Saturday Night Is Alright For NASCAR Fighting!

 

Saturday night fever at Bristol
By RICK MINTER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Bristol, TN. - You almost have to see a NASCAR race at Bristol Motor Speedway to believe it. The massive 160,000-seat stadium is filled to capacity with flashbulb-popping fans surrounding a high-banked, half-mile concrete track. It's a proverbial bowl surrounded by the Tennessee moutains.

Cars are circling at speeds of more than 120 mph, with sparks flying from suspensions, caused when the cars drag the pavement and bump into each other.

It's a tight fit. The track and grandstands cover 13 acres. Consider: Two Bristols could be built on the ground covered by the 29-acre lake that sits inside a portion of the infield at Daytona International Speedway.

The problem for most is getting inside. A Saturday night race at Bristol has been the hottest ticket in motor sports. This week's is sold out for the 49th consecutive time.

For the most part, Bristol has been successful from the start.

When Carl Moore, Larry Carrier and R.G. Pope decided in 1960 to build their own track, they chose a hilly, almost mountainous site that was being used for a dairy farm.

To manage the racing affairs, they brought in an experienced promoter and public relations manager, Hal Hamrick, who at 77 still publishes his own racing newspaper, FasTrack.

Long before the track held its first race on July 30, 1961, Hamrick was out speaking to civic clubs and any group that would have him promote the track and the NASCAR racing it would bring.

"The hardest thing we had to do was convince the folks in North Carolina and South Carolina that a track in Tennessee wasn't next to the Mississippi River," he said.

Hamrick and the owners courted the press, too, putting in the sport's first air-conditioned press box and arranging for Holman-Moody, one of the sport's top teams at that time, to fly reporters to Bristol for the first race. Local car dealers were talked into providing convertibles for reporters to drive during race week.

The drivers also were wooed. An infield hospital and a lounge for drivers were built, and Hamrick convinced many of the top stars, including Fireball Roberts and Fred Lorenzen, who usually ran only the major events, to put Bristol on their schedules.

It all worked. More than 12,000 fans showed up for the first race just to watch time trials, and on race day the 21,500-seat grandstand couldn't hold them all. Hamrick estimated that nearly 5,000 either stood or sat on the ground to watch Jack Smith, with relief from Johnny Allen, win the 500-lap race.

The track continued to grow and had several different owners. The first night race, in 1978, ushered in a new era, one that saw a significant attendance jump. more on Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway