Heading into the 60th running of the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday, May 26, at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the history books are filled with statistics about NASCAR’s longest race.
Included among the numbers is the fact that Darrell Waltrip has won the race five times; that Jeff Gordon is among seven drivers who scored their first NASCAR Cup Series victory in the 600; and that Jimmie Johnson is the only driver to win the Coca-Cola 600 three consecutive years.
But while statistics are important, auto racing is not about the numbers. Auto racing is about memories and the Coca-Cola 600 has produced plenty of those,
From 1960 when Joe Lee Johnson scored the biggest victory of his career to last year when Kyle Busch claimed the prestigious trophy for the first time, memories are what make the Coca-Cola 600 an important part of NASCAR history.
The best way to tell the story of this Memorial Day weekend classic is to share some of those memories and, fortunately, there are many willing to do just that.
“They’ve been asking me to define the greatest moment here,” said Bruton Smith, founder of Charlotte Motor Speedway. “I’m not sure that I can come up with one, there have been so many. I think the greatest moment was actually getting the speedway open. That might have been the most trying of all events.”
“My favorite 600 memory is obviously 1994, because that was my first-ever win in a Cup car,” said Gordon, a three-time Coca-Cola 600 winner. “It was beyond a dream come true to win a race at the Cup level, and to do it at Charlotte. Everybody knows how special Charlotte is, not just because of its history within the sport but also because it’s located in the backyards of all the race teams. They all consider that their home and take a lot of pride in winning that particular race, plus it’s a huge event.
“It came down to a pretty dramatic ending. Ray Evernham made a great call in the pits to take two tires when Rusty (Wallace) pretty much dominated the race all day. He took four, and we took two and won the race. That was certainly the start of a lot of history for me in this sport and something I will never forget.”
Waltrip has won more Coca-Cola 600s than any other driver, but his most vivid memory is actually about a victory that got away.
“In 1980, I was going for my third win in a row and that’s the one where Benny (Parsons) beat me,” Waltrip recalled. “That one hurt because I had a better car than Benny did, but we didn’t use good pit strategy that day. We stayed out one time when we should have pitted and it cost us the win.
“I had a superior car and I had the field covered, but because we made a bad decision about pitting, we ended up on worn out tires at the end of the race and I couldn’t hold Benny off. He got around me and I couldn’t get back around him without wrecking him, and I wasn’t going to wreck Benny Parsons. That was a tough one,” Waltrip concluded.