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CUP: Fans Race Around New Hall
Fans flocked to the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Tuesday for opening ceremonies...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted May 11, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Fans came out in big numbers for Tuesday's official opening to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C. (Photo: Tom Jensen/SPEED.com)
Robert Lefler finally found a race-car wing he could love.

PHOTOS > CUP: NASCAR Hall of Fame Grand Opening

The Raleigh, N.C., race fan stopped on the Glory Road display at the NASCAR Hall of Fame on opening day to admire the 1970 Dodge Daytona once driven by NASCAR champion Bobby Isaac.

“Now, that’s a race car,” Lefler said. “You had to really know how to drive them back in those days. It just looks fast sitting there. And the big wing on the back made them look almost like airplanes.”

The bright orange No. 71 Dodge Daytona was part of a brief but spectacular period in NASCAR Cup racing – the day of the winged giants. Dodge Daytonas and Plymouth Superbirds roamed the high banks of Talladega and Daytona in those days, their tall rear wings piercing the sky. The wings were prominent and imposing, unlike the subdued wings introduced on the Car of Tomorrow.

Lefler and hundreds of other first-day visitors walked casually along Glory Road, almost certain to be one of the new hall’s feature attractions. Designed to look like a speedway racing surface with banking ranging from zero degrees to the steep turns of Daytona and Talladega, Glory Road displays 18 race cars from the 60 years of NASCAR history.

Race car exhibits and huge display cases featuring memorabilia from the Petty, Earnhardt and Allison families seemed to be the hottest items on the hall’s opening day.
The iconic black No. 3 Chevrolet of Dale Earnhardt is among the relics for fans to view at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. (Photo: Tom Jensen/SPEED.com)

“I could look at these for the rest of the day,” said Miriam Keller, a Dale Earnhardt (Sr. and Jr.) fan from Lancaster, S.C. who had parked in front of the Earnhardt family display. “Just about everything you see tells a story. Dale Earnhardt was such a great driver. It’s nice that there is so much stuff like this to remember him by.”

Fans lingered at displays of a jacket Fireball Roberts wore just a few weeks before his deadly accident at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a moonshine still similar to those operated by Junior Johnson’s family and a display showcasing the 1979 Daytona 500 last-lap accident involving Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison.

“If you looked at everything and read everything, you’d be here for a week,” said Tom Brooks, a fan from Winston-Salem, N.C. “I’m impressed with it all so far. So many fans don’t even know about some of this stuff and how different the racing was 20 or 30 years ago. This helps to save some of that.”

Visitors crowded around the many interactive areas in the hall, using “hard cards” inserted into computers to answer trivia questions and explore the data stored in the hall’s information banks.

A victory lane photo opportunity with a “Hall of Fame” trophy also was a popular spot.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series All-Star Week • The Stars Come Out. The Gloves Come Off. • Saturday, May 22nd at 7 pm ET
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