Tom Higgins' Scuffs

Daytona's "Flash" Gordon

  LAST IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING DECADE-TO-DECADE AT DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

    Perhaps stock car racing hall-of-famer Buddy Baker put it best.

   "In my opinion a NASCAR driver can't consider his career complete unless he wins both the Southern 500 at Darlington and the Daytona 500," Baker said a few years ago.

   If this is true, Baker completed his career by taking the 500 at Florida's Daytona International Speedway in 1980.  He triumphed in the Darlington Raceway classic in South Carolina 10 years earlier.

   Since the Southern 500 sadly no longer exists, present-day and future drivers seemingly are going to have incomplete careers.  But Darlington still has a spring 500-miler, so maybe that should count.  It remains, after all, the same tough old speedway.

   Whatever, to Baker's thinking, Jeff Gordon completed his still on-going career on Feb. 16, 1997 by capturing a dramatic, crash-filled Daytona 500.  He previously had begun a rash of five Southern 500 victories in 1995.    

  To win the first of his three Daytona 500s, Gordon had to outduel two of NASCAR's biggest, most popular stars--the late Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott.

  Gordon and Earnhardt tangled on the 189th of the race's 200 laps on the fast, famous 2.5-mile Daytona track.

   Here's how The Charlotte Observer's David Poole described it:

   "Coming out of Turn 2...Gordon tried to get by Earnhardt for second (behind leader Elliott).  Earnhardt was crowded toward the outside wall.  His Chevrolet scuffed the wall, bounced off, was tapped from behind by Dale Jarrett's Ford and then went tumbling down the backstretch.  (Ernie) Irvan's car clipped Earnhardt's, sending Irvan's hood flying into the grandstand, slightly injuring two spectators.

   "'Jarrett and Ernie were pushing me hard,'" said Gordon.  "'I closed up on Earnhardt and had to squeeze out of the gas to keep from hitting him in the middle of the corner.  I saw that he was pushing, and I saw him have to get out of the gas.  I was like, 'Ohh, this is going to be close.'  He hit the wall, bounced off and hit me in the door.

   "'I was trying to win the Daytona 500, the biggest race I know of.  I think Dale would have done anything he could to win the 500.  What I did didn't cause him to wreck.  What I did caused him to have to lift off the gas.'"

   Earnhardt crawled from his  crashed car and got in an ambulance for the required ride to the speedway's infield infirmary.  Then he noticed his car had landed on its wheels.  He jumped from the ambulance and got back in the car.  Incredibly, it cranked.  Earnhardt drove to the pits and although his chance to win was gone, he continued in the race.

   Next for Gordon came Elliott, who was leading in a Ford on Lap 194 when the 500 restarted.

   Lined up in order behind Elliott were Gordon and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Terry Labonte and Ricky Craven.

   "I was history and I knew it," Elliott said after the race.  "I was a sitting duck there at the end.  With three Hendrick cars behind you, you ain't got a chance.  I was dead meat and I knew it.  It was just a matter of where and when."

   On Lap 195 Gordon went so low in the trioval in front of the main grandstand that David Poole observed "he could smell the burgers frying in the infield."  The move enabled Gordon to flash by Elliott.  Labonte and Craven went high and got around Elliott, too.

   These moves essentially ended the racing, as a 10-car crash on Lap 196 forced a finish under the caution flag.   

    Gordon and his crew led by Ray Evernham understandably were ecstatic in Victory lane.  Later, Gordon candidly conceded, "I really never saw myself winning the Daytona 500."

   Later still, Gordon chuckled and added, "After the checkered flag I saw this mangled, black No. 3 (Earnhardt's car) coming up behind me and I though, 'Uh oh!' But Dale pulled up beside me and gave me a thumbs-up sign.  I knew then he understood I was just trying to do the same thing he was trying to do, win the Daytona 500."

   Gordon's triumph made him the youngest Daytona 500 winner in history at 25 years, six months and 12 days in only his sixth start in the race.  Richard Petty was 26 when he won NASCAR's foremost event in 1964.

