Today (2-26) in stock car racing history

[mitchum]

Stock car racing in general and superspeedway racing in particular was still pretty much a Southern thing in the sixties but changes were coming. In '67 the Daytona International Speedway, which enjoyed an international flavor since its opening in '59 by hosting all types of motor racing events from sportscar endurance races to motorcycle events, had some world wide flavor injected into its premier stock car event on February 26, 1967.

While mountain man Curtis Turner was busy running Smokey Yunick's Chevelle into the ground and fourth place finisher Tiny Lund sat in the pits on the last lap with an empty gas tank, Holman Moody's main driver , Fred Lorenzen vainly chased the second H-M car to the checkers driven by a little guy with a foreign sounding name that would lator become very familiar to several generations of racing fans. That little guy in the blue and gold Fairlane was none other than Mario Andretti, a two time USAC champion notching his first NASCAR win.

[The Mad Modeller]

Keep these coming. I like reading them.

[mitchum]

My pleasure, I even got an extra one today that I missed yesterday. Oh well, better late than never, I hope.

[nascarrocks]

Very cool. Saw that car at the Chicago Auto Show a couple of weeks ago.

[mitchum]

Not unless it was Darrell Waltrip's 71 Mercury. Darrell bought it a few years ago because it was his first Winston Cup car and had it restored to its configuration when he drove it. Holman Moody had rebodied it form a Fairlane to a Mercury Cyclone way back when Darrell and his father-in-law bought it back in the early to mid 70's.