Let there be dirt

By DAVID GREEN

The third NASCAR Grand National race I ever witnessed was on a dirt track -- the half-mile Greenville-Pickens Speedway, in 1967. Richard Petty won. It was victory No. 12 in the King's fabulous 27-victory season of 40 years ago.

It was also one of the handful of dirt-track events remaining before the last one was contested. Twenty-one more dirt races would be held, in places such as Fonda, N.Y.; Maryville, Tenn.; Columbia and Greenville, S.C.; and finally, the last one, Sept. 30, 1970, at Raleigh, N.C.

So, whenever the ARCA RE/MAX Series goes to DuQuoin or Springfield, Ill., or ventures to some other location such as the Indiana State Fairgrounds or the West Virginia Motor Speedway near Parkersburg, I wax nostalgic about the days when NASCAR-sanctioned stock cars raced on unpaved ovals. And when Nextel Cup Series stars and drivers from other major-league disciplines take part in an event such as the Prelude to the Dream at Eldora Speedway, I get all stirred up about how great it would be if only...

Well, reality smacks me in the face before the goose pimples grow to great numbers or impressive size. Only occasionally -- to use official NASCARspeak, "except in rare instances" -- will I get to indulge myself in such treats. Only with ARCA cars, or only with star drivers in borrowed dirt late models, will I ever see this again.

The first season of what is now the Cup Series, the only pavement they ran on was the two-lane blacktop highway that served as one straightaway (the sand of the beach was the other one) of Daytona's old beach-and-road course. The half-mile oval at Dayton, Ohio, and the new Darlington Raceway came on board in 1950, giving the 21-race schedule two paved-track events.

That was very much the norm for U.S. oval racing at the midpoint of the 20th century. Indianapolis was still paved with bricks and the Milwaukee Mile's dirt would not be covered with asphalt until 1954.

Just two decades later, the dirt tracks were gone from major-league racing. NASCAR waved the checkered flag on the genre at Raleigh and USAC staged its last Championship Division races on dirt in the same season.

Since 1970, dirt-track racing has gone through a series of ups and downs. Many tracks -- Greenville-Pickens among them -- were paved in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of them managed to hang on to the second-tier Late Model Sportsman/Busch Series schedule for awhile, but now all of them are relegated to local weekly programs.

Meanwhile, dirt stock car racing began to develop its own identity. It has flirted with some level of national scope, from Robert Smawley's National Dirt Racing Association in the late 1970s to today's World of Outlaws Late Model series.

It's highly entertaining racing, but the cars have gotten so radical in their design, it's hard for some old-school fans to get very excited about it. Of course, some people feel that way about the evolution of Nextel Cup cars.

Could today's Cup cars race on dirt? Absolutely.

Will they ever, except in ARCA events? I don't believe so. But I wish I could be proven wrong.