On Wednesday night's "NASCAR Now," I engaged in a little old school versus nu skool with my colleague "Sweaty" Eddie Hinton. One of the topics on our list, one we ran out of time to get to, was the inaugural race at Talladega 40 years ago. It was a bizarrely controversial weekend that birthed a bizarrely controversial racetrack. Hinton wrote a great story about it on ESPN.com and I had done a little research on it when writing my "ESPN Ultimate NASCAR" book back in 2007.
Long story short: Bill France Sr. built a track in rural Alabama that was longer, bigger and faster than Daytona. Turns out it was also scarier. Guys would run a few laps of practice and as the speeds reached 200 mph, their tires, designed to run on tracks half Talladega's size, began to blow apart. The superstars of the day, organized under a union known as the Professional Drivers Association (PDA), decided it was unsafe and walked out. France ran the race anyway, recruiting a field of racers from other divisions, from ARCA to NASCAR's Grand American division. No-name Richard Brickhouse took the checkered flag. France also won a small victory that day.
No one is going to tell that story better than Hinton already has. But as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story.
"If it hadn't been for that race, I wouldn't be here today," Richard Childress said as he stood in the ballroom that makes up the top floor of one of nearly two dozen buildings that cover his sprawling complex of some 200 acres. "All of the championship trophies, the employees, the cars. There's not a thing here at RCR that isn't here because of that day at Talladega."
Childress was there to participate in the Grand Am race in his No. 13 '68 Chevy Camaro. That series was formed to allow short-track weekend warriors to come out and run on the big tracks under the NASCAR banner.
"It was me, Chocolate [Myers] and some other guys. And that was it. Well, we saw all this going on over there in the Cup Series garage, they called it Grand National then, and that afternoon we see those trucks pulling out and going home, with Richard Petty and Bobby Allison and guys like that leading the way. Then Bill France Sr. comes over to our garage and announces that he needs cars to come run the Cup race the next day, and he'd pay us a bonus to do it. Well, he didn't have [to] ask me twice."
The following day, Sept. 14, 1969, Childress took the green flag, started 26th and finished 23rd, completing only 80 of 188 laps before pulling off with a rear-axle issue. For his efforts he received a pledge from the France family that they would always have his back because he'd had theirs. He also left the track with about $10,000 in cash, a wad that included prize money from both races and his as-promised bonus from France.
"I had never seen that much money in my life," Childress says. "That was the cash that I needed to finally incorporate. We went home and used that cash to start Richard Childress Racing. I bought some land and built my shop with that money. We continued the short-track deal and the Grand Am deal and, by '71, I got to run a few more Cup races. By '73, I was running full time. Ten years later, we were running for championships. Dale [Earnhardt ended] up winning more races than any driver ever has at Talladega, and he won his last race right there in 2000."
The NASCAR stars of '69 gave Childress a hard time about what they viewed as crossing the PDA's picket line. As the years passed and RCR became the pacesetter for the sport, those tensions eased. But sometimes, even now, RC says he is reminded that some are still mad at him.
"It was not easy. Nothing worth having is. Would I do anything [different] that weekend if we could go back and have another shot at it? Not a chance."
Back in April of this year, Childress helped Talladega kick off its 40th anniversary celebration. The Alabama blog on AL.com has video of his news conference.
Throttle Linkage
• Dustin Long of Landmark Newspapers got a rare inside look at NASCAR's postrace inspection process at its research and development center in Concord, N.C.
• Long also pays tribute to longtime Martinsville Speedway PR director Dick Thompson, who passed away early Wednesday morning.
• Doug Demmons of The Birmingham News visits the people who could end up being the busiest group at Talladega this Halloween weekend: at the Infield Care Center.
• Jay Pennell catches up with the family of Blake Bobbitt, the teenage fan who suffered a broken jaw when Carl Edwards' car flew into the catch fence at Talladega in April.
• USA Today's Nate Ryan recovered from his recent bout with H1N1 to take a look at NASCAR's push to become more green.
The 'Why We Call Richard Petty "The King"' Fact of the Week
Sadler Foundation
We're still waiting for someone to make a movie called "Petty in Pink."
His Royal Fastness is now and always will be a man's man. So why was he seen strolling around Lowe's Motor Speedway wearing pink? During the Charlotte race weekend, The King traded in his trademark black, Charlie 1 Horse cowboy hat for one adorned with pink feathers as part of the national push for awareness of the fight against breast cancer.
That hat, which he autographed as he handed it over to the Sadler family, is currently up for auction by the Hermie and Elliott Sadler Foundation, with the money headed for the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure. Bidding ends Nov. 19.
Season's Tweetings
Speaking of the Sadler family, Elliott has spent the fall walking his 12,000-plus followers through every step of wife Amanda's pregnancy. On Wednesday afternoon, he revealed big news:
"@Elliott_Sadler We having a boy!! The Sadler name lives on. My dad gets his first grandson. Said he going to buy a gokart and a shotgun to get ready! Haha[.]"
Ryan McGee