   In 1998, in his 20th try, Earnhardt finally won the 500, too, completing his career, in the estimation of Buddy Baker, who won at Daytona in his 19th February try.  Earnhardt first won the Southern 500 in 1987.

   Earnhardt, a seven-time champion at NASCAR's top level along with Petty,  lost his life at Daytona in 2001 in a last-lap crash in the 500.

   Gordon, who has four titles in a continuing pursuit of Earnhardt and Petty, remains among the sport's elite.  He rates among the favorites to win this year's season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 18.

   

   

   

   

Die is cast for Awesome Bill

   FOURTH IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING DECADE-TO-DECADE AT DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

   My pal Steve Waid of NASCAR Scene has been known for years for his quick, witty, stinging one-liners.

   Among his best, most biting ever came on Feb. 15, 1987, as the Daytona 500 neared its conclusion.

   When driver Geoff Bodine and his crew chief, Gary Nelson, called their failed gamble on fuel "a roll of the dice," Waid instantly pounced.

   "Yeah, and they rolled a nine!" Waid cracked in the press box at Daytona International Speedway.

   Nine happened to be the number on the fleet Ford that Bill Elliott drove past the faltering Bodine on the 198th lap of 200 in the classic NASCAR event en route to Victory Lane.

   Told of Waid's line when he came to the press box for the winner's interview, Elliott beamed brightly and flashed Steve a thumb's up.

   "I knew those boys (Bodine's Hendrick Motorsports team) were going to gamble on not stopping after me and the rest of the leaders did pit for fuel late in the race," said Elliott.  "That's typical of them and that car.  They come to win and nothing else is good enough.  You've got to admire them for it."

   Elliott, winning the 500 for the second time in three years, shook his red head.

   "I had no idea if Geoff could make it," he said of his Chevrolet rival.  "I did know that car has a history of getting good gas mileage, but going 45 laps (112.5 miles) on a tank at the speeds we're running would have been tough."

   Earlier, Bodine had made it 42 laps before refueling.

   Elliott averaged a sizzling 176.263 mph as only four caution flags, all for debris on the 2.5-mile track, slowed the pace.

   He continued to comment on the Bodine/Nelson duo's decision on fuel:

   "Ernie (Elliott's brother and crew chief) called me on the radio and said Bodine had run out of gas.  That perked me right up, because I was almost 24 seconds--or about a half a lap--behind him at the time.

   "In the same situation, I definitely would have done what Geoff's team did."

   Said Bodine:

   "It was our plan from the previous round of pit stops to try and outlast them.  If you never take a chance in life, well, it gets kind of dull and boring."

   Added Nelson:

   "If we'd had Geoff come in, maybe we could have finished second.  We came to Florida to win the Daytona 500.  We rolled the dice and came up short.  I'd do it again, although I know everyone is going to come up and say we should have stopped."

   After his fuel cell ran dry, Bodine coasted back around to his pit and got enough gasoline to finish the race.  He fell back and took the checkered flag 14th, a lap down.

   Although Bodine was out of contention, Elliott wasn't exactly home free for the triumph.

   Charging on hard behind him were Benny Parsons, Richard Petty, Buddy Baker and Dale Earnhardt.

   Elliott made his final fuel stop on Lap 187.  His top challengers came to the pits over the next six laps.

   "We got in and out good on the last stop and that's what ultimately won us the race," continued Elliott, who was then 31 and in the prime of his colorful career.  "I figure beating Buddy and Dale out was the key, because it looked like to me they had the strongest cars, although Benny's was good, too.

   "The crew deserves a lot of credit, but I guess I deserve some, too.  I have yet to see one of these cars that can win by itself.  There's always got to be somebody in there mashing the gas.  I know I get teased a lot for using the word 'combination,' but that's what works for us."

   Elliott, who had led by 1.27 seconds after the final round of pit stops, finished three car-lengths ahead of Parsons' Chevy with Petty, Baker and Earnhardt following.

   Elliott and Baker dominated at the front of the pack.  Elliott led 105 laps and Baker, the 1980 Daytona 500 winner, led 45, mostly in the first half of the race.

