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Sprint Cup
CUP: Hall of Famers Had At It, Too
The NASCAR Hall of Fame will induct five new members next Monday...
Richard Petty (Left) and Bobby Allison (Right) were bitter rivals back in the day. (Photo: Getty Images)
The six living members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s first two classes sat on the stage of the Charlotte Convention Center Wednesday night, spending the better part of an hour telling stories, trading good-natured barbs and celebrating each other’s accomplishments.
Seeing Bobby Allison, Ned Jarrett, Junior Johnson, Bud Moore, David Pearson and Richard Petty seated side-by-side was like gazing on NASCAR’s own Mount Rushmore. These were six hardened faces that endured countless miles of racing on hardscrabble rural Southern tracks, long before there were million-dollar-purses and billion-dollar television deals.
These guys didn’t hawk products, thank the boys back in the shop or have lucrative endorsement deals. They raced. And they raced hard. Bare-knuckled, no holds barred.
The group included soldiers, moonshiners, farm boys, brawlers and high-school dropouts. What they shared was about as basic as basic gets: Each man was a fierce competitor and a champion, and each well and truly loved the challenge of strapping into a race car and having at it, when winning and losing affected how well your family ate the following week, not how many points you earned.
And now, in their retirement years, they are mighty fine storytellers, too. Seems that back in the day, the boys had done some having at it of their own.
“I’d been racing all my life, before I went to stock-car racing,” said Johnson, the legendary moonshiner. “I guess I’d outrun every law there was in North Carolina, ‘fore I went to driving a race car.”
Jarrett recalled an episode in the late 1950s, when he tangled with Johnson at the Hickory Speedway dirt track, Jarrett’s hometown facility in central North Carolina.
“Junior had bumped me the week before and I went into the wall,” Jarrett said. “After the race, I was a little bit upset about it. I thought, ‘If I get a chance, I might go ahead and try to repay him.’ Well, the next week I got a chance. We were fighting for the lead going into Turn 3, and I was on the inside, and I slipped a little bit, hit Junior and knocked him into the bank.
“And after the race, we were down there at the pay window, waiting to get paid, and I was trying to convince Junior that my brakes had failed or something had gone wrong and I didn’t mean to do that. And I thought I was doing a heck of a sales job. A fan walked up with a $5 bill in his hand and he said, ‘Boy, I’m glad you knocked that S.O.B. into the wall tonight.’
“And I said, ‘No, no, no, no, I didn’t mean to do that.’
“‘Oh, yeah, you owed him. I know you did. I’m glad you knocked him into the wall,’” the fan retorted.
“Junior just laughed and turned around and walked off because he understood where that fan was coming from,” Jarrett said.
Allison and Petty, in particular, were bitter rivals, Petty the gentlemanly and soft-spoken face of the sport in the 1960s and '70s and Allison, the scrappy and tough underdog from Alabama who always seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder.
“You know, I had a problem backing into Richard Petty,” Allison said, tongue firmly in cheek. “Finally we got it sorted out where he understood that I wasn’t really backing up into him, he was just going faster than me on the straightaway and I was in his way.”
Allison said the contentious on-track battles with Petty helped fuel fan interest and grow the sport.
“What we did, we made the fans stand up in the grandstands,” Allison said. “And wherever we ran on one given week, the next week, there was a few more that had come there to see what we were going to do to each other. And the whole time, we were benefitting racing.
“Sometimes, we weren’t benefitting ourselves, because we had to go home and fix our cars,” Allison said. “The prize money wasn’t very good and it took a few bucks to get that car back in shape, but we went out there and gave it our honest shot. I had a lot of good times doing it and I hope Richard did, too.”
Petty said the rivalry was the simple result of two men who shared a burning desire to win. “The deal was, we respected each other from the standpoint of, we wasn’t trying to hurt each other, we was just trying to win races,” Petty said. “I think everybody understood that.”
Pearson and Petty had it, too, most notably in the famous 1976 Daytona 500, which Pearson won after the two crashed on the last lap. When the two collided, the Wood Brothers got on the radio and asked Pearson what happened. His response was classic: “The bitch hit me.”
“Go back and look at the film,” Petty insisted Wednesday night. “I did not hit him. You can’t hit anybody when you’re in front of him.”
But the best example of old-school having at it came from Moore, the World War II hero, crew chief and car owner. Incensed that Curtis Turner had wrecked his car and cost his driver a race victory, the lanky Moore went looking for Turner, tire iron in hand. Much to his surprise, Turner pulled a gun on Moore.
