Plan put Novi inductees Richter, Wheeler at odds

For officials of Charlotte Motor Speedway and NASCAR, it was yet another contentious dispute.

   For members of the media and the few fans who knew about the argument, it was a source of high amusement.

   The fuss was about elephants.

   Yes, elephants.

   It happened in 1995 prior to the track’s October 500-mile race in the Winston Cup Series, now known as Sprint Cup.

   The speedway’s president and general manager, Humpy Wheeler, loved to promote eye-popping prerace shows.

   On this occasion, he was presenting a three-ring circus.  The production, to be staged on the grassy area between the start/finish line and pit road, included aerialist on tight wires and trapezes, a daredevil shot from a cannon, clowns and performing camels, dogs, tigers and elephants.

   NASCAR nixed the latter.

   “No elephants, decreed NASCAR vice president Les Richter.

   “Why not?” demanded Wheeler.

   “They might go berserk and damage the race cars lined up on pit road,” replied Richter.

   It was Wheeler who essentially went berserk.

   Humpy felt this was the thinnest of excuses, ordered only to embarrass the speedway and demonstrate NASCAR’s control over events.

   Track owner Bruton Smith and Wheeler through the years often were at odds with the NASCAR brass, and this was the latest incident.

   Wheeler wouldn’t relent.  “We advertised the elephants, and their show goes on!” he declared.

    Shortly before the ringmaster opened the circus, NASCAR gave in.

   The pachyderms performed.

   Years later a grinning Richter conceded that the sanctioning body issued the elephant ban “just to rattle Humpy’s cage a little bit.”

   So it’s a bit of irony that the sometimes antagonists Richter and Wheeler were among the inductees Wednesday night into the Motorsports Hall Of Fame Of America.

   The black-tie ceremony was held at the Fillmore Theater in Detroit.  The hall and its museum are located in Novi, a suburb just west of city.

   Inductions are held annually in August in conjunction with a major NASCAR race at Michigan International Speedway. The Carfax 400 is scheduled Sunday.

   Wednesday’s other inductees are drag racer Kenny Bernstein, road racer David Hobbs, motorcycle racer Scott Parker, IndyCar driver Al Unser Jr., and the late NASCAR champion Joe Weatherly.

   Both Richter and Wheeler enjoyed colorful careers.

   Richter can lay claim to the rarest of honors.  He’s now a hall-of-famer in two sports, football and and auto racing.

   Les was an All American linebacker in the early 1950s at the University of California, where he graduated as valedictorian of his class.

   After two years in the Army, Richter was selected second overall in the pro football draft.  A team then called the Dallas Texans took Les and then traded him to the L.A. Rams for 11 players, still an NFL record.

   The Rams got the best of the deal.

   Richter was an all-pro eight straight years, often playing both defense and offense.  He also kicked field goals and extra points.

   Richter, now 78, got into auto racing in 1959 as part of a group that bought Riverside Raceway, a road course in Southern California.

   “I’ll never forget the first time I saw the place,” he recalled a few years ago.

“It was just a strip of asphalt twisting over rocky, hilly terrain.  There were coyotes, rattlesnakes and no telling what else around.

   “It took us a while to be taken seriously.  What really enabled the track to take off is when NASCAR’s Wood Brothers, Glen and Leonard, came out west and put Dan Gurney in their car.  Dan probably was the most respected driver in America at the time.

   “Dan drove the Wood boys’ cars to victories in 1964, ’65 and ’66 at Riverside.  Parnelli Jones won for them in ’67 and Gurney again in ’68 to give Glen and Leonard five straight.”

   Richter laughingly recollected a 67,000 mile pickup truck endurance test in 1967 at Riverside involving Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford vehicles.

   “The run was non-stop except for tires, fuel and a change of drivers,” he said.  “Eventually, the drivers on night shifts were getting really bored.

   “So we hired some strippers to come out and hide near the turns.  When the drivers came around the women would jump out and pretend to be hitch-hiking.

   “The trucks were equipped with radios, so you can imagine the conversations that took place.”

   I once asked Richter the toughest football player he ever faced.

   “No doubt about it,” he said.  “Jim Taylor, the Green Bay running back.

   “I tried to tackle him head on, one on one.  He left a bony bulge the size of a peach in my shoulder and it’s still there.”

   Who among NASCAR drivers did Richter see as being as rugged as Jim Taylor?

   “No contest,” replied Richter.  “Dale Earnhardt.  “He would have been a great safety.”

   While president of Riverside Raceway Richter co-founded the International Race Of Champions series (IROC) in 1972.  When the Riverside track closed in 1989 he joined NASCAR as a vice president, working out of the Daytona Beach headquarters.

   Upon retiring from NASCAR, Richter became a vice president of California Speedway at Fontana, and still serves as a consultant.

   No race track in the world ever has gone to the expense of staging prerace shows as the Charlotte speedway did when Wheeler was at its helm.  He left his post there in 2008.

   Each May prior to 600-mile races military units were brought in to show their stuff as a way of commemorating Memorial Day.

   These battle re-enactments invariably were thrilling and sometimes produced humorous incidents.

   Most memorable of the latter to me occurred on May 27, 1984.

   Here’s the tale:

   A country preacher was delivering a “hellfire and brimstone” sermon to his congregation at a small church about two miles from Charlotte Motor Speedway.

   “Lord,” yelled the minister, “if everything I’ve said is true, give us a sign!”

   At this moment a loud explosion thundered over the area, creating such a concussion that the church steeple shook and the windows rattled.

   The story goes that the frightened flock spoke in tongues for two days.

   However, the big boom wasn’t heaven sent.

   It was triggered by artillery men of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, N.C.  The paratroopers had fired a howitzer while re-enacting the invasion of Grenada the previous October.

   Wheeler spent 33 years at the Charlotte track and became widely known as the premier promoter in motorsports.

   “His imagination reaches to infinity,” an associate of Humpy’s once said.  “I’ve heard people say they came to races at Charlotte as much to see what wild thing Humpy would do next as they did to see the races.”

   More seriously, Wheeler is credited with proving that superspeedways could be illuminated for nighttime racing.  He achieved this in 1992 as a means of keeping NASCAR’s all-star race in Charlotte.

   Humpy was especially popular with competitors because he dramatically increased purses and strongly advocated safety measures, such as the “soft barrier.”

   Now 70, Humpy presently operates The Wheeler Company, a Charlotte-based consulting firm he began this year that focuses mainly on professional sports.

   So far he hasn’t suggested the use of elephants to a client.  But it’s still early.