   Finally, as the victors' press box news conference ended,  Ernie Elliott, slowed through much of the 1986 season by mononucleosis,  was asked what he thought the chance of Bodine running out of fuel might be.

   He answered with a one-liner to rival that of Steve Waid:

   "Oh, I'd say about 9.9."

   

          

Mr. Benny

   Everyone that knew Benny Parsons personally has a warm story about this wonderful man, the 1973 NASCAR Winston Cup Series champion and auto racing hall-of-famer who died Tuesday after a battle with cancer.

   Here's mine:

   Perhaps nowhere was Benny more admired and loved than in the little Sandhills town of Ellerbe, N.C., where he lived in the early 1970s while driving for the locally-based L.G. DeWitt Racing Team.

   This is understandable.

   Benny did things for Ellerbe like no one before or since.

   For me, one example always has stood out.

   Not long after Benny, his wife and two sons moved to Ellerbe, he was elected president of the Parent-Teachers Association at the elementary school his boys attended.

   One wintry day, the boys came home very glum.

   They had become upset after learning that some of their classmates were not going to receive presents or anything special to eat for Christmas.

   Benny checked with teachers and discovered that the situation was even worse than he imagined because of the high rate of poverty in the rural area.

   Benny, well-known for a tender heart and good-guy nature, immediately began calling in favors from his many friends in motorsports.  Winter jackets, shoes, food, toys and Christmas candy began flowing in.

   A big party was scheduled at the school the night before the holiday recess was to begin.

   Some of stock car racing's biggest names showed up to take part.

   Why, the legendary Wood Brothers, Glen and Leonard, even arranged to bus a church choir down from their hometown of Stuart, Va., to sing the carols.

  Youngsters who never had experienced much of a Christmas shrieked when Santa started calling their names to receive gifts.

   One little fellow, probably seven or eight years old, made his way over to where Benny and I were standing and in conversation.  He had a bright toy truck under one arm and a new pair of sneakers under the other.

   The lad tugged at the leg of Benny's trousers.  "Mr. Benny," he said, "what am I supposed to do with these?"

   Benny gulped.

   "Take them home, son," Benny replied.  "They're yours."

   The little fellow's eyes widened.  "To keep?" he asked incredulously.

   The eyes of Parsons moistened and he leaned down and gave the boy a hug.

   Then, with a small shake of the head and a lump in his throat, "Mr. Benny" excused himself and walked away to be alone for just a bit.

    

Written On The Wind

   THIRD IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING DECADE-TO-DECADE AT DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

   The Daytona 500 of Feb. 20, 1977 should be remembered as the NASCAR classic in which Cale Yarborough "out-winded" his opponents.

   Literally.

   Having his car handle better than anyone else in cold, hard winds--blowing off the ocean over Daytona International Speedway at 30 mph--concededly was the critical factor for Yarborough and his team owned by the legendary Junior Johnson.

   "Some of them could race right even with me on the straightways, but I wore them out in the turns," said a delighted Yarborough, winning the sport's biggest event for a second time.  "The wind almost seemed to be picking their cars up and moving them over a whole lane.  I could just pull away from them."

   Credit the late Herb Nab, Yarborough's crew chief, for that.

    

   Nab was no golfer.   Never played the game even once.

   But a few hours before the race he was plucking blades of grass from the area between the track and pit road, then flipping them in the air a-la Jack Nicklaus to determine wind direction and velocity.

   He went through the procedure several times, bringing stares from bewildered bystanders.

   Nab then hustled back to the garage area and the famous 2.5-mile speedway and made chassis adjustments on the Yarborough-Johnson team's No. 11 Chevrolet.

   Nab refused to divulge what he did, but said, "You can bet it had to do with how the car handled in the wind.

   "When it's gusting as bad from the northeast as it was today, it changes the complexion of the whole race track.  The second and third turns, especially, change a surprising amount."

   These corners were the spots where Yarborough mostly was able to keep foremost challenger Benny Parsons at bay over the final 29 of the 200 laps. 

