The Rest Of The Story

   It makes me feel really old to be writing about something that happened 50 years ago, but here goes anyway.

 Back in 1973, I went to many a race with a group of men from my hometown of Inman and thereabouts. Most of them are gone now. My distant cousins, Wesley, Weldon and Ronnie Stubbs were regulars in our group, as were Freeman Clemons and Pete Gay.

 Cecil Dunn went occasionally, and it’s refreshing that his memory of the things we saw back then matches up with mine. Cecil and I were standing next to the backstretch fence in 1975 when Tiny Lund was killed in a crash just in front of us. We also watched as two Georgia men, watching from the infield across from us, scaled the fence and rescued Terry Link from his burning car, even as a track worker was using his caution flag as a weapon to try to keep the two heroes away from Link’s car, which had impacted Lund’s. (Years later, thanks to a savvy researcher at the newspaper, I was able to interview Richard Simpson and David Garmany, both of whom were burned in the rescue.)

  All of our trips to Talladega, where NASCAR is racing this weekend, were memorable, some more than others.

  The 1973 Talladega 500 featured a tragedy in the beginning, and odd occurrence in the middle and a fairy tale finish at the end.

  Larry Smith hit the wall in Turn One just as the race was getting going, contact that appeared minor from our seats on the backstretch. We eventually learned that Smith had been killed.

Then Bobby Isaac suddenly retired from the race. Later we heard that Isaac heard voices telling him to quit.

 If that wasn’t enough, the finish turned out to be the what many say is the biggest upset in NASCAR history.

 Like many of the folks from the Atlanta area who were at Talladega that day, my friends and I were closely watching the car owned by Jimmy and Peter Crawford, two Eastern Air Lines pilots from College Park.

 It was a 1972 Plymouth, painted in the black and gold colors and carrying the No. 22 made famous by the late Fireball Roberts.

 Jimmy, often the driver, had been discouraged by NASCAR from driving in the race because of a crash in his previous Talladega appearance. So a deal was worked for journeyman Dick Brooks to take the wheel.

 It was apparent from the start that Brooks’ machine was a fast one. Several times we saw him drop to the inside of the long backstretch and blow by a string of cars like the rude motorist who ignores the “Left Lane Closed Ahead” signs on the highway and speeds by the slowing motorists in the right lane before darting in front just as his lane closes.

 Brooks needed the straightaway speed because the car was a clunker in the corners, and his pit crew, a rag-tag bunch of amateurs, lost him a lap or so on most stops. 

  Brooks led four times for 19 laps, including the one that counted.

 Not long afterward, the Crawfords dropped off the NASCAR circuit and were largely forgotten.

  But one night in the late 1980s, in the pits at Senoia, Jimmy and I started talking about the Talladega win, and that’s when I learned the real story behind the Crawfords’ upset victory.

The win, it seems, wasn’t so unlikely after all. The Plymouth had been built originally by Mario Rossi, one of the top mechanics of his era. But the real secret to the speed was under the big black hood, the area where Peter Crawford worked his magic.

Peter Crawford, it turned out, was a mechanical genius. With NASCAR forcing the big-block engines of that era to run restrictor plates, Crawford set about to design an induction system that would maximize the air flow to his engine despite the plate.

He wound up designing his own intake manifold, which he built according to the specifications in the rule book. He submitted it to NASCAR, and it was approved, as long as he made similar manifolds available to the other Plymouth teams, which he did.

What NASCAR officials didn’t realize at the time was the effectiveness of Crawford’s creation. When the power plant was hooked to a dynamometer at an Atlanta-area race shop, the engine produced more power than the dyno could measure. So Crawford made his own dyno. Even with the restrictor plate attached, the engine cranked out far in excess of 600 horsepower, a whopping amount for that time.

So it was really no surprise that Brooks was able to run so fast on the straightaways, especially since the brothers had also used their aerodynamic knowledge to tweak the body. And this was in the days before trips to wind tunnels were commonplace.

The win wasn’t just a surprise to the fans in the stands that day, it was something that NASCAR founder and track owner Bill France Sr. didn’t expect – or appreciate.

According to the Crawfords, France summoned them to NASCAR headquarters in Daytona Beach for a meeting, where he informed Peter that his manifold was being outlawed.

Peter protested, saying his creation fit every spec in the rule book.

France, he said, responded that it didn’t.

 Crawford said he respectfully asked France to show him where he was in violation.

According to Crawford, France had him turn the rule book from the engine specs back toward the front of the book. He had him read the opening sentence.

It read: “All parts must be NASCAR approved.”

That was his violation, and with that ruling, one of the slickest parts ever run in NASCAR was never seen at the track again.