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it's been called the eighth wonder of the world Car and Driver magazine called it one of the 10 things to see before you die it's been used as a sit for a Tom Cruise movie it was the inspiration for the opening scene for Disney Pixar's animated feature feeling the cars and one of its oversized trophies was used in the feature film Talladega Nights driving here has been likened to flying fighter jets in the gymnasium and racing in the salad bowl it's the second largest sports arena in the United States and the eighth largest on the planet and even at that size the tickets are some of the hardest to get for any sporting event now you would think that a facility this big would be New York Chicago or Los Angeles that you would be wrong it's the Bristol Motor Speedway located in Bristol Tennessee a city of about 25,000 people that is broken roads and notoriety to the region like most great American icons it had humble beginnings Larry carrier and calm or were the men with the vision that brought the track to Bristol I guess that it was really Larry's idea probably I was in Knoxville at a Tennessee football game he calls me up and says call him over and Charlotte got to come over here I said what's going on so we're having a race over here and get about 50,000 people paying $20 a ticket you're carted around the circle you gotta come see this so I flew from Knoxville to Charlotte and sure enough Larry was there and I saw the race thing that kind of things about it we decided to come back and maybe a woman breast lift with it both men realized that building another race track in a small town wasn't the answer the key was to get NASCAR involved oh yeah we wouldn't count that NASCAR we went down to see Bill France it was President s car and he kinda liked us and south of dinner with his right-hand guy named Pat Purcell and it paralyzes a lot that came up over race as long as he lives I was up here but they finally said what you guys are crazy build a racetrack in these Tennessee Hills what dates do you want picked on dates out didn't toast a penny today you be hundred million dollars each one if you could get them just to where it worked but like most great ideas it just wasn't as easy as they thought it was going to be well Larry's dad was a real estate fellow he specialized in farms anybody found a farm in Pine flats it looked like it might work pretty well it's with the option on it then we have a covenant community meeting to tell me we're going to I heard some rumblings in one race tracks around here you know they might bring in bad elbows right bringing some alcohol and some gambling some loose women we don't want that around Frank laughs David McGee is an announcer for the track and has written two books about its history and Carl and Larry finally said well let's just go over there and talk to the people so they had a little community meeting and there were a couple of ministers over there who opposed the track and as Carl tells it they were basically worshipped and welcomed by a lot of the folks but not so much by some of them and the basic decision was well if they don't want it so let's just go someplace else what if you don't want us we don't gonna come so as only I think basically two people come we had the charge against us so we said bye-bye we'll come back so Larry then got it there's dad got them on his horse came up here and found another piece of property dairy farm we're sitting on right now we've got this dairy farm and also treated the dragstrip property I went together so they they basically walked away from Pawnee flats and that is a residential subdivision now kind of in behind where the whites grocery store used to be that large retail Plaza right there that's that's the area that they were looking at and it was going to allow them because they wanted to build a track that was bigger than a half mile they wanted to build something larger maybe 3/4 of a mile to a mile and that was going to give them the opportunity to do that but that just didn't work out but big ideas are free buying the land and building the racetrack was not we can get any money any money yeah what's all the bikers as my job not to find the money I couldn't get a seat at the table talk about about real France well we've got the lamb but we've got other money to buy the land built the track well go see a guy Pat Burle vending company they do a lot of business and dog tracks and all contract all the country they might need some money immiscible for you Jersey I always thought for the Mafia and maybe would maybe wooden but you know we had to smoke green cigars poke little Erica really wants to drink at that time and he said I don't need the money amateur net we need six hundred thousand dollar swell interest rates to five percent when I say that's correct he said I charge ten percent I want your concession spots for fifteen years when every choice we signed up we got six one thousand dollars to buy the land and built eraser so in nineteen sixty construction began the track complex covered 100 acres and would provide parking for more than twelve thousand cars the track itself was a perfect half-mile measuring 60 feet wide on the straightaways 75 feet wide on the turns which were banked at 22 degrees there were concrete bleachers on both sides of the track which left room for about 18,000 paying race fans well the first race was pretty much a sellout we were surprised didn't know what was going to happen you know it ticket sales weren't there in advance people waited until Sunday morning to see what the weather gonna be I'll be right in class they're not gonna come so we sold had Excel out the first crowd and that they people dressed up for nicely guys came with shirts and ties on a hat song and you know we'd been a couple races ourselves and amazed it came dressed up they hadn't been erased before but the first one they kind of dressed down in Japan they decided to call the race the volunteer 500 in the first driver on the track for practice on July 27th 1961 was tiny London his Pontiac next was David Pearson the the very first race they had qualifying at practice during the weekend they had qualifying on Friday afternoon and then they came back on Saturday and they had a beauty pageant to crown the very first Miss volunteer 500 and they had about 35 entrants they had Miss America was here to help judge it then they had some some VIPs from around the area and I think some NASCAR VIPs to help judge the beauty pageant and the photos from that event the the old concrete grandstand the old a side grandstand from Saturday night looks absolutely full for a beauty pageant and then on Sunday the very first volunteer 500 was held Fred Lorenz I'm on the pole with the speed of seventy nine point two to five miles an hour how good was a volunteer 500 field July 30th 1961 when the drivers took the green 11 of the 42 in the lineup more