Lives, sport were changed forever at 'Dega's first race (NASCAR.com)
October 28, 2009
History records that on Sept. 14, 1969, a North Carolina native named Richard Brickhouse won the inaugural NASCAR Grand National race at what was then called Alabama International Motor Speedway. But if you delve deeper into the key moments of the events leading up to and including the 1969 Talladega 500—and its aftermath—the echoes of that race still resonate deeply within the sport four decades later.
In a way, the formation of a driver's union and subsequent walkout was a reflection of the prevailing political climate of the day. The war in Vietnam, and the growing protest movement, was grabbing headlines. The nation had been rocked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the race riots in Watts and Detroit, and the growing animosity between workers and management.
"That was a time when authority was being questioned in the United States," said Roger Bear, who was manager of the track in 1969. "There were things going on in the world and this country that frankly we were mirroring in this sport, I believe. I think there was a questioning of authority. I think the younger drivers, the Bobby Allisons, the Richard Pettys, I think they thought they ought to have a larger say in the sport.
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"They were starting to make some money and starting to feel like they needed a seat at the table. And they just didn't have a seat at the table. … But I will never be convinced otherwise that there wasn't an outside influence that was encouraging them, if not funding them."
Earlier that summer, many of the prominent drivers of the day had agreed to join a group called the Professional Drivers Association, with the idea of having more of a voice in how the sport was operated and controlled. NASCAR president Bill France, who had already crushed a previous attempt to organize a union in 1961—banning Curtis Turner and Tim Flock from the sport—was not amused.
On top of that, the news from the tire tests at the new Talladega track was not good. At speeds closing in on 200 mph, the tires were shredding, coming apart in as little as two laps, and Goodyear and Firestone engineers were stumped. But 60,000 tickets had been sold, and France wasn't about to postpone the inaugural race.
The situation came to a head immediately following qualifying. According to longtime sportswriter Tom Higgins, who was in attendance that day, several drivers—including Richard Petty, president of the new union, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough and LeeRoy Yarbrough—confronted France in the garage area on Saturday. The discussion became more animated and the words harsher as neither side was willing to compromise.
At some point, France himself climbed behind the wheel of a car he had entered and completed several laps at high speed in an effort to assuage drivers' fears. It didn't work. A closed-door drivers meeting went late into the night, and sometime shortly after midnight, Petty and more than 30 teams loaded up their cars and walked out, assuming that France would have to acquiesce to their demands. But France had Plan B already in place.
A few of the single-car independent drivers hadn't been invited to join the PDA and needed purse money to cover their expenses. In addition, teams who had run in the Grand American support race earlier in the day were still on the property, and France hastily rounded up volunteers from those ranks, along with a handful of cars from the ARCA division. Somehow, he cobbled together a 36-car lineup—although six cars were of the "start and park" variety—and the show went on without the big names.
Brickhouse, who had signed the PDA agreement, was the only union driver to challenge the walkout. He replaced Paul Goldsmith in Ray Nichels' No. 99 Dodge, one of the new "winged" Charger Daytonas. Fellow North Carolinian Jim Vandiver, who had never stepped foot inside a Grand National cockpit until that moment, wound up in the No. 3 Dodge vacated by Bobby Johns. And Midwestern ARCA star Ramo Stott was recruited to drive the No. 14 Dodge for Bill Ellis, the car in which Brickhouse had originally been entered.
They were the only three on the lead lap at the race's conclusion. After presenting Brickhouse with the winner's trophy, France made two pointed remarks aimed squarely at the PDA. "Winners never quit and quitters never win," France said. And he followed that by saying, "The boys who pulled out owe their future to the drivers who ran today, if they have a future."
Petty and Pearson were the first to break ranks within the PDA, deciding to run at Columbia Speedway five days later, and the organization quickly crumbled and disappeared. And no further successful attempts to unionize NASCAR's drivers have been made to this day.
But who really won and lost? Forty years later, the answers aren't as cut and dry as you might think, both on the track and off. In order to understand the events of that weekend, and how they not only altered NASCAR forever, but the destinies of those involved, perhaps it's better if the story is told in their own words.
