Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post: Daytona Beach Racing in Color - 1949! Continue reading the Original Blog Post
To bad a lot of old iron used up. To bad NASCAR does’t run stock cars any more. Also to bad they do not use narrow tires & rough tracks. Be to exciting & competitive I guess. Also would test the drivers rather then which team has the biggest budget
The '49 race in color is good. But far better, even in b&w, is the next film that came up, of the '52 race. The reporter's prerace interview of the Flock brothers was of special interest to me as I'm a native son of Griffin, GA, just 35 miles South of Atlanta, which in those days was the unquestioned center of stock car racing in the South. Watched many of the drivers, including the Flock brothers, run on tracks in and around GA that were running in this race, and drank quite a few beers in a "fight your way in and fight your way out" beer joint owned and operated by Bob Flock in downtown Atlanta. NASCAR, and another group called GASCAR (a G instead of N to make it for Georgia instead of the N for National) raced all over GA from the 1 mile dirt track in Atlanta (Lakewood Speedway the "Indianapolis of the South" , all the way down to the Peach Bowl also in Atlanta, which started out dirt and later asphalt, claiming to be quarter mile but many said a fifth mile. One indelible memory is of my first time at a NASCAR race in Macon, GA at Central City Park on a half mile dirt track. The access roads to the track within the park were dirt, bordered by grassy areas as you drove in to the parking lot. Off to the side in that grass was a battered Hudson Hornet, all lettered up as a race car. It was jacked up and a man was underneath the front, presumably readjusting the front suspension alignment from the settings used for flat towing to track (tow bar, no trailer) over to those required for the dirt track. He just wanted to lay in the grass to do it instead of the red GA clay in the unpaved pits. All the NASCAR stars were there, the Flock brothers, Marshall Teague, Lee Petty, all of them.Don't remember who won now, but I'll never forget that pit work on the grass by a lone man who was, I assume. owner, driver, and mechanic who picked up volunteers at the track to serve as a pit crew. Memories like that make me want to puke when I see the NASCAR of today.