrick Motorsports. Labonte is credited with Johnson’s final win there as a team owner on April 17, 1988.
Bobby Allison also won four Cup Series races at North Wilkesboro Speedway, but following his win on March 25, 1979, he had to walk to victory lane. A right-front ball joint broke as he crossed under the checkered flag, crippling the car during the cool-down lap. The crew eventually managed to get the No. 15 Bud Moore Engineering Ford to victory lane.
From 1986 through 1995, Dale Earnhardt won five times at North Wilkesboro while driving for team owner Richard Childress.
Other multiple winners include Rex White, Rusty Wallace, Herb Thomas and Geoff Bodine with three victories each and David Pearson, Mark Martin, Fonty Flock, Buck Baker and Marvin Panch with two wins apiece.
Four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon won the most recent Cup Series race there for Hendrick Motorsports. While in victory lane, he told ESPN, “To be the last Winston Cup race that’s going to be here, you feel sorry, but at the same time, you’re elated to go down in history and the record books.”
For 15 years, the track sat empty like a western ghost town. Fans have traveled Highway 421 for well over a decade seeing the red Winston Cup signs fade like the memories of glorious Sunday afternoons long past.
Led by a group of local investors, the track opened briefly in 2011 for a series of late model races. Painted and spruced up by volunteers, the facility quickly fell back into disrepair.
After being revitalized for a series of stock car races last August, North Wilkesboro Speedway has new life thanks to its owner, Speedway Motorsports.
Landing this year’s NASCAR All-Star Race at the five-eighths-mile track resulted in significant renovations, which will lead into a series of races for the ASA STARS National Tour (May 16), the CARS Tour (May 17) and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (May 20) leading up to the May 21 NASCAR All-Star Race.
“Our hope is to celebrate the history and look forward to the future,” said Speedway Motorsports President and CEO Marcus Smith. “North Wilkesboro Speedway is an amazing, historic place for NASCAR. It’s almost like Fenway Park is to baseball.
“Bringing back races, bringing back special events, bringing back tourism, creating a very special place where the community can gather, it’s exciting. When you think about nostalgic opportunities, this is one of those one-in-a-million opportunities.”
This story appeared in the April 26, 2023 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