ROGER BEAR
The chairman of Keystone Sports and Event Marketing, Roger Bear was a young executive for Daytona Speedway Corp. in 1969, and as director of marketing for Alabama International Motor Speedway, he found himself squarely in the middle of the war of wills between France and the drivers. Even before the drivers walked out, Bear knew France would make sure there would be a race run that day.
"You could either postpone the race or run the race. Those were the options," Bear said. "Postponing the race? What could we have done? We had 60,000-something people coming for the race who had already bought tickets, made plans, made hotel reservations for the six hotel rooms that existed back then. We had to run the race and there was no time to postpone it."
As the final touches were being put on the facility during the summer of 1969, Firestone and Goodyear conducted tests of their tire compound, and Bear said nothing unusual was learned at that time.
"There was tire testing done, and to the best of my recollection, there were no significant issues during the tire tests," Bear said. "But tire tests are kind of confidential things. The only thing that was going on was some goofy vertigo issues that somebody came up with. The fact of the matter was, Talladega was designed to be so much less stressful on people and equipment, because the ingress and egress of the turns was so much more gradual."
But as the date of the race approached, some worried that the tires wouldn't be able to stand the stresses of running multiple laps at nearly 200 mph, and when practice began, those fears began to be realized.
"When Bill France would come into the garage area, he'd stand up and talk to them and they'd all gather around and frankly, some of them were quite rude," Bear said. "But they had pretty strong feelings that these tires would go away, sometimes in as little as two laps. And Firestone was flying tires in daily, Goodyear was flying tires in daily in an effort to replace that. So the tire guys were saying to the drivers or owners or whoever was on the inside, 'Hey, we've got real problems here.' And France's solution was, if you think the tire's going to blow, back off and come into the pits and change it. We'll have enough tires for you."
Bear could see that the situation was about to come to a head on Saturday afternoon, following qualifying and practice. And there was no doubt France had an inkling that the regular drivers might walk out, because plans were already in place to make sure there were enough cars for a representative field.
"There was a major confrontation coming and it was a test of wills," Bear said. "At the end of the day, they practiced. And we had ARCA cars and drivers ready. We, as a facility, were prepared. We had the Grand American race that ran successfully the day before—and not a tire failure, not a single car hit the wall. That night, we encouraged any Grand American drivers who wanted to enter the race that they were eligible to compete, and some did."
There is one thing that still irks Bear 40 years later.
"There had been weeks of preparation for this, and I had pointedly asked some of the drivers if they were going to race or walk out," Bear said. "And had been promised by some drivers that, 'Yeah, I'm going to race. Don't worry.' And there was such peer pressure that they were in the group that left, and personally that was quite disappointing to me. Nevertheless, we ran the race and I think it's quite interesting to note that the race was run successfully without a single car in the wall from a tire going down."
In Bear's opinion, the fans still got to see what they came for: a competitive NASCAR race. But at the same time, the balance of power within the sport was never the same again.
"All things considered, I think the world changed that day," Bear said. "I think the drivers were successful in their walkout. I think NASCAR was successful in putting on a race. I think it probably worked out as well as it could have to everybody. The people who were there were given an opportunity to come to a future race at Daytona or Talladega at no cost, so we basically rain-checked the entire crowd, and a significant number of those people have never claimed their tickets."
RICHARD PETTY
There are some who claim the PDA was all about money and power, but Petty disagrees. He said much of the concerns drivers had in those days revolved around working conditions for themselves and their families, which is why talks about forming a union began that summer.
"We were trying to make things a little bit easier on the drivers and the drivers' wives," Petty said. "There were no conveniences to a race track then. Our kids and wives sat right out in the middle of the infield, filled with all those drunks or party people or whatever. And we asked, 'Can we do something about that? Can we have cleaner restrooms for the drivers? Can we have a little privacy for the drivers?' Stuff like that. Naturally, there was some monetary deal, too."
At Darlington, a petition was circulated in the garage area.
"Then when we got to Talladega, when we had the tire problem, everybody said, 'Hey, let's just do it through the PDA. Let's not do it on an individual basis. We're already halfway holding hands here anyway,' Petty said.