“If he hadn’t a had that pistol, I’d a probably used that tire iron right on his head,” said Moore. “I’ll say this, though: I backed away quite a bit and laid that tire iron down first.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
Seeing Bobby Allison, Ned Jarrett, Junior Johnson, Bud Moore, David Pearson and Richard Petty seated side-by-side was like gazing on NASCAR’s own Mount Rushmore. These were six hardened faces that endured countless miles of racing on hardscrabble rural Southern tracks, long before there were million-dollar-purses and billion-dollar television deals.
These guys didn’t hawk products, thank the boys back in the shop or have lucrative endorsement deals. They raced. And they raced hard. Bare-knuckled, no holds barred.
The group included soldiers, moonshiners, farm boys, brawlers and high-school dropouts. What they shared was about as basic as basic gets: Each man was a fierce competitor and a champion, and each well and truly loved the challenge of strapping into a race car and having at it, when winning and losing affected how well your family ate the following week, not how many points you earned.
And now, in their retirement years, they are mighty fine storytellers, too. Seems that back in the day, the boys had done some having at it of their own.
“I’d been racing all my life, before I went to stock-car racing,” said Johnson, the legendary moonshiner. “I guess I’d outrun every law there was in North Carolina, ‘fore I went to driving a race car.”
Jarrett recalled an episode in the late 1950s, when he tangled with Johnson at the Hickory Speedway dirt track, Jarrett’s hometown facility in central North Carolina.
“Junior had bumped me the week before and I went into the wall,” Jarrett said. “After the race, I was a little bit upset about it. I thought, ‘If I get a chance, I might go ahead and try to repay him.’ Well, the next week I got a chance. We were fighting for the lead going into Turn 3, and I was on the inside, and I slipped a little bit, hit Junior and knocked him into the bank.
“And after the race, we were down there at the pay window, waiting to get paid, and I was trying to convince Junior that my brakes had failed or something had gone wrong and I didn’t mean to do that. And I thought I was doing a heck of a sales job. A fan walked up with a $5 bill in his hand and he said, ‘Boy, I’m glad you knocked that S.O.B. into the wall tonight.’
“And I said, ‘No, no, no, no, I didn’t mean to do that.’
“‘Oh, yeah, you owed him. I know you did. I’m glad you knocked him into the wall,’” the fan retorted.
“Junior just laughed and turned around and walked off because he understood where that fan was coming from,” Jarrett said.
Allison and Petty, in particular, were bitter rivals, Petty the gentlemanly and soft-spoken face of the sport in the 1960s and '70s and Allison, the scrappy and tough underdog from Alabama who always seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder.
“You know, I had a problem backing into Richard Petty,” Allison said, tongue firmly in cheek. “Finally we got it sorted out where he understood that I wasn’t really backing up into him, he was just going faster than me on the straightaway and I was in his way.”
Allison said the contentious on-track battles with Petty helped fuel fan interest and grow the sport.
“What we did, we made the fans stand up in the grandstands,” Allison said. “And wherever we ran on one given week, the next week, there was a few more that had come there to see what we were going to do to each other. And the whole time, we were benefitting racing.
“Sometimes, we weren’t benefitting ourselves, because we had to go home and fix our cars,” Allison said. “The prize money wasn’t very good and it took a few bucks to get that car back in shape, but we went out there and gave it our honest shot. I had a lot of good times doing it and I hope Richard did, too.”
Petty said the rivalry was the simple result of two men who shared a burning desire to win. “The deal was, we respected each other from the standpoint of, we wasn’t trying to hurt each other, we was just trying to win races,” Petty said. “I think everybody understood that.”
Pearson and Petty had it, too, most notably in the famous 1976 Daytona 500, which Pearson won after the two crashed on the last lap. When the two collided, the Wood Brothers got on the radio and asked Pearson what happened. His response was classic: “The bitch hit me.”
“Go back and look at the film,” Petty insisted Wednesday night. “I did not hit him. You can’t hit anybody when you’re in front of him.”
But the best example of old-school having at it came from Moore, the World War II hero, crew chief and car owner. Incensed that Curtis Turner had wrecked his car and cost his driver a race victory, the lanky Moore went looking for Turner, tire iron in hand. Much to his surprise, Turner pulled a gun on Moore.
“If he hadn’t a had that pistol, I’d a probably used that tire iron right on his head,” said Moore. “I’ll say this, though: I backed away quite a bit and laid that tire iron down first.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
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