With the fair arriving in Spartanburg this week it’s going to be a week full of fun and entertainment for lots of families with some of that fun being had at the infield pavilion of the fairground. The infield pavilion of the fairground is located in the middle of an old half mile dirt track that used to occupy a spot on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule and in fact is a place that has seen a lot of famous drivers pass through its gates with only a few that were able to make it to victory lane.
The first race at the track was held on July 4, 1953 and saw NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Lee Petty go to victory lane in his 1953 Dodge outrunning such names as Buck Baker, Herb Thomas, and Curtis Turner. Petty would also return to victory lane at the track two more times as he also won there in 1956 and 1957. Lee Petty wasn’t the only member of his family to win at the racetrack as his son Richard Petty, a NASCAR Hall of Famer and the all-time winningest driver in NASCAR, also won three of his 200 career wins at the Piedmont Interstate Fairgrounds racetrack. The winningest driver at the track was another NASCAR Hall of Famer Ned Jarret as he won at the race track six times winning in 1960, 1962, 1963, 1964, and both races in 1965. The last victory for Jarret at the speedway saw him lead the last eighty laps after Spartanburg native and another Hall of Famer David Pearson was involved in a crash after Pearson had led the first 120 laps of the race. Jarret’s last victory at the race track saw him beat out not only Pearson but also fellow Hall of Famers Cale Yarborough and Wendell Scott. The racetrack also has the distinction of being the location where Wendell Scott made his first ever NASCAR career start. While Pearson never won a race at the hometown track while it was on the Cup Series schedule fellow Spartanburg native and Hall of Famer Cotton Owens won at the track twice in both 1960 and 1961 driving his 1960 Pontiac. Some of the early pioneers of NASCAR also won at the track as Tim Flock won there in 1955 and Marvin Panch visited victory lane at the track in 1957. When looking at the list of drivers that have competed at the Piedmont Interstate Fairgrounds track it literally reads off like a list of some of the best known drivers in NASCAR’s early years. Some of the drivers that never won at the track but competed in races there were drivers like Fireball Roberts, Ralph Earnhardt, Tiny Lund, Fonty Flock, and Junior Johnson. The last Cup Series race at the track was ran on June 4, 1966 and was won by driver Elmo Langley who went on to become the long time pace car driver for the series. Langley led the last forty laps of the race to take the victory when Tiny Lund fell out of the race after leading 160 laps and Langley outran second place finisher Neil Castles by two laps. While the last race at the track on the Cup Series was raced there over fifty-four years ago you can still find the grandstands where fans watched numerous legends thunder around the track in years gone by and from those stands you can still see what used to be the old racetrack. So with the fair in town this week it would be a great time to visit the old racetrack and let your mind drift off to visualize what it must have been like to see many of those legends navigate the old flat turns one and two before racing down the back stretch which led to the high banked turns three and four followed by the all of the field racing back down the front stretch to see who would take home the checkered flag, it sure must have been a sight. *Thanks to www.racing-reference.info for race finish information |
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