The Worst NASCAR Race Ever: The 1969 Talladega 500

Talladega Super Speedway has been mired in controversy for longer than most racing fans have been alive today. You might think this all started in the late 80s with the introduction of the restrictor which came into play with the advent of group racing, leading to the inevitable big accidents. Drivers and owners alike are furious, some say it dates back even further to the 19th century when the Native Americans who lived here were driven out by the US military during the Trail of Tears and the natives cursed this land as they They marched for centuries. Old Stories Although the best-documented story behind Talladega's turbulent past dates back to the first

race

in September

1969

, what follows is a story from the Baptists and the U.S.

Department of Defense about the boycotts and lost opportunities of wars and the failures of greed and the deception of workers' rights and the fight against unions this was the first

race

at the Talladega Super Speedway and it was the

worst

race in Nascar history. It was huge. I thought Daytona was great, but then you look at that track. Looks like you put Daytona inside it's pretty horrible to think a guy had been racing something like that, we're not going to do this with our necks on the road, this car will be in the race if you don't drive with Someone else, let's be real, I won the race, no doubt, and when he told me that, Leroy got behind me, punched him in the face and knocked him down so we can tell this story, we'll have to go back.

Like all the way from the beginning, this is the Talladega Super Speedway circa 1949 at this point it's not a loop at all, this is Aniston Air Force Base and the small town of Anniston in Talladega County, Alabama, originally opened in 1942 as a training school for the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. The postwar years for Anniston Air Force Base have not been kind. When the 1960s arrive, the airfields are in in poor condition, but the US Army still needs them due to the Vietnam War being prepared and the need to transport ammunition from the Aniston Army Depot to the West Coast, how

ever

, the city of Anniston and the county Talladega can't afford it, they don't have the money or the manpower, they run up a big bill. france, current president and ceo of

nascar

, who is looking to build the biggest, baddest track in the world in south carolina.

There are some stories about the original idea of ​​the world's biggest and baddest track being built. Some say it's supposed to be built in raleigh. Others. stored somewhere in south Georgia, but this one makes the most sense to me and is the one that has been the most popular over the years. Big Bill France wants to build a new track and a big market. He wants it to be even bigger and better. than daytona, so it makes the corners a little steeper, the track a little wider, and the length a little longer. His goal is halfway between the existing tracks of Charlotte Motor Speedway and Atlanta Raceway and Greenville, South Carolina is the perfect location.

Right in the center, in the middle, just one drawback with this master plan. South Carolina has blue laws on the books right now. If you don't know what a blue law is, then it's good for you that you live in a sensitive part of the country. Blue laws are essentially laws passed in heavily Baptist areas that concern what types of activities can and cannot be done during the Sabbath and for Baptists, that is,

ever

y Sunday of the year, some of these blue laws are still in books today, as in some counties in south carolina you can't buy beer on sundays and to this day all liquor stores in south carolina are closed on sundays, but in the 1960s they were much more comprehensive in some places where no type of business could be opened.

Sunday and most places couldn't have a social or sporting event on a Sunday back then and that was a state law that wasn't just limited to the counties. Bill France attempts to petition the state legislature to change these laws, but to no avail. I'm not moved if you're wondering then how the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway ever became a good thing, that was because back in the day they used to run the 500 not on Labor Day weekend but on Labor Day itself , on a Monday, such a big bill. Francia packs up his things and goes looking elsewhere.

Yes, South Carolina misses out on the biggest, baddest racetrack on the planet being built on their property because of the damn Baptists. I could have had the craziest race track in America built in my backyard, but no. it didn't happen thanks to these idiots, yet another reason to hate the baptist church. God, God, I hate Baptists so much that they ruin everything here. Oh, where does Big Bill France end up? Well, you need his lead to be close to someone important. marketing southern cities with large populations, you also need a runway that's close to an interstate, like within 10 miles, a scout of yours arrives halfway between Atlanta and Birmingham.

