Hot Time In New Hampshire

   The weather forecast for Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway calls for a high temperature of 63 degrees.
   There's also a possibility that showers could interrupt the running of the Lenox Industrial Tools 301, a Sprint Cup Series race.
   What a contrast to the first time that NASCAR took its big-time tour to the 1.058-mile track near Loudon on July 11, 1993.   
   New England was in the grip of a heat wave breaking records dating back a century.  Thermometers soared to well over 100 degrees for several straight days.  Few homes and businesses in that part of the Northeastern U.S. had air-conditioning, because it normally wasn't needed.  As a result, several deaths in New Hampshire and its neighboring states were traced to heat stroke.
   Drivers and their teammates on what was then called  the Winston Cup Series were worried that New England was baking like Boston beans.
   Sure, they had coped with heat and humidity before at Daytona in July, Talladega in July or early August and Darlington on Labor Day weekend in September.
   But there was a possibility it would reach 105 degrees or more at Loudon 15 years ago, with a correspondingly high humidity factor for an event then called the Slick 50 300.
   "Who wins could be a matter of who copes with these unusual weather conditions the best," said Buddy Parrott, crew chief for driver Rusty Wallace.  "We've all got to be prepared not only to keep our cars going, but our drivers.  We've got to assure they simply don't give out."   
    

   Part of the preparation by the the crews was to have plenty of extra ice available.  They planned to pour it down the fronts of the drivers' uniforms during pit stops.
   Meanwhile, Bob Bahre, founder and promoter of the track originally named New Hampshire International Raceway, was concerned about the well-being of an overflow crowd of fans expected for his Winston Cup inaugural.
   Bahre, known for his willingness to spend money to accomodate his customers, had large showers, or misting devices, installed under the grandstand so that fans could try to keep cool.
   "We hope, if they get overheated, they'll go to them like kids  playing around an open fire hydrant in the summertime," said the colorful Bahre who a few months ago sold the track to Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc.
   Even TNT's crews working to televise the race had to improvise against the heat.  They planned to have towels wetted and iced-down every few minutes for the cameramen to use.  Not to cool themselves, but to place around the metal spots where they held their cameras, which were too hot to touch otherwise.
   Approximately 66,000 braved the oppressive heat to attend Bahre's inaugural Winston Cup show after he had hosted Grand National circuit events the three previous years, a division that's now the Nationwide tour.
    The fans saw a relatively dandy race, one in which heat didn't cause anywhere near as much attrition as feared.  Thirty of 40 starters were running at the finish.
    Wallace won despite starting 33rd after failing to qualify in the first round of time trials.
    A sizzling pit stop during a caution period gave him the lead with 30 laps to go, and he eventually beat runnerup Mark Martin to the checkered flag by 1.31 seconds.  Davey Allison, who seemed en route to victory by holding a 6-second lead at one time prior to the pivotal yellow flag, finished third.
    The action included a tangle between Dale Earnhardt and Sterling Marlin.  The two swapped sheet metal as Earnhardt tried to keep Marlin from lapping him.  Marlin was leading at the time, and eventually finished sixth when the handling became unsteady on his car.
   "It feels great to come up here and win at a brand new race track," said Wallace.  "What a whale of a first race in New Hampshire for a neat bunch of fans.
   "Our last pit stop was a killer!  Wow!  When the pressure is put on my guys, they really perform.  They got me out front and I drove on from there."
   Wallace triumphed while driving with a broken left wrist suffered in May during a violent barrel-roll crash at Talladega in the Winston 500.
   "There's a pin in the wrist and it's sticking against the bone and it hurts like a toothache," said Wallace.  "But it doesn't affect my ability to compete."
   Obviously.
   After the race, driving back to a hotel in Manchester, I witnessed  one of the most remarkable things I've seen in covering motorsports for 50 years.
   Thousands of smiling fans lined a two-lane road leading from the race track back to I-93.  Traffic was at a crawl, so we could talk to each other.
   "Please come back!" said most, some of whom waved Confederate flags in recognition of the Southern-based sport.
   "I believe you can count on that!" I replied.
   On I-93 hundreds more fans waited and waved from the overpasses.
   It was a joyous time.  "A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight," it might be said.
   The exultation  was deeply, tragically tempered the next day when news came that Davey Allison had been gravely hurt in the crash of a helicopter he was attempting to land at Talladega Superspeedway.  The immensely popular Allison succumbed to his injuries on July 13, 1993.
   Many of us who were at the Loudon speedway that sweltering summer day 15 years ago remember seeing driver after driver board chartered helicopters for flights to a nearby airport where planes awaited them.  The choppers enabled them to avoid the snarled traffic.
   One of the last to take a helicopter away from a landing pad in the infield near victory lane was Davey Allison.
   With a wave and a smile to cheering fans, he hopped aboard and flew off into the blazing sun, sadly never to be seen by us again.