Catchfence

– The sport’s economic situation is very serious. People wonder whether car counts will be reduced. They wonder if races will even take place. How will the sport handle it? –

It’s straight out of the racing headlines…….of 1974.

It was a time 35 years ago when NASCAR faced a real economic crisis. It may strike one today as bizarre that racing has faced crises far more serious than the present economic angst in the sport. Yet in the 1974 season there was such a situation, a situation so serious that different sanctioning bodies worked together as never before to keep the sport going.

In the early 1970s a new situation hit the US – fuel shortages. The 1973 Yom Kippur War angered Arab oil powers, who wielded far greater clout than they do today, and they responded by restricting exports to the West. Though it came as an economic shock, this oil embargo would have been of little consequence without the far more egregious error imposed on the economy but a few years earlier – price controls. It wasn’t until the US lifted price controls on fuels that the mid-70s shock was alleviated, but for the 1974 period the combination proved atrocious to the economy.

For NASCAR, the sudden fuel crisis was doubly grave, for racing had been the one sporting activity curtailed entirely in the Second World War. Understanding this and a veteran of national politicking (having worked with George Wallace’s presidential bids), William H.G. France, recently retired from NASCAR but still in charge of International Speedway Corporation, went to work to save the sport. Other sanctioning bodies such as USAC began working with NASCAR to weather the storm, and to counter belief that racing was wasteful of fuel, data was produced showing racing was actually substantially less consumptive of fuel than most other leisure or even business activities which often involved transcontinental flight.

This helped keep racing from being regulated, but conservation measures were still required of the sport amid national measures such as limits on when gas stations could operate – a potential nightmare for weekend travel. For NASCAR it took several forms. Daytona cancelled its annual 24-hour race, while the stock car portion of Speedweeks proceeded but with limits on fuel supply for qualifying and practice sessions and a 10-percent reduction in race distances, fuel conservation practices that began in Speedweeks and carried into the balance of the 1974 NASCAR season. It didn’t affect the season-opening Winston Cup weekend, in latter January at Riverside, CA. This race ran 500 miles but had to be stopped after 60 laps due to rain and resumed six days later; Cale Yarborough won the race.

While teams were limited to 30 pre-race gallons of fuel from supplier Union 76, they could acquire additional fuel via their own resources, and during Speedweeks and thereafter a striking level of bartering went on between raceteams – former Daytona champ Leeroy Yarbrough, for one, provided extra fuel for the Wood Brothers team and driver David Pearson from his Sportsman team; Richard Petty had entered two cars at Riverside for himself and West Coast racing legend Herschal McGriff, and for Daytona McGriff needed more track time than Richard, so Richard had his usual setup put into his 1974 Dodge Charger, gave it a quick check on the track, and alloted his remaining pre-race fuel for his rookie teammate.

The reduction in race distances was cleverly taken from the beginning, so the Daytona 500 began with the first 20 laps not run and thus not scored. Thus on Lap 21 David Pearson, Richard Petty, and Cale Yarborough went for the lead and all had it at some point before Cale officially led the lap by six feet over Pearson.

There had been other changes entering this 500. NASCAR had mandated restrictor plates in 1970 and 1971; they’d switched to carburator sleeves for 1972-3, but in mid-season in 1973 they reverted back to carburator plates; the 500 was thus a restrictor plate race 14 years before the plates became a permanent fixture at the track and at Talladega. The plates kept the horsepower of the teams’ 427 CID engines down, but one car was not running plates – Bud Moore’s #15 Ford, driven by road racing ace George Follmer and powered by a 351 small block Ford.

But the biggest change lay in media coverage of the race. ABC television had aired edited highlight broadcasts of the 500 on delayed basis for several years, but for 1974 it decided to begin airing portions of the event live including the second half.

The 500 turned into the most competitive running ever – 60 official lead changes, a still-standing record, among 15 leaders, a record tied several times before being broken in 2006. A new team, DiGard Racing, and its veteran driver Donnie Allison, battled for the win but a backmarker’s blown engine blew out Donnie’s front tires with 11 to go and sealed the win for Richard Petty. The win had been witnessed by a crowd some thought might be down from the previous year, but which was the same size, variously reported as 85,000 to 103,000, to where local Daytona businesses that had laid off employees had to rehire them to handle the crush of racefans.

It was clear that, fuel crisis or no, racefans were not going to let the sport fizzle out – shown in particular at Bristol in mid-March when 18,000 fans showed up amid snow flurries to witness the Southeastern 500 won in dominating fashion by Cale Yarborough. It was also clear that the sport was not going to let them down, either. The 1974 season saw a reduction in some starting fields, and beginning at the Atlanta 500 NASCAR mandated different carburators to make small block engines more competitive. The Wood Brothers purchased one of Bud Moore’s small blocks and dominated the Atlanta 500 with it before fuel mileage and an ill-timed yellow trapped Pearson a lap behind Cale, still driving a big block Chevy for Junior Johnson on the big tracks, for the win. Pearson’s first win with the small block came at Darlington.