Interstate 20 is being built and right next door, Aniston Air Force Base with all that. flat land around him big bill agrees with the department of defense to pave a new runway as long as he can have the old ones, they agree and the city of aniston sells the land to big bill france on very favorable terms everyone wins big bill france gets her land anniston doesn't have to worry about that old deteriorating asphalt and the army can still get ammunition out of the depot seems too perfect, doesn't it? Bill France hires the same contractors who built the I-20 to build his runway construction has very few problems and is completed on time, but by design the completion date is dangerously close to opening weekend.

The executive suites for VIPs and corporate sponsors are simply open-air rooms with tables made from pieces of plywood on trestles. patrons of those suites have to wear earplugs at the opening weekend invitational test races, forget it, the first tests are held on the Wednesday of show week, just five days before race day, all the drivers hit the track that Wednesday and are impressed with Talladega. just 0.16 miles longer than the Daytona and 12 feet wider, but it feels much bigger than that. They are shocked but excited because they can't wait to race, however the first guys on the track report some handling issues, okay no big deal.

They are using Daytona setups and this track is a little different so they just need to make some adjustments. They return to the garage after a few full speed laps and this is what their tires look like, like they're shredded. The track could be too. have been paved with cheese graters other drivers report the same problem no matter the car no matter the tire manufacturer everyone has the same problem bad tires now at the time

nascar

was in the middle of a full blown tire war between Goodyear and Firestone Chances If you are a Nascar fan watching this video, you may not remember the last tire war in Nascar.

You don't even know what I'm talking about. A tire war is a horrible thing for me and any sanctioning body to go through. I'm not even sure why they allowed this to happen in the first place. Basically, the sanctioning body in this case, Nascar decides they don't like the amount of money their tire manufacturer is putting into the exclusive manufacturer in the sport, so Nascar goes shopping and finds Firestone. who put up a considerable sum to compete against Goodyear in Nascar, Nascar teams signed contracts with different tire manufacturers, so you have Goodyear teams versus Firestone teams, and that sounds good, right?

The competition is great, Well, in this case, not the free market can fix most things, but this is not one of them to gain an advantage over the competition Manufacturers face the razor's edge of safety A softer tire has more grip and therefore faster but lacks durability and falls apart faster a harder tire lacks grip and speed but lasts longer and is safer a tire failure is one of the

worst

accidents a road driver can have. Nascar and they usually look like this, head-on impacts with walls at steep angles, many drivers up to this point have died in accidents that look like Many things like this and injuries are common in Nascar in

1969

.

Nobody wants this, but When winning is at stake against safety, winning usually takes priority, that's just how people are. The last tire war in Nascar was in the early 90's with complete Goodyear vs Hoosier flops. were rampant in those years and led to many driver injuries and hospitalizations, Nascar eventually learned its lesson and there hasn't been another tie war since, but this is 1969 and those lessons are being learned in the heat of the moment here and now in the opening weekend of the first race on the biggest, baddest race track on the planet the two tire manufacturers fly harder compounds overnight from their various warehouses across the country arrives on Thursday still no progress the tires no They're getting better they're still falling apart Friday morning finally arrives and the drivers are fed up, none of the manufacturers can find a tire that can withstand the stress of two tons of car bodies traveling at 190 miles per hour on inclines of 33 degrees and that day Firestone backs out, no driver will. get injured or killed on their tires, cancel their contracts and allow teams to use any tire they want.

Goodyear, however, remains adamant that if they can weather this storm, they will win the tire war and be the undisputed tire manufacturer for Nascar for years to come, they believe. The PR of potential accidents is worth being the top dog in Nascar's main series as the day goes on, the Goodyear tires aren't performing any better and aren't wearing any more than the Firestones and soon drivers start looking at the newly formed association of professional drivers. To help them, formed just weeks before the events of this race, the Professional Drivers Association, or pda for short, is a cooperative of drivers who want a share of the money from broadcast rights, a pension and benefits program. of medical care.

