Tom Higgins' Scuffs

Darlington's tireless Tommy Britt surely in line for honor

Tim Richmond’s face grew redder and redder, his voice louder and louder.

Richmond was talking on a telephone with some acquaintance, and the conversation grew more heated by the second.

It was 1986, a year during which Richmond solidified his NASCAR stardom by driving to seven victories, including a triumph in the storied Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.

The scene of Richmond’s phone call, in fact, was the infield media room at Darlington, a day after he’d taken the pole for the 500 in 1986.

It wasn’t a matter of eavesdropping. Richmond was shouting so loudly that everyone in the room was privy to what he was saying.

Finally a media wretch, writing on deadline, complained that Richmond was a distraction.

The speedway’s Tommy Britt, charged with overseeing operations in the media center, tapped Richmond on the shoulder.

“Sorry, Tim, you’re going to have to leave,” said Tommy. “These phones are reserved for the press.  And on top of that you’re causing a ruckus in here and people can’t work.”

Richmond argued there was nowhere else nearby to make his call.

This was before the advent of cell phones, remember.

Richmond reluctantly hung up the phone. After a few hot words for Tommy, he left the building in a huff.

There was a round of appreciative applause for Britt from members of the press corps who were present.

Britt smiled and nodded.

He had faced far worse than an angry NASCAR star of Richmond’s magnitude. Tommy fought in Vietnam with the Army from 1968 to '70. He was awarded the Vietnam Service Medal with three Bronze Stars.

You’d never have known about Tommy’s war experiences. He never spoke of them, at least not to me.

I’m recalling all this because my friend Tommy Britt passed away on Nov. 17 at his residence in his beloved Darlington after a fight with cancer. He was 62.

I phoned Tommy in October. He said brightly, “I’m having a good day. I can walk.”

I sat and cried.

A stocky, rotund guy, Tommy’s favorite sports, in order, were NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, Clemson football, and all athletics at the local high schools, Darlington and St. John’s.

Every time I encountered Tommy I greeted him with the opening lyrics of Clemson’s fight song, “Hold That Tiger!”

He would grin and reply, “Chula!,” a nickname of Basque origin he tagged on me in the late 1970s after we'd attended a jai alai match.

By my count, Tommy worked under five different track presidents at Darlington Raceway, mainly in the public relations department.

In my opinion Tommy Britt ranks high among the most popular representatives in the raceway’s history, which dates to 1950.

Surely, speedway officials will name something in Tommy’s memory.

May I suggest the infield press room, where Tommy worked so tirelessly and efficiently during Darlington’s race weeks. Where he even had the guts to evict a NASCAR star.

Martin's lesson from 1990? Don't change horses

As Mark Martin battles Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series championship going into Sunday’s Checker Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, memories return of a costly call to pit on Nov. 4, 1990 at the Arizona track.

That decision in the desert, combined with another even bigger one made a few days later prior to the season finale at the track then known as Atlanta International Raceway, proved critical as Martin and his Roush Racing team lost the Winston Cup title to Dale Earnhardt by 26 points.

Martin, still seeking a first championship after being the runner-up four times, presently is 73 points behind Johnson with the Phoenix race and the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 22 remaining.  Mark is 39 points ahead of Gordon.

The popular Martin’s resurgence as a sentimental favorite for the title at age 50 evokes recollections of his splendid chance to become champion 19 years ago.

In 1990 Martin led Earnhardt by 45 points when they arrived in Phoenix.  The advantage would have been an almost insurmountable 91 except for a penalty of 46 points the Roush outfit incurred in the Pontiac 400 at Richmond in March.

NASCAR officials took the action, still controversial and disputed by team owner Jack Roush to this day, because the carburetor spacer plate on the engine of Martin’s Ford was bolted to the manifold rather than welded.

During the Checker 500 of 1990, Earnhardt took the lead on the 51st of  312 laps on the 1-mile track and stayed ahead the rest of the way.  Meanwhile, Martin was running respectably, keeping Earnhardt’s Chevrolet in sight.

