Full Throttle

NOTE: This turned out to be longer than expected so it’s the first of a series and will be resumed in coming days - ed.)

Jeebus!

Let the damn season begin! Please!

Please, so some of the nutzoids, conspiracy theorists and general all-round misinformed will have something to occupy themselves with. At the very least, for a few hours on weekends.

Since PCNA (a/k/a Brian France) let lose with his “back to it’s roots” dictum a few days ago a few blogs and forums have erupted into a cacophony of lunacy.

What follows may provide a rough ride, both for those that tire easily of those prone to drunken rantings and those that are drunk (’cause I’d rather think they’re drunk than insane) and live in a detached reality. Hold on!

“They” say Brian France is the worst leader ever, he’s lorded over his domain in a fashion reminiscent of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. They wanna go back to the good old days! NASCAR’s roots is where they wanna be, So be it!

So let’s go.

February 7, 1964, qualifying day for the Daytona 500. Paul Goldsmith in a Ray Nichels prepared Hemi equipped Plymouth scorched the high banks at 174 miles an hour. It smashed the old two lap qualifying track record of 160 miles an hour.

FoMoCo was livid as they had heard rumors of this new fangled Hemi and claimed the Hemi was no more a production item than rear-view mirror fuzzy dice. With the chart topping speeds they had confirmation.

Goldsmith and Richard Petty won the 40 lap qualifiers with an above 170mph average speed. At the end of the 1964 season, Richard Petty and his Hemi Belvedere had won his first 500 and was crowned as Grand National Champion, the first of his seven Cups

This is where today’s fans get a taste of the Good Old Days. Just before the last race of the season, Big Bill France announced new rules for 1965. Effectively, it banned the 426 Hemi outright.

Chrysler reacted by imposing a boycott on any factory team stating flatly that no Chrysler product would race in NASCAR until the rules changed. No GM cars either, they still maintained an earlier decision to stay out of NASCAR competition; so it was down to watching Fords beat other Fords.

Without the Chryslers, and popular Richard Petty, people stayed away from NASCAR events in droves. Big Bill tried reinstating Curtis Turner, who he had banned for life for gambling on NASCAR races (in reality he was ousted for trying to form a drivers union), with no luck, the stands remained empty.

Finally in late July 1965 France let the Hemi back in, with some restrictions, and on July 25, 1965, the MoPar teams came back.

Yep… present day fans, “we had it made. Those were the days,” They think. Or were they?

Big Bill France had a return engagement in August 1969 in one of the most infamous incidents in NASCAR history.

Richard Petty and a group of 11 other drivers met in secret to form a Professional Drivers Association, the PDA. As recruitment began more and more vets signed on as they believed that France would never act against Petty. Battle lines seemed to be placed across the entrance to Talladega Motor Speedway’s September date.

The PDA’s biggest issue was tires and safety at Talladega. That really came to the forefront when “Chargin’” Charlie Glotzback turned in a pole winning lap of 199.466 miles an hour.

The PDA insisted that the racetrack was unsafe. France popped a vein, and to prove them wrong, he climbed into Holman & Moody Ford, ran some 50 laps and returned to the pits safely. (Huh… lets see Brian try that!) The PDA weren’t buying what France was selling as they believed the Ford was a USAC version and much slower than NASCAR’s Fords.

The PDA’s hand was weakened when Saturday’s GT race (like a Nationwide car today) was held with no incidents.

France had vowed that no one would ever dictate to him on any issue when it came to NASCAR. He tolerated no disloyalty. Cajoling, threatening, and punitive,