When neither side was willing to compromise, the drivers walked. It was both the high-water mark, and the dissolution, of the PDA. Of his role, Petty has few regrets.
"I think it worked out pretty good for us and NASCAR," he said. "For the drivers, we did not compete and did not get anybody hurt. Also, I always looked at it from the deal where if Talladega had run the race and somebody had won, on Monday it would have been over with. The way it was, it was in the newspapers for weeks. And all the sudden, everybody looks on their map and wonders, where is Talladega, Ala.? Everybody knows about it now. They couldn't have done a better PR job, it couldn't have been better for NASCAR or even for us in the long run—drivers and crews—by doing it like that."
Even though the PDA was short-lived, Petty believes the walkout opened the eyes of NASCAR's management to some of the major issues, particularly when it came to paying drivers an equitable share of the purse money.
"I think then they started the contingency programs and all that, you make a certain amount of money just for showing up, to thank the drivers or to make sure they got the drivers they needed to show up at the race track," Petty said. "So it changed their outlook a little bit, even if it wasn't unionized, it wasn't organized. We didn't go in as a club and say, 'You've got to do this or we've leaving.' NASCAR said, 'OK, if we don't do this, maybe they might do something like that.' So we kind of left that hanging on the vine and went ahead and let NASCAR put in their two cents worth."
Unlike the harsh sanctions France placed on Turner and Flock eight years earlier, the sanctioning body welcomed the union drivers back without penalty. And Petty has a theory about that.
"The deal there, was we were the whole show," Petty said. "If they had kicked all of us out, then they would have had to start with a whole new group of people. And the factories were involved with the drivers and owners. All of a sudden, the factories go home, Goodyear goes home, and you haven't got a show."
RICHARD BRICKHOUSE
Richard Brickhouse was about to turn 30 in September of 1969. The native of Rocky Point, N.C., had broken into NASCAR's premier division the previous season, and had impressed the folks at Chrysler enough to be given a ride in Bill Ellis' Dodges. He responded with a seventh-place finish at Michigan, followed by a 10th in the Southern 500 at Darlington.
Brickhouse was one of the drivers who signed the PDA petition, but he was torn by the idea of walking out, as his career was just about to blossom.
"I signed a list that they presented me with at Darlington," Brickhouse said. "And I didn't really know what I was getting involved in, and I don't think they did either, at the time. When we got to Talladega, Chrysler had asked me to drive one of their factory cars there. That was to be my first factory ride. They had done all this research and development on their new winged car and they wanted me to be in the race.
"There were just a lot of unknowns, especially in my camp. I was driving for Bill Ellis at the time, and he had brought a car down for me, the No. 14 car. And then we got to where Chrysler wanted me to drive the No. 88 car, which was an extra car, one they were using for testing purposes. And then I eventually got switched to the No. 99 car, which was Charlie Glotzbach's. They decided to let him qualify the car he had been testing in. There weren't too many people getting much sleep that night."
Compounding Brickhouse's difficult decision was the tire issue.
"It all came down to the tire problem," Brickhouse said. "The tire companies just realized that they were in a bind. Firestone was the first one to withdraw, and Goodyear thought they had a tire sufficient for the race. But everybody was dealing with something unknown. The speeds were higher than they had ever been, and nobody really knew what the outcome was going to be. It was kind of hard to make a decision on anything, under those conditions. Everybody was trying to ask the others about what they were going to do, whether they were going to stay or go. It was a chaotic situation there."
Brickhouse's determination whether to walk out or stay was ultimately predicated on his future driving prospects.
"It was a definite crossroads in my career because I had reached a point where I couldn't continue to run," Brickhouse said. "The car I had bought to get into Grand National was going to be obsolete at the end of that year. And I was not financially able to continue on. I didn't have a sponsor. So I knew I couldn't turn this opportunity down. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to continue anyway.
"I felt like it was something I couldn't walk away from."
Starting ninth in the race, Brickhouse quickly realized that he could run faster by getting as close to the wall as possible. Plus, he knew he had a decided advantage in aerodynamics and horsepower with one of the few winged cars remaining in the field.