Then, while in sixth place on Lap 296 of the 500-kilometer event, Martin decided to pit for four tires during a caution period.

It was a mistake. Martin ran the tires off his car trying to make up the lost distance. He finished 10th, as Earnhardt won.

The difference vaulted Earnhardt and his Richard Childress Racing team into the standings lead by six points.

“Mark and his guys won’t be able to go to Atlanta and hope for us to have bad luck,” said Earnhardt. “Now, they'll have to force the issue, and they're fully capable of doing that, just like we are."

Martin fretted about deciding to make the late pit stop and taking tires all around.

“We did the right thing, didn’t we?” he asked a couple times over the radio hookup to his pit crew, led by Steve Hmiel and Robin Pemberton. The answer was mixed.

Obviously, Martin would have preferred to go to Georgia leading the standings toward a title that then was worth about $1 million. But he indicated that in a way he was  somewhat relieved it would be an all-out race for the crown.

"We want to win this championship, and now the only way we can do it is to outrun Dale," said Martin. "That has to be done.

"It takes all the pressure off. I don't know why, but now I don't feel any  pressure.

"I feel we had a bad day. It could have been worse, but we really should have finished better. We had better than a 10th-place car.

"Now, I don't have to worry about getting outrun by Dale and losing the championship. Now, all I've got to think about is going down there and race to win, and I'm excited about that."

Both teams had plans to begin testing almost immediately for the dramatic showdown at Atlanta.

Martin's team was to be at the Georgia track Tuesday through Thursday, with Earnhardt’s on Wednesday and Thursday.

Roush ordered three different Thunderbirds taken to the Georgia speedway and Martin drove all of them Tuesday and Wednesday.

However, it wasn`t the amount of  machinery that longtime NASCAR observers found so surprising, but who was present to offer input about the cars.

Testing an unpainted Ford, owned by the auto company, was veteran Winston Cup competitor Morgan Shepherd, who at the time drove for the Bud Moore Engineering team.

And conferring after each run by Martin and Shepherd were Roush, fellow Ford team owners/engineers Robert Yates and Junie Donlavey, Eddie Wood  of the Wood Brothers team, Ford engineer Preston Miller and chassis specialist Jake Elder, who worked for Yates.

Roush, Elder and Miller appeared the most active, with the latter two relaying information back and forth between Martin and Shepherd as they sat in the cars, waiting for adjustments to be made between runs.

The "official" explanation for the concerted effort:

A revolutionary steering design of the late car builder Banjo Matthews was being tried in the hope that it might help deliver Ford the NASCAR manufacturers championship. Chevy held a 184-181 lead for an eighth straight title, a crown Ford hadn`t captured since 1969.

Shepherd smilingly conceded, though, that he and the others were working on behalf of Martin.

"I'm hopeful of finding something that will help me win the Atlanta race and Ford win the manufacturers' deal, of course," said Shepherd. "But all of us Ford people really want to see Mark win the championship."

  The three cars driven by Martin and the one by Shepherd were parked side-by-side in the track's sprawling garage area.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, from a location about 100 yards away at the other end of the garage, Earnhardt alternately tested two Chevrolets as team owner Richard Childress and crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine directed operations.

Asked his reaction to the joint Ford preparations, Earnhardt smiled.

"They've got a lot of irons in the fire, don't they?" he said. "It seems  pretty late in the season to me to be engineering. Sure, we've noticed all the Ford people up there, but it doesn't bother us."

The race for the title continued to be civil and diplomatic, a fact both Earnhardt and Martin said they were proud to have maintained. This situation was stressed when the two contenders ate lunch together.

As Earnhardt sat eating barbecue in the track's infield media center, Martin approached, put his plate on the table and pulled up a chair.

"Well, you put it on us Sunday at Phoenix," said Martin.

"We ran good," nodded Earnhardt. "I kept expecting you to come up there and race with me, like we have all year."