   Yarborough finished 1.39 seconds ahead of runnerup Parsons, who had won the 500 in 1975.

   "It's disappointing to get this close again and not win," said Parsons.  "But Cale was handling so strong I couldn't make a move on him."

   The high wind created problems other than poor handling for a lot of drivers in the 42-car field.

   It whipped tons of trash--such as hotdog wrappers--out of the grandstands and onto the track.  The debris plugged the cars' radiators and caused overheated engines.  Among these victims were Richard Petty, David Pearson, Neil Bonnett and Dave Marcis.

   Two of the race's six yellow flags were flown so that maintenance crews could clear the worst of the trash from the track.

   They tried mightily, but mostly the effort was to little avail.

   The wind-blown trouble was so bad that it left only 16 drivers running at the finish.

   Declared Yarborough, "It was as tough conditions as I've ever seen at Daytona.  The paper and sand blew onto the track the whole race.  The wind was so strong the car sort of felt like an airplane sometimes." 

   

    

   

Awesome Andretti!!!!!

SECOND IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING AT DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

   Bob Moore, my friend of 40 years and a former Charlotte Observer collegeaue, was sure of it.

   If Mario Andretti didn't wreck on the current lap, he surely would the next.

   Bob's assessment was shared widely across the press box at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 26, 1967, as the Daytona 500 roared on.

   "Mario's car was sideways through every turn," Moore recalled this week.  "It didn't seem possible that he could keep holding it lap after lap."

   This view also held in the pit of the storied Holman & Moody team that was fielding the Ford driven by Indy-car star Andretti, an interloper into the NASCAR Series.

   "We thought he was a wreck waiting to happen," remembers Waddell Wilson, a Holman & Moody team member who had built the engine powering Andretti's No. 11 Ford.  "I have been going to races for more than 50 years, and I have never seen a driving performance like Mario put on that day 40 years ago."

   Andretti was just 26 at the time and he still had a distinctive touch of  native Italian in his voice.

   His English might not have been so good, however, there was no doubt about his driving talent.

   "If there ever has been a natural, it's Mario," said Waddell Wilson.  "Everyone could see it.  He had been racing since he was 13 back in Italy.I"

   Wilson, a hall of famer as an engine-builder/ mechanic/crew chief, and now serving as a consultant to JeriCo Transmissions, chuckled at the recollection.

   "I had built a bunch of engines for the '67 Daytona 500," he recalls.  "I had engines for Fred Lorenzen and Dick Hutcherson. 

   "At the last minute Ford sent word down from Detroit that they wanted a little bit tunnel port adjustments for the cars of Freddie and Mario.  I made the changes and they looked good on the dyno.

   "I loaded the engines on a tractor-trailer and drove through the night from Charlotte to Daytona Beach.  After I got there we put the engine assigned to Mario on the dyno again.  It durn near immediately lost the cam bearings.

   "I had to totally disassemble that engine and redo everything.  I drove through the night back to Charlotte to put it back together, then returned to Daytona the next day.

   "We got the engine in for practice, and it performed really well.

   "Plus, the great old chassis specialist and crew chief Jake Elder and Ralph Moody were working together to get the car set up like Mario wanted it.

   "It was radical, what Mario suggested, but they went along with him.

   "Mario knew what he was doing.  No one could run with him.  For his style, he had the perfect race car, and he ran the wheels off of it.  He made a statement that day.  He was the class of the field."

   Andretti took the lead on the 168th of the 200 laps onthe fast 2.5-mile track and stayed ahead the rest of the way, averaging 146.926 mph.

   Andretti was 22 seconds ahead of nominal teammate Fred Lorenzen when a caution flag slowed the 500 for the final two laps.

   Initially, Mario thought the yellow might cost him the race.  Jerry Grant and Jim Hurtibise tangled in the fourth turn and slid to the apron, covering the track in thick smoke.

   "I couldn't see the cars.  I had no idea where they were," said Andretti.  "I just went as close to the wall as possible and hoped a car wouldn't be there.  I had no control over the situation.  I just prayed and hoped.  I made it, with luck.  I couldn't see a thing and then the air was clear.  I sure was glad to see that grandstand."