Now that sounds a bit like a union. but it's totally totally no, the pda makes sure of this as they never call themselves a union at any point, plus they are not a union at all, anyway a normal union of professional athletes like the players association Of the NFL or NFLPA uses collective bargaining to fight for things like wage increases, health care benefits, pension programs and organized strikes if necessary, the PDA, on the other hand, promises to fight for wage increases, health care benefits , pension programs and organize strikes if necessary. Okay, okay, okay, it might be a union, but still The PDA never refers to itself as such because of two reasons: one, union culture is virtually unknown in the south at this time and even if the drivers agreed to unionization, there is no guarantee that Nascar fans would have supported them and second, Nascar is very tough on drivers who openly talk about unionization.

The PDA isn't even Nascar's first unionization attempt in 1961. Nascar's two most popular drivers, Curtis Turner and Tim Flock, worked with truckers to get Nascar's first union off the ground. The great federation of professional athletes. bill france responds by promising that no member of the fpa will be allowed to compete in nascar curtis turner loses support quickly but holds out for as long as he thinks he can eventually big bill france uses the nuclear option like he said he would and bans curtis turner from the sport for life this is not a punitive measure this is to send a message there will be no talk of unionization in nascar no matter who big bill france bans his most popular driver at the peak of his career simply To make it clear that there will never be a union in Nascar, so why does Nascar have this search and destroy policy when it comes to unions?

Well, it has a lot to do with how the union works. Let's take a look at what a normal player strike would normally look like. works in most sports sanctioning bodies, usually you have the sanctioning body, let's say the NFL in this case is aligned with the team owners, the NFL sets salary caps and determines who can and who can't You can own an NFL team if you own a team, say, forexample, the buffalo. tickets and try to sell them, you can't just sell them to any random Yahoo on the street that will throw you enough money, the NFL has to approve the new owner, there are only a limited number of teams allowed to compete in the NFL and the NFL decides who is own what team and where that team is located, even if you own that team, you can't move it to a different city without the NFL giving you the green light.

The NFL and the team owners are, for all intents and purposes, basically one. Likewise, on the other side, you have the players who work for the teams basically as contractors providing their services. If players don't like their salary or benefits packages, they can collectively band together in a union and threaten a strike to take advantage of the owners. in the nfl to give them what they want, if that doesn't work then the nfl and its owners can just hire a bunch of replacements to play if they don't want to give in to nascar, on the other hand it's completely different in 1969 most drivers They are owner drivers, which is exactly what it sounds like, not only does the guy drive the car he owns, he also owns the team and decides who on his team to hire, finalizes sponsorship deals and what races he wants.

Running it would be as if Tom Brady were not only the quarterback of the New England Patriots, but he was also the team's owner and general manager and could choose who would coach him. The board is totally unbalanced, the players and the owners are now one. Likewise, and Nascar teams can come and go as they want right now, if you have enough money, you can start a Nascar team and race as long as your cars pass MOT and post a fast enough qualifying time. like to enter. Showing that Nascar basically just has to let you compete and Nascar can't hire replacements.

A Nascar stock car is a patented car that cannot circulate anywhere else. It's specifically designed to run under a Nascar rules package, but you can't just go buy one on the street and have a Google drive it, yet in 1969 the pda is allowed to merge because Nascar has a lot more eyes on it, they have a much larger fan base than at the beginning of the decade, and as a direct result, they have more. stars too and literally every star driver is part of the pda david pearson the allison brothers kale yarbrough and basically every driver worth talking about let's say bobby isaac who is a bit of a loner who has a history of flying his own colors and that could the president be from the pda, well, none other than the king himself, richard petty france, doesn't dare do anything about the pda because they have too many cards in their hand, too fast, they caught him and he can't. he does anything to make it do exactly that, nothing, he never acknowledges that the pda exists, journalists ask him about the association and he feigns ignorance as if it were a fairy tale, if he can't punish the pda drivers he will simply act as if it doesn't exist to devour your credibility, yet the PDA is as ill-prepared as Goodyear and Firestone to deal with this situation.