"I wanted to, but couldn't," replied Martin. "My car was too tight at the start of the race. When we adjusted, it got too loose and that was burning my tires off."

After lunch, Martin explained the rare move of bringing four cars to a track.

"It’s imperative that we be at our best,” said Mark. “I think winning is what it will take to beat Dale here. Atlanta is a great track for him.”

At the time, Earnhardt had six Atlanta victories, including three of the speedway’s four previous 500-milers.

After making a sustained 25-lap run on Wednesday, Earnhardt's team decided to pass on scheduled further testing Thursday, loaded up and headed home to North Carolina.

It was a psychological ploy, as both Earnhardt and team owner Childress later smilingly admitted. Earnhardt added to the mind game by revealing that he was heading to Alabama to deer hunt.

"We knew the Ford people would notice, and that by leaving after only one day we would drive them crazy,” said Earnhardt.

It appeared to do just that.

By Thursday, Roush and his Ford advisers decided to have one of the Thunderbirds that Davey Allison drove for Yates brought to Atlanta for Martin to test.

The result looked promising in finding some chassis combination or engine factor that might prove pivotal in overtaking Earnhardt. A late run in the Allison car produced a lap of 176.463 mph, fastest by far overall among the dozen or so teams that tested during that week in 1990.

The speed left Martin and his teammates smiling.

"We'll try and duplicate what we learned off Robert's car and put it on ours," Martin said. "We feel going in the only way to beat Dale for this championship is to outrun him, and maybe this will help us do that."

"We're reaching, grasping for something new that will give us even the slightest performance advantage," said Roush.

Understandably, the Roush/Martin contingent was non-committal about what developed from the research runs.

"Basically, the result of all this work is that we've narrowed our choices from four cars to two," Roush said. "Those two will go in the Lockheed wind tunnel at Marietta (Ga.) Sunday and we will see which has the best aerodynamics.

"Then Mark, Steve, Robin and me will go through everything and choose our car for the race."

Looking back, I vividly remember an incredible scene as Martin’s testing neared an end. As track closing time loomed at 5 p.m. Martin pulled one car in, sat conferring briefly with Hmiel and Pemberton, then crawled out.

He was met by Roush, who repeatedly had climbed atop a transporter for a better view of the laps, then descended for consultations.

Roush put his arm around Martin’s shoulders, whispered some information, then patted the driver on the back four times. Martin dashed off to crawl in another car and return to the track.

It looked just like a football coach giving his quarterback the big play on  the sideline and sending him into the game to execute it.

I remarked about the similarity to Preston Miller, the Ford engineer. Miller nodded and smiled.

"I just hope it doesn't turn out that the play has to be a Hail Mary,” he said.

In a stunner, it was decided that the Yates team’s Ford would be entered for Martin rather than a car from the Roush stable.

Not all involved were happy about the decision.

“This sucks,” Pemberton, now NASCAR’s vice president for competition, said privately on the morning of the race.

That it did.

Martin wasn’t able to really get going in the Yates-owned car and finished sixth while Earnhardt took third place and claimed the fourth of the seven Winston Cup championships he was destined to win. Shepherd won the race, marred by the death of Mike Ritch, a crewman for Bill Elliott, in a pit road accident.

“We had to do something out of the ordinary,” Martin said of his move into the Yates car.  “It didn’t work out.”

Bet on Martin, by far the big-time stock car racing tour’s most respected driver, being in his Hendrick team’s OWN machinery for this year’s final two races.

North Wilkesboro's wild 'Rush Through the Brush'

Permit me a history lesson, dear readers.

Decades before "The Pass In The Grass" there was "The Rush Through The Brush."

The former involved Dale Earnhardt, the late seven-time champion. The latter involved Junior Johnson, the legendary driver/team owner who, along with Earnhardt, was elected on Oct. 14 to the inaugural class of five inductees into the expansive new NASCAR Hall Of Fame in Charlotte that opens next May.