    Despite the scare, Andretti adopted another view later.

  "Oh, that caution helped out," conceded Andretti, later a winner of the Indy 500, The Formula 1 Championship and the 24 Hours of Daytona.  "I was just about out of gas.  I pedaled around the final 5 miles.  And I didn't want Freddie Lorenzen pulling up there and being able to draft me.  He might have outsmarted me.  Besides, drafting scares me."

   "Mario is too gracious," said Waddell Wilson.  "That Daytona 500 was his as long as he could keep from going completly sideways in the turns, which didn't seem possible and still amazes me to this day."

   A few moments of silence then followed during  my phone conversation with my boyhood friend Waddell Wilson.

    Finally, he spoke with the deepest sincerity:

   "It's 40 years later, half of our lifetimes, and I have won several Daytona 500s.  None was more enjoyable than that one in '67 with Mario Andretti.  I will remember it forever.

   "He's as good a person as I have ever worked with in my life, bar none."

COMING NEXT: CALE YARBOROUGH SCORES A VICTORY IN THE 1977 DAYTONA 500.

Unforgettable Bobby Hamilton

   I was fortunate enough to cover stock car racing off and on--mostly on--from 1957 through 1996.

  That's 40 years, or half an expected lifetime.

  I can count on 10 fingers the races I remember most and never will forget, this old mind willing.

  The crash-filled 1958 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, which Fireball Roberts won in a '57 Chevrolet...The '69 star-boycotted inaugural at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, taken by Richard Brickhouse, who never won again...Buddy Baker finally winning the Daytona 500 in 1980 after 20 years of trying, while driving an Oldsmobile nicknamed "The Gray Ghost" because it was so fast it blended into the asphalt...Benny Parsons and Darrell Waltrip battling each other and threatening "End Of Time" storm skies as dusk fell at Charlotte in the 1980 World 600, swapping the lead eight times in the final 26 laps.  Benny made the final pass on the 399th of 400 laps to capture the victory...Ron Bouchard edging Terry Labonte and Darrell Waltrip in a three-car photo finish in the Talladega of '81 for his only Winston Cup Series triumph...Richard Petty narrowly beating Cale Yarborough to score victory No. 200 in the '84 Pepsi Firecracker 400 on July 4, 1984 at Daytona with President Ronald Reagan looking on, the first sitting leader of the free world to attend a race...Bobby and Davey Allison placing 1-2 in the 1988 Daytona 500, the greatest father-son finish in motorsports history...Dale Earnhardt charging from last place, 15th, to first in just two laps to win the 1993 Busch Clash at Daytona.

   Add high on the list to these Bobby Hamilton's dramatic triumph in the 1996 Dura Lube 500 on Oct. 27 at Phoenix International Raceway in Arizona.

   

   This race is especially significant to me for two reasons.

   First, due to illness, it's the last NASCAR event I ever covered.  I took early retirement shortly afterward.

   More importantly, Hamilton's triumph returned Petty Enterprises to Victory Lane after an improbable absence of 13 years.

   Memory of Hamilton, and his grand accomplishment, come rushing back to mind because of the popular Tennessee driver's untimely death on Sunday, a victim of cancer at age 49.

   Here's a sampling of how I wrote the story from Phoenix for the Oct. 28, 1996 edition of The Observer:

   "It seemed like old times for the Petty Enterprises team on Sunday...Hamilton took the lead on the 283rd of the 312-laps in the 500-kilometer race and returned the storied No. 43 car made famous by Petty to Victory Lane.

   "It was the first win for the Petty-owned car since October of 1983 in the Miller 500 at Charlotte Motor Spedway with Petty at the wheel."

   Petty won twice in '84, but he was driving a car owned my Hollywood music figure Mike Curb.  It bore the No. 43, but it was not fielded by Petty Enterprises of little Level Cross, N.C.  The second of those triumphs came in that Pepsi Firecracker  400 previously mentioned, and that car now sits in a place of honor in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

   So to me, and most others, Bobby Hamilton's triumph REALLY marked the return of the REAL 43 to Victory Lane.