Maurice Petty hand-built a small block Chrysler engine and Richard cleaned house at North Wilkesboro with it, but the small block rules were causing havoc with other teams as NASCAR was striving to keep the big blocks in contention. No fewer than five rule changes came during the spring and summer, and teams were spending money trying to handle or beat the changes – Richard Childress noted at the time to getting a rule change in the mail after making a carburator change that had been obsoleted as soon as it was made.

It became such that reports in Charlotte media suggested a race team boycott of the World 600. It didn’t happen, and another 85,000 fans appeared at Richard Howard’s track. Petty, Pearson, Cale, and Buddy Baker monopolized the 540-mile event and the lead bounced around lap after lap. Baker was now driving Bud Moore’s car after Follmer, who’d struggled with it, was let go. Baker put the Ford into the lead and led nearly 100 laps before the small block died on them. Pearson escaped a wreck with Cale with 11 to go and edged Petty by forty feet for the win.

As spring became summer, the Petty-Pearson-Yarborough battles had become the sport’s near-exclusive club of competition; Bobby Allison had won at Richmond in February in a self-owned Chevrolet, but other than that no one else was winning even though the sport’s top three drivers were getting pressure in most races from Baker, from both Allisons, periodically from sophmore driver Darrell Waltrip, and from a new car in NASCAR’s field, Roger Penske’s AMC Matador. Gary Bettenhausen was the driver, but in July Bobby Allison had no car for Daytona’s Firecracker 400 because parts he’d ordered to deal with NASCAR rule changes had not arrived in time to build engines for Daytona; Bettenhausen, who had shown no special moxie for stock cars, had also injured himself in a sprint car race in violation of his Penske contract. Penske asked Bobby Allison to drive the Matador at Daytona and he timed it second and in the ensuing 400 led 50 laps.

This Firecracker 400 also illustrated the beginning of the sport’s economic recovery. The worst of the fuel crisis was past and now NASCAR was allowed to return race distances to their full length. In addition, Junior Johnson’s team had merged with a team fielded by Allan Clarke and sponsored by Carling Breweries in Toronto, driven by Canadian rookie Earl Ross. This new sponsorship arrangement came amid Royal Crown soda sponsorship of Bud Moore’s Ford and Coca-Cola backing of Bobby Allison. The sport was thus proving itself a strong value for sponsors.

And the racing, despite the dearth of winners, was exciting – six races in total (both Daytona races, Talladega, both Michigan races, and Charlotte in October) broke 40 official lead changes while three others (the 600 at Charlotte, Talladega in August, Ontario in November) topped 35. It was enough that the fanbase was still coming to the speedways and in mid-summer of ‘74 they saw several electrifying finishes. The Firecracker 400 saw 45 lead changes among nine drivers. Coming to the white flag David Pearson slammed on his brakes to fake Richard Petty into passing him past the stripe; this put Pearson into Petty’s draft for the race-ending slingshot pass, which Pearson pulled off despite Petty chopping him low off Turn Four. The two got into an argument about it in the pressbox after the race and even renewed it at Daytona in 2008.

The next race, at Bristol, Cale led over 350 laps amid an epidemic of crashes, including a vicious melee involving rooklie Neil Bonnett as he tore out 40 feet of infield guardrail. Buddy Baker took the lead in the final 50 laps but Cale sideswiped him out of the win on the final lap, leaving Baker and Bud Moore (winless in NASCAR since 1966) howling and Junior Johnson ecstatic.

Petty’s win at Atlanta at the end of July was followed by NASCAR’s debut at Pocono, a last-minute replacement for Trenton Speedway in New Jersey which had been slotted onto the 1974 schedule but dropped early in the year. Petty won the 500-miler there, then got revenge at Talladega in a race marred by a mysterious bout of mass-sabotage of racecars – found early Sunday morning with cut tires, torn-up suspension pieces, and dirt clogging fuel lines. In a race that saw numerous competition yellows to check for sabotage, Petty lost the lead to Pearson with six to go, then sideswiped him in the trioval and beat him by a nose.

When the 1974 season ended Petty won ten races and the season title, Cale won ten races and placed second, David Pearson won seven races, Bobby Allison had the Richmond win and the season finale at Ontario Motor Speedway – another late-stage addition to the schedule, slotted into latter November when the original schedule had Rockingham in October as the finale; Ontario was also making a return to NASCAR after running in 1971 and 1972 – and Canadian rookie Earl Ross stunned everyone by outlasting the field to win at Martinsville in September.

The sport’s attendance during 1974 – easily topping 1 million overall – surprised a lot of people given the economic crunch of the season’s first third, and this even though the overall economy was still in a decade-long funk. With outside companies now seeing the sport as a potential strong marketing tool and television slowly but steadily increasing its own interest, the growth of the sport was now beginning.

What 1974 showed was how resilient the sport of racing could be.