Of the two feats of fantastic driving, Johnson's was perhaps the most formidable, although it's much lesser known, lost in the passage of years.

It returns to mind because it occurred at North Wilkesboro Speedway, scheduled to reopen next October after 14 years of inactivity.

Back to the lesson:

The so-called "grass pass" occurred on May 17, 1987, in the all-star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. During a boiling battle for the lead in the final laps, Bill Elliott bumped leader Earnhardt off the pavement exiting the fourth turn.

Earnhardt, who had tangled with Elliott earlier, somehow maintained control of his car while speeding through the grass separating the racing surface and pit road. Earnhardt came back onto the track still in front and continued to a controversial victory.

There was no pass in the grass, but someone called the incident that, and the catchy title has endured.

And "The Rush Through The Brush?"

This is the nickname I've taken the liberty of putting on the improbable move made by Johnson at North Wilkesboro Speedway on May 18, 1958.

The wild escapade is among many memories that came rolling back with last week's news that the historic track will reopen in October of 2010 with a USA Racing Pro Cup Series event.

Allow me to digress a bit ...

The speedway in Wilkes County, N.C., where racing began in NASCAR's earliest years, closed in 1996. New owners moved the track's two Winston Cup Series dates to larger venues. One went to New Hampshire International Speedway and the other to Texas Motor Speedway.

During the ensuing years the .625-mile North Wilkesboro track has been shuttered. It's towering Turn Two Grandstand, looming alongside busy U.S. Highway 421, has served as a stark, sad reminder for stock car racing fans of the speedway's glory days and colorful place in NASCAR lore.

Home-county hero Johnson, who grew up in the Brushy Mountains about 15 miles from the track, provided much of that color. He began his driving career there as a teen-ager, won five times on the home layout after moving up to the major NASCAR tour and posted a record 18 victories before loyal local fans as a team owner.

"I've got great memories, of course, of North Wilkesboro Speedway," Junior said recently. "I have to say that race in 1958 is one of the best."

Not surprising, since it included "The Rush Through The Brush."

Johnson, driving a Ford, was involved in a dandy duel with Chevrolet rival Jack Smith during the early stages of the 160-lap race that spring Sabbath 51 years ago.

Junior took the lead on the 79th lap and steadily pulled away to a half-lap advantage.

Characteristically, the former moonshine hauler refused to back off the throttle and cruise to victory. Johnson, who had only recently been released from federal prison after serving 11 months for manufacturing illegal liquor, kept running as hard as his car would go.

Entering the third turn Johnson overdid it.

He went barreling over an embankment that served as a retaining barrier to keep the race cars on the track.

Here, paraphrased, is how the incident is recounted in "Junior Johnson: Brave In Life," an authorized biography I co-authored with my friend Steve Waid in 1999:

"Junior showed his immense driving talent hadn't diminished in his time away (behind bars). After careening over the embankment he sliced through a patch of weeds and came back on the track ahead of Marvin Panch, who was second at the time.

"A crowd estimated at 6,000 went wild at the sight of the local hero pulling off such a feat."

In the book, Johnson had this description of what happened:

" 'Back then, the newly paved tracks seemed to tear up pretty easily (and North Wilkesboro had recently been transformed from dirt to asphalt). I got into the loose stuff, or pieces of asphalt marbles, and went over the 4-foot high bank. I never touched the brakes. I knew the only chance I had was to keep my speed up to get through that brush and back over the bank, so that’s what I did.' "

Junior won by six seconds over Smith, with Rex White third in the lead lap.

Johnson’s "brush with the brush" and his full-bore philosophy led to a nickname, "The Wilkes County Wild Man."

His like, and derring-do similar to his bounding-over-the-embankment-and-back-again likely never will be seen at North Wilkesboro Speedway again.

Nevertheless, it's terrific that the track, immensely popular with fans, will produce the rumbling thunder of race cars again.

I certainly plan to be there.