   This was not lost on Bobby.

   "I can't believe it," he said in the press box after giving the new Grand Prix model its first victory and going through the ceremonies just off pit road.  "Those last laps I thought I felt tires going down.  I heard rattles and even thought the battery was shaking.

   "My mind was running wild the last lap.  There were three cars smoking and and I was concerned they would put some oil on the track.

   "I'm so happy for Richard and Dale Inman and Robbie Loomis and the other guys on the team.  They've worked so hard and have gone a lot of years without a win.  To be the first to do it in this Pontiac since Richard means a lot to me."

   Inman, Petty's cousin, was the team manager.  Loomis was the crew chief.

   Hamilton finished 1.23 seconds ahead of runnerup Mark Martin in a Ford.

   "The boys did good today," said Petty, who was mobbed on pit road when the checkered flag fell.  "I just sat and watched.  Today, we had it all together.  I thought Bobby had enough to take care of 'em there at the end, but you never know for sure."

   Hamilton had tears in his blazing blue eyes in the press box as the interview ended.  So did a lot of media members who admired the down-to-earth country boy Tennessean whose humbleness and sincerity and honesty affected everyone he met.

   Beneath those ever-present dark glasses, I sensed King Richard's eyes were moist, too.

Daytona Through The Decades

   FIRST IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING AT DAYTONA BEACH

   By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea...

   That's where Cotton Owens, his fellow drivers and the crews of NASCAR's foremost circuit, then known as the Grand National Series, were gathered in mid-February of 1957.

   They were back in Florida to race once again on the storied Beach and Road Course a few miles south of Daytona Beach.  The layout measured 3.2 miles, split evenly between the hard-packed oceanside sand and the straight-as-an-arrow asphalt of U.S. A-1A.  Short, hairpin turns in the sand connected the two long straightaways, giving the "track" the appearance of an elongated paper clip. 

   Racing on what was popularly known as "the Beach Course" had begun in 1936, was discontinued 1942-45 because of World War II, and resumed in '46.

   In 1957 NASCAR founder/president Big Bill France was in the process of building a high-banked, 2.5-mile superspeedway just west of Daytona Beach, so competitors and fans alike were aware that beach racing soon would pass into history.  It might even happen as soon as 1958, depending on the progress of the trioval track's construction.

   "Everyone wanted to be the last driver to win on the beach, so the situation was especially intense," the late superstar, Tim Flock, once recalled.

      

   Flock was the winner of a NASCAR Convertible Division race on Feb. 16, and he was widely favored to win again 24 hours later in the main event.

   However, the handsome Georgian was outqualified by several rivals, including Banjo Matthews, who won the pole at a 134.328 mph as a teammate of Owens in a Pontiac Chieftan fielded by Ray Nichels.  Matthews was followed in time trials by Jack Smith, Owens,  Fonty Flock and Tiny Lund.

   The qualifying runs of Matthews and Owens earned a lot of attention because they were driving two of only five Pontiacs in the field of 57 cars.

   With a crowd estimated at 35,000 roaring over the sound of the surf, Owens immediately showed he deserved the respect, surging into the lead on the first lap with a hard-charging Paul Goldsmith trailing slightly in second place in a '57 Chevrolet.

   Owens, a native of Union, S.C., who was then 32, led the first 10 of the 39 laps in the 159.9-mile race.  Goldsmith led Lap 11; Owens led Laps 12-23; Goldsmith led Laps 24-31; and then Owens Laps 32-39.

   Goldsmith appeared headed to victory, holding a 25-second lead when smoke started trailing from his car.  He went to his pit, where car owner/crew chief Smokey Yunick diagnosed the trouble as a burned piston.

   "This beach course, especially the turns, which become rutted, is very hard on equipment," said Goldsmith.

   "I was gaining rapidly on Paul.  I think I might could have run him down," remembers Owens.

   Cotton didn't have do face that challenge.