"The fastest way around the race track is normally the middle, and that's where it was the roughest," Brickhouse said. "After I started the race, I moved up the track looking for a smoother line, the way some of the drivers do today. Of course, some of the cars out there were not capable of running the speeds of what the tires would stand up to, but the winged car I was driving was like 10 mph faster than the regular Charger.
"So I set a conservative pace and stayed with the group and made sure I was in the lead at the end of the race. The car was prepared by Nichels Engineering and it was a top-notch car. By far, I felt it was the best one out there. I knew if I drove that car, I was going to win that race."
Brickhouse won the battle that day, but ultimately lost the war. He became the focal point for criticism from the drivers who staged the walkout, although Brickhouse claims he never was blacklisted because of his actions.
"I never had any hard feelings between me and the other drivers on a one-to-one basis after that," Brickhouse said. "I was basically a stranger to them all anyway, because I hadn't been around that long. I didn't hold any grievances with any of them, because we all did pretty much what we felt like we had to do at the time, and that's the way it is."
Brickhouse competed in only 13 more Grand National races, but says the walkout had little to do with why his career ended prematurely.
"That boycott got a lot of credit for my demise but it really wasn't the case," Brickhouse said. "The economy went into a recession right after that and Chrysler got out of racing, Firestone got out of racing, and that's what hurt me more than anything else. I was unable to continue because of financial reasons.
"At that point, everybody was predicting that Plymouth was coming back, Richard Petty was coming back. He had been driving Fords. And we were going to have five Plymouth teams and five Dodge teams. And I had had a couple of offers and it didn't look like I could lose. My career was going straight up. And due to the financial situation, it seemed to me that I got hurt the most."
With no cash and no car, Brickhouse was left with a tough decision.
"I was running a farming operation at the time and had hired some help," Brickhouse said. "And I was forced to come back home and go to work, because I had to make a living and I wasn't financially able to just hang around the race tracks and hope for a ride. There was a time there when people like Bobby Allison and Buddy Baker were without rides there, and I was lower on the list than them."
Looking back, Brickhouse said he has no regrets opting out of the PDA, even though his racing career suffered after his Talladega victory.
"That was the whole thing, it was ill-conceived and ill-planned," Brickhouse said. "They just picked the wrong time. But they were dealing with something they hadn't ever dealt with before. All that was understandable, too."
JIM VANDIVER
Forty years later, runner-up Jim Vandiver is still convinced that he, not Richard Brickhouse, was the winner of the inaugural race at Talladega.
"I definitely believe I won that race," Vandiver said. "[Car owner] Ray Fox, to this day, still says we won that race. [NASCAR scorers] debated it for about two or three hours, but they finally gave it to Richard Brickhouse. In my mind, I know they wanted that car to win that race because it was the first winged car—Chrysler spent a lot of money on research building that car—and they didn't want to be outrun by a Charger 500."
Vandiver has replayed that race in his mind many times, and he always comes to the same conclusion.
"Brickhouse was a lap down," Vandiver said. "You know, from driving race cars, if you've been in the lead pack all day or on the lead lap. What happened was he pitted twice under the green and we pitted every time under the caution. So we had a lap on him. And it came down to about 10 laps to go, and when they threw the green flag, Brickhouse did get by me but that just put him back on the lead lap."
Like Brickhouse, the Huntersville, N.C., resident was 29 and just beginning to make a name for himself in the sport. But when he came to Talladega to run in the Grand American touring division, he had no idea how his life would be changed when he was asked to replace Bobby Johns in the No. 3 Dodge.
"There was a GT race that ran Camaros and Firebirds, and they raced on Saturday down there," Vandiver said. "Actually, what happened was my brother Tommy was a crew chief for Ray Fox. And when the drivers walked out, Fox wondered who they were going to get to drive his car. My brother said, 'You could get Jim to drive it.' Fox said, 'Go get him and let him try it out.' So he came to the GT garage and got me, and I tried it out on Saturday."
"I had never driven one before and the first time I went out, I ran something like 193 mph. I liked it. I don't know. It was something that afterwards, Daytona and Talladega were my favorite tracks. The faster we ran, the better I liked it."
