Catchfence

One might not recognize historical depth right away when it comes to racetracks. Watkins Glen is a track that has been around for awhile, but as a NASCAR track it still coms across as fairly new. Thus it may come as something of a surprise to realize how much history the track’s NASCAR relationship has seen in twenty-six races and counting.

Of the track’s first twenty-six Winston Cup-level races, twenty-three have happened since ISC purchased the facility and reopened it for the 1986 NASCAR season. In its “former” life, the track was an infrequent guest stop on NASCAR’s Grand National tour, first debuting the southern stockers in 1957 as Buck Baker led wire-to-wire in his self-owned Chevy over the self-owned Ford of Glenn Roberts. Indeed, five of the top ten finishers (Baker, Roberts, Jim Reed, Lee Petty, and Al White) drove self-owned racecars in a 20-car field. The Grand National stockers didn’t return to The Glen until the ill-fated 1964 season and Billy Wade – destined to die after the 1964 season – took the win after leading 44 laps. The race was Wade’s final win in Grand National racing.

After Marvin Panch won in 1965, the track no longer hooked up with the NASCAR boys but instead cast its lot with F1 and CART, until it fell into disrepair after the 1980 racing season. When ISC purchased it, it replaced Nashville Speedway, off the schedule after Warner Hodgedon’s financial problems of 1984, as a summer stop for the Winston Cup cars, and in its debut NASCAR race of its second life, Watkins Glen saw triumph by another ill-fated superstar. Geoff Bodine led 32 laps but it was his teammate Tim Richmond who took the win, his fourth in a six-race summer span. Richmond’s 1986 surge to NASCAR stardom helped put The Glen on the map, but the 1987 running proved to be his final top-ten as illness and controversy ravaged his life. He finished tenth after leading seven laps in the 1987 race as Rusty Wallace ran out of gas coming to the final lap, yet got enough gas on the ensuing stop to win anyway.

Wallace and Ricky Rudd took over The Glen; in 1988 Rudd sideswiped Wallace away from the lead on the final lap to grab the win, then Wallace took the flag in 1989 before Rudd took it back in 1990. Their reign of control over road racing ended in 1991, and at The Glen a new road rager took over, as Ernie Irvan stormed to the win, a doubly amazing feat after a season marked by crashes and controversy.

It was also a tragic affair, as independant driver J.D. McDuffie died in a vicious crash against a tire barrier on the track’s long backstretch. Following the wreck a chicane, known as The Boot or The Bus Stop, was installed on the backstretch. It soon became a source of spins and dirt-tracking, and amid all that a change was taking place, as road racing specialists among the NASCAR fraternity, of which Rudd and Wallace were considered the best, no longer owned victory lane – Kyle Petty took the win in 1992, Mark Martin won three straight, Geoff Bodine’s last win came there in 1996, Jeff Gordon won three straight, then Steve Park broke through with his first win. Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, and Kyle Busch all won there in subsequent seasons, while the only road racing specialist to win there was Robby Gordon, in 2003.

The track has regularly seen an infusion of outside road race ringers such as Ron Fellows – who has won there three times in BGN and twice in the Trucks – and Boris Said, who has raced in 122 combined races in NASCAR’s various classes as well as the ARCA series and has a plethora of starts at Watkins Glen – and for it all has just 26 top-ten finishes combined and seventeen DNQs. The road ringers once were considered a threat on the road courses; at Watkins Glen at least that realistically can’t be considered the case anymore.

Through it all, The Glen sees another new change this season, as double-file restarts debut on the track after going through eight races already and seeing the intensity of racing pick up after a slow start to this rule. However it turns out, it’s likely to add some more history to a track that often gets lost in the memory bank.