  With Goldsmith sidelined, Owens found himself with a lead of almost a minute over Chevy's Johnny Beauchamp.  Owens held the advantage and took the checkered flag 55 seconds in front.

   It was a significant triumph.

   Through the years Owens had ranked among NASCAR's top competitors, winning more than 100 feature events in the Modified Division.  But this was his first Grand National victory in 27 starts dating to 1950.   

   It also was the first Grand National win for Pontiac. 

   Owens averaged 100.541 mph, the first time a Grand National victor had topped 100 mph.   

   The popular, soft-spoken Owens beamed almost as bright as the sunshine that bathed the beach that day.  He received heart-felt congratulations all around, including from his rival drivers.

   "There's no doubt it's the greatest win I had as a driver," Owens said this week.  "See, except for two seasons, I didn't run all the Grand National races.  I stuck with my modified cars.  I was pretty much a part-time Grand National driver, so winning on the beach was very big for me and I look back to 50 years ago with a lot of pleasure.

   "I think people have sort of lost sight of how tough that beach course race really was.  It was difficult getting through those sandy, hairpin turns.  They became deeply rutted and the ruts could pitch a car almost anywhere.  It took every bit of your driving skill and strength to muscle a car through those turns.  We had no power steering in those days, remember.  If there was another car alongside it doubled or even tripled the difficulty.

   "I was lucky on the latter count.  Except for just a very few laps, no one was near me when I went into the turns." 

  Owens was destined to win eight more times over the next eight seasons, but none of the succeeding victories came close to matching what he accomplished Feb. 17, 1957 on the beach a few miles north of Ponce Inlet.

   His best overall season came in 1959, when he won two races, posted 22 top ten finishes in 37 starts and wound up second to champion Lee Petty in the point standings.

   Cotton retired as a driver after the '64 tour, concentrating fulltime on  fielding cars for others, which he had started doing in 1960.

   As a team owner, Owens amassed 39 victories, including 15 wins in 42 starts by driver David Pearson in a tremendous '66 season when the two paired to take NASCAR's top championship.

   Owens captured the Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway in 1970 with Buddy Baker driving Cotton's sleek orange and black No. 6 Dodge, a car that once was displayed in the track's museum, but since has been sold to a collector.

   Owens discontinued his racing operation in 1973.

   The past five decades have brought honor-upon-honor to Cotton Owens.  Included are memberships in various motorsports halls of fame, the Smokey Yunick LIfetime Achievement Award and The Order Of The Palmetto, South Carolina's highest civilian honor.

   NASCAR named him among its 50 greatest drivers in 1998.

   Owens is 81 now, but has continued to oversee operation of a busy garage in Spartanburg, S.C., where he has lived most of his life.  Owens said he's now in the process of selling the business.

   "I'm still going to work," he hastened to add.  "It'll just be at a different place.  I've already restored and sold a couple of cars my drivers raced--the winged Dodge Buddy Baker drove and a '64 Dodge Polara.  My next project is restoring the '66 Dodge Charger that David Pearson drove to the championship."

   Owens has a website that provides a window into the fascinating early days of NASCAR.

   Turns out Cotton wasn't the last Beach Course winner.  That honor went to Goldsmith, who triumphed in 1958, edging the legendary Curtis Turner by five car lengths.

  Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959.  Lee Petty beat Beauchamp by inches in a finish that wasn't made official for four days.

  The Beach Course's colorful days were over.

   Almost every year when Speed Weeks roll around at Daytona Beach, Cotton Owens heads to Florida to join friends like Ray Fox and other oldtimers who competed on the sands.  The occasion is The Living Legends of Stock Car Racing organization's annual banquet, an event that usually draws about 1,500 fans.

   If Cotton attends this time, he can with justifiable pride and satisfaction, look back 50 years--a half-century--to the special February day he spent in that Pontiac beside the sea.

   He should drive out there and ride down the old beach course and A-1A again for old time's sake.

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   NEXT: MARIO ANDRETTI SCORES A SURPRISING VICTORY IN THE 1967 DAYTONA 500.