As far as fallout from the regular drivers, Vandiver said he never had any issues with him afterward.
"I never had run NASCAR up to then and didn't know anything about the PDA," Vandiver said. "So I wasn't in the organization and they treated me superb. They were down on Brickhouse because he was in the PDA and he went ahead and drove the car after they had said nobody was going to run.
"In my case, nobody ever said a word. I always had a good reputation and was always well thought of. I never heard a thing about it. To tell you the truth, I didn't know anything about the tires and I was too naive. I just wanted to drive the race car and didn't even think about the tire situation or anything like that."
Vandiver went on to run a total of 85 Cup races before retiring as a driver in 1983, finishing as high as third in the 1972 Daytona 500 and fourth in the 1975 Southern 500. But he still wonders how his career would have been changed by winning at Talladega in 1969.
"I think it would have made a huge difference," Vandiver said. "You really never know how close you might have come to really making it. Years later, I was talking to Petty one time and he said, 'You know, we started to hire you when we hired [Pete] Hamilton but we knew Hamilton a little bit better.' And then I was in Charlotte in '95 for a legends race and I was signing autographs between Dick Hutcherson and Glen Wood, and Glen Wood said, 'You know something? When we hired Neil Bonnett, we were thinking of hiring you but Bonnett had a little more experience than you.'
"Just like now, it tears me up because it's not the money, it's the idea that you can say you were the winner of the first race at Talladega," Vandiver said. "I was at the first NASCAR race in 1949, when I was about 11 years old. I remember going to the first race at Charlotte Motor Speedway when Joe Lee Johnson won the race. People always remember who won the first race. You always wish you would have won and came that close and you think you won, and the guy you drove for says you won the race, but you don't get credit for it."
RAMO STOTT
While Vandiver believes a scoring error cost him a victory, third-place finisher Ramo Stott's contention is that a political decision kept him out of Victory Lane in the 1969 Talladega 500. Stott had been receiving factory support from Chrysler for his ARCA program and assumed he'd be given the best car when the regular drivers walked out.
"I thought I had a pretty decent car but I knew Nichels and the Goldsmith car was a little better over the one I was running, but they were happy with the way I was running," Stott said. "At the time, I thought I was doing pretty good. But later on, I got to thinking how come [Ray] Nichels put me in that other car and put Brickhouse in the better one. I should have been the one to get into Goldsmith's car.
"At that time, the word was I was supposed to get in that car. But I found out later why they took Brickhouse, because Brickhouse was a southern guy and I expect Bill France and them thought he could pull more people in than I could, being from up here in the Midwest."
Stott was battling Benny Parsons for the 1969 ARCA championship that season, but had no NASCAR ride when the walkout occurred. That changed in a hurry, as Stott replaced Brickhouse in the No. 14 Dodge owned by Bill Ellis. Still, he felt like a strike-buster.
"If you've got a strike on, you get scabs coming in," Stott said. "I felt sort of like a scab. I knew we needed to run that race. Bill France and I were pretty close at that time. I was down there because I had already ran in my own car."
Given what he knew about France, there was no doubt is Stott's mind that there would be a race, with or without the regular drivers.
"When most of the boys decided not to run because the pay wasn't that good and the tires were no good, they just felt that they needed to do something at that particular time," Stott said. "It was like a walkout at a company. So what do you do? Are you going to stop everything that you're producing? That's similar to the way that particular race went.
"I felt bad then and later on, because the guys would say, 'Yeah, you ran that first race and you shouldn't,' but I wasn't a NASCAR driver at that particular time. I ran Daytona, but I wasn't considered a full-time driver. I wasn't a member of that PDA. That was a membership for the NASCAR drivers."
Stott had met France two years earlier.
"I went into his office in 1967," Stott said. "I went down to run the ARCA 300 and the ARCA drivers protested against me. Back then, I was running the IMCA circuit in the Midwest. I ran 60, 70 races in the Midwest. Then I went down there to the south, they didn't particularly like me running with them. They said if I was going to run ARCA, they weren't going to run, because they felt I was getting too much help.
"So I went over to the office to meet Bill France and discuss it with him, and he said, 'Why don't you just come over and run with us?'"