They have all the cards, but they don't know how to play them, so drivers take the matter into account. their own hands approach big bill france and express their concerns it is not about benefits for the payer but about safety and security they just want to postpone the race until a tire compound can be manufactured that can withstand the brutal loads of

talladega

bill france he says there's no way he has to race on the original date, he won't admit it to the drivers, but he's up to his eyeballs in debt having to build this place, those basic sweets we talked about earlier, Bill France doesn't even have the money to complete them.

They were built at cost by the contractor with the agreement that the contractor could make a suite for himself, a suite he still owns to this day, except it's much nicer these days, of course, the race has to begin on race day due to the postponement. means not getting your money back as soon as possible, which is why the end date was so close to race day, you have to get your money back now in the first place, the big bill folks aren't budging, but neither are the drivers. The little clicks begin. They are lining up all over the garage, they are trying to discuss among themselves what they think they should do, they stay and hope that Goodyear can bring good tires or they continue with the protests and say that they are not going to race, some drivers don't even talk. openly about a possible strike bill france tries to ease tensions by buying an old racing car and taking it out for a few laps just to prove that there is nothing wrong on the track instead of easing everyone's tensions it only makes things worse, As the drivers point out that Solo was going about 160 miles per hour, well below what they were doing, Bill says, "Well, why don't you run that speed then?

But it's just a slap in the face to say something like that to a runner." ". It's an affront to everything racing stands for, even if they tried, someone would go further and someone else would respond and everyone would end up running 190 miles per hour anyway at some point during these Friday group meetings at Bill France. He's talking to Bobby Allison and Leroy Yarbrough when Big Bill France tells Bobby Allison, a 15-time winner in Nascar's big national division right now and winner of the last race just a week before. Quote, I think you're just scared. to run at this point according to bobby allison to this day he says leroy yarbrough came out behind him and swung and hit bill france in the face putting him on the ground leroy then turns around and says to his group guys, pack your things. we're leaving, that was the trigger the pda needed at once, every pda driver packs up their things and abandons the

talladega

super speedway, they won't die for big bill france's stupid, dumb track, there are only three that will hold out, one of them, the aforementioned Bobby Isaac, who sees an opportunity to compete for the championship points lead now that all his competition remains: two, a non-PDA driver named Jim Vandiver, who drives for a team owned by Ray Fox and three, a PDA driver who turns scab and who will compete with his name anyway.

He's richard brickhouse, he races for the same team as bobby isaac, a factory owned team financed by the chrysler corporation and chrysler corp wants to debut their new car, the dodge charger daytona, a car supposedly capable of reaching speeds in excess of miles per mile. time, but this week that Won't happen, the tires just won't allow it next year, it will dominate the calendar and win the championship in 1971, Nascar will ban its use completely, but here in 1969 Chrysler just wants someone to drive their car for his flagship team, the owner of the car. of the number 99 Dodge approaches Richard as soon as the strike happens and tells him that if you don't drive this car on Sunday, someone else will, so that's his reason for turning into a scab and not honestly participating in the strike if you were in his place.

You would also find it difficult to say no. You have the opportunity to win your first race and show off in this new Dodge Daytona. It's an opportunity that only comes around once in a young racer's career and that's if you're really lucky. Richard knows it. this and promises to race on Sunday if Nascar had been, say, a midwestern or northeastern sport instead of a southern sport somewhere where a union culture existed, then there wouldn't have just been a strike, there would have been a picket line and calls for fans to boycott. race, but this is Alabama in the 1960s and putting something like this together is almost unheard of.