So when France needed help, Stott was there.
"Bill France had put a lot into it, and they were having bad tire problems," Stott said. "But I won that 500-mile ARCA race and never even changed the tires. I was probably 5 mph off the speeds the NASCAR boys were running when they were having their problems with the tires. At that time, we had treaded tires. We didn't have the slicks that came out later for that tire. Goodyear found out that the smooth tire worked so much better than the treaded tire because they'd heat up.
"We didn't have any tire issues. We didn't have any trouble. I think it was just a case of the NASCAR drivers thinking they weren't making enough at that particular time. I don't think the race paid all that much way back then."
One year later, Stott won the ARCA event at Talladega. And more amazingly, he did it without changing a single tire.
Stott never ran more than six NASCAR events in any season, making his final Cup start in 1977. But his welding abilities—and knowledge of the Superbird chassis—came in handy when he helped build the car Pete Hamilton drove to victory in the 1970 Daytona 500.
Still, Stott wishes his name had been the one chosen to drive the winning car in the first 500-miler at Talladega.
"I'd have won that race, I think, with the No. 99 car from Nichels Engineering," Stott said.
RICHARD CHILDRESS
Finishing 23rd that day was a young driver from Winston-Salem, N.C., named Richard Childress, who would use his winnings to eventually build a NASCAR dynasty. But in 1969, Childress was just happy to be racing.
"In 1969, I was working for a battery plant, doing a lot of other things on the side," Childress said. "And building wrecked cars. Anything I could do to make a buck. By that time, I had moved up, started running modifieds at Bowman-Gray Stadium and went on to running dirt around home. Then they started a division in 1968 called the Grand American touring division. I said, 'I need to build me one of them.' So I went and bought a wrecked '68 Camaro and put it together and carried it to Daytona and ran and qualified sixth, I think it was, right outside Lloyd Ruby. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was having a ball."
Childress then went to Talladega and happened to be in the right place at the right time when the PDA boycotted.
"Bill France came along, and he had driven a car around there and he was going to race it," Childress said. "He ended up letting Tiny Lund run the car, I think. But he was willing to pay us, $1,000, $1,500, $2,000—I don't remember exactly what it was—but I left there with $10,000 and I didn't think I'd have to work again. Little did I know.
"But that was the most money I'd ever seen at the time, so I came back, bought some land, built a shop, quit working at the battery plant. I had quit working there in February because they told me if I left, I couldn't come back. So I decided I was going to race for a living, even if I had to run the short tracks. So that opened a lot of doors for me."
Just like Brickhouse, Vandiver and Stott, Childress never ended up winning after 1969. However, he parlayed his good fortune into one of NASCAR's most successful racing operations. And 40 years later, he returns to Talladega to celebrate four decades in NASCAR.
"A lot of it is about breaks," Childress said. "I got a big break there, getting to run that race, getting that extra money."
BILL FRANCE
Bill France's decision to hold the race at Talladega despite the driver walkout was a calculated risk. But according to Bear, it was a risk France was more than willing to make.
"Bill France was the most powerful man I ever knew in my life," Bear said. "And I say powerful in the most wonderful terms. He was a man who could make a decision and make it work. And I always felt he made the right decision, but he was capable of making any decision and making it the right decision."
However, after the boycott, France's relationship with some of the people in the garage area was irretrievably broken. And in Bear's mind, it was the beginning of the end of his reign as the head of the organization.
"I think that was the beginning of his retirement," Bear said. "I really think from that point on, France was more interested in Bill Jr. running the organization than he was the day before. I think he was disappointed. He never said that to me, but in 40 years of looking back and remembering, I really think that was the point where Bill Sr. said, 'OK, it's going to be sooner than later.'"
But before France stepped out of the spotlight, handing the chairmanship of NASCAR to his son in 1972, he made sure the ones who stuck with him that weekend knew how much they were appreciated.
"Every driver in that race, and every owner, got a letter from Bill France, thanking them for participating in that race," Bear said. "And got more than that. That letter said, 'If you ever need anything, you've got one get out of jail card.' And some of those people used that, I'm positive of that."
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