Drivers on the PDA never try to choose it. In fact, the topic is not even mentioned. The drivers don't even think about picketing. line, they simply pack their bags and return home. Nascar fans aren't quite sure what to make of this, so Big Bill's friends make sure to tell them what to think about it. He offers an unbeatable deal if you buy a ticket to the Talladega 500 and then. You can use that heel to enter the Daytona 500 next year. Fans get on it, flocking to see the show in Talladega County in September and getting free tickets to Daytona in February, but what about the race itself? just put three cars on a 2.66 mile track for 500 miles, right, you're absolutely right, bill france says, so go and attack the field from the 400 mile preliminary race on saturday, one race in a series completely different in which sports cars compete. that division is not stock cars instead of chevelles torinos and road runners they compete with camaros mustangs and even an amc javelin they can barely do 160 with the wind at their backs let alone pass the technical inspection so what is France doing?

Just change the rules, that's all. he just does it like it's totally normal, he just declares all the cars legal and that's it, there are three really competitive cars driven by two young guys no one has heard of and bobby isaac, nascar's biggest loner, and a field full of very unusual cars. The pace of the stage is almost ready for disaster to strike and it does happen, but not in the way one would expect, that tire problem we were talking about at the last second that morning before race day, Goodyear brings some new tires and it held up surprisingly well, there wasn't a single tire failure that day and the lower division cars that filled the field are using the same tires they used the day before without a single problem and I don't mean the same games as them. they had several sets of tires that they would change during the race no, they stopped for fuel in that division, it's just that these guys ran a full race for 400 miles on one set of tires and then turned around and did another 500 mile race at the next day with no problems, just what the tires were doing back then in 1969.

Anyway, when the race starts, Bobby Isaac drives calmly because he is making a race in this championship and he just wants to score some easy points, he finishes fourth that day, which means one of those underpowered pony cars hit him that day because he was so relaxed there, uh, shout out to ramos stott, then richard brickhouse and jim vandiver are running one twos all day and according to the radio call that someone bothered to record, they expressed some confusion in the running order and then announced that jim vandiver was the leader jim vader in the lead here is uh bridgette brickhouse surrounding jim vandenberg as he circles, which gives him advantages made up one of those laps that should put him back on the same lap with the leaders bob, that's right we have a possible scoring error even though there are only two competitive cars on the track later when the checkered flag flies, Nascar announces that richard brickhouse is the winner, vandiver and the owner of his car, ray fox.

Furious, they claim to this day that they won that race that day and that the scoring error was no accident. I can't confirm this, but I really wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be true, but the rumor persists that it does. It was Chrysler Corp that sweetly convinced Bill France to invent the scoring error because they wanted their new model of Dodge to beat Jim Vandiver, who was driving the older model. It probably would have looked bad if the new 1970 Dodge Charger Daytona had lost to the old 1969 Dodge Charger despite the outcry, Richard Brickhouse has declared the winner and Jim Vandiver is in second place.

Richard Brickhouse would enjoy his victory as much as could be imagined, but these three drivers who did not participate in the strike would end up being Bobby Isaac, cursed in some way, would win the 1970 championship in the Winged Charger Daytona, but in 1977 he parked his car in the middle of a 200-lap event at Hickory Motor Speedway and collapsed. He was resuscitated and taken to the hospital where he appeared to have made a full recovery, but later that night he would die of a heart attack caused by complications from heat exhaustion. richard brickhouse and jim vandiver would never win another race or even be competitive in In the next race, Richard was knocked down by a PDA driver who had left Talladega and this photograph depicting the incident was taken so clearly because a PDA driver had told the photographer where to stand to get the best photo, the PDA disbanded just a few weeks later, their best chance to gain some influence long gone.

No unionization talks ever came up after that race, there was no need to have them, it was their best chance and they hadn't mentioned that the owner driver had moved on. of the dodo bird, the chances of a Nascar merger taking off these days are slim to none, so that was all there was,the worst race in Nascar history, a new car, no one could see the full potential of that day alone. three competitive drivers two of the three of whom no one knew about a field full of filling cars a tire scandal that was resolved at the 11th hour and of those two unknown drivers who were competitive no one knows which one actually won the race to this day today It was truly the worst race in Nascar history, bar none, thanks for watching.