than 25 percent would be on the list when NASCAR named its 50 greatest drivers in 1998 country music star Brenda Lee who was 17 at the time saying the national anthem when the volunteer 500 was over Jack Smith of Spartanburg South Carolina would forever be written in the history books as the first winter however Smith wasn't in the driver's seat of the Pontiac when the race ended the burly driver made the first 290 laps but then with the extreme heat blistering his feet turned over the duties to Johnny Allen of Atlanta to take over as a relief driver it was a scene that would play out four years at Bristol until better insulation in the cars power steering and other things made the heat of the summer race is easier to manage Allen never gave up the lead in fact finished two laps ahead of second-place finisher fireball Roberts Ned Jarrett Richard Petty and Buddy Baker completed the top five running order the total purse for the race was sixteen thousand six hundred and twenty five dollars with the winner's share of whopping three thousand two hundred and twenty five dollars of the 42 cars that started only nineteen finished the brutal event but after the drivers had packed up and the fans had gone home Maureen carrier had a lot of bills to pay plus make the payments on the six hundred thousand dollar loan and two NASCAR races a year was not going to do it when Larry and Carl and Archie Pope first built the track in 1961 their part of their vision was that it would be a multi-use Sports Complex that they would have all kinds of football games there that they would have college games and NFL games that they would have other types of events there to help pay the bills because they'd borrowed six hundred thousand dollars to build the darn thing and they had to figure out a way to pay at office and it wasn't going to be easy to pay off with eighteen thousand nascar tickets twice a year so the idea was to have football and the first game that they signed was the washington redskins who were very popular in this part of the country and the philadelphia eagles who were the defending NFL champions the filter washing there with George Preston Marshall on the Redskins well liked to play an exhibition game inside our Speedway and you've got one scheduled with Eagles who were the national champions here before call him up and y'all come down to Bristol and he worked he worked it's a bow game an infield at racetrack how a man is gonna be a big deal you know coming down here teams came in worked out over high school Rob publicity on Labor Day weekend they had the NFL exhibition game on a Saturday night as I said of Labor Day weekend and it didn't work out they had I don't know the the newspaper accounts at the time said there were five or six thousand people there Carl says there's absolutely no way there was that many Carl's explanation is nobody came but it was it was a flop it was a bust these are teams that play before twenty thirty forty thousand people in their home cities and it's popular as football is in this part of the world at both the high school and college level I think they expected a big crowd yeah I had some tough isn't coverage read some risk in network but we have the goalposts up of course we cut them down that night that was in that process which right football game which rodeoed we tried country music festival who tried everything the only thing that really works racing in three years after the round track was built they built the Bristol Dragway to supplement that income and they even talked of a road course that would utilize the drag way as a straightaway for the course the contract was for Sport Club America Bell Road course in there the original intent was that the drag strip was going to be the long straightaway and then you had that hairpin 90 corner at the end of it and then what was the return road for the cars to drag hearts to come back to their pit area was going to be was going to be part of the road course as well but they just never could make the logistics where they actually had USAC sanctioning for that they actually signed an agreement with you second and had those folks ready to go with a sports car type race but they just never could make it work then in 1969 a change is made to the track that would make it the undisputed fastest half-mile in the world the original configuration was about 22 degrees of banking and the higher banking was in 1969 and there's a story behind that when Larry first built the track they wanted to be the best short track in the country and they found out very quickly the speed sales tickets and the fastest short track in the country was Asheville weaverville Speedway which was just north of Asheville North Carolina it's a little half mile track up in the mountains and they were faster than Bristol so a rivalry began between the two tracks a lot of a lot of promotions a lot of words tossed back and forth and back the the national record for a half mile track went back and forth between Bristol and Asheville for several years and Asheville had it more times than Bristol did and Larry really craved that it became very important to him so he looked at some tracks in the Midwest in Dayton Ohio and Salem Indiana and looked at the higher banking that they had he looked at the banking at Asheville he brought in a couple of engineers and they said yes you can go that steep but we're not sure it's a good idea and he took one look at it and said this is roller derby with wheels and so they raised the banking up to about 34 35 degrees 36 maybe at the very top and that's when that's when everything changed the track record picked up by 13 miles an hour in the qualifying record just on the very first race and from then on Bristol was the king of speed but even then with the small seating capacity the men with the vision to build the track just couldn't make a go of it of course we kept it for 15 years and didn't make any money it was so expensive to run the racetrack to keep it up and that the purses the drivers money it's gonna get money that's 15 years I said Larry yelling I can't keep going to the bank we're just getting everyone dance oh we need a red cell he said I agree with you we sold a couple of guys from Nashville Lanny Hester and Gary Baker from Nashville got in and they brought something very important with them they raced at Nashville to fairgrounds at night on Saturday with a Winston Cup race and they figured well let's try to do something with this August race because we can't give the tickets away well the night race was a huge success after about a year or so people recognize that this maybe was going to be the wave of the future so Bristol set the standard there but the track would change hands again they kept it three or four years and they sold it took on him more Hodgdon anyone Bank worried about four tracks at one time they went bankrupt and then Larry's daddy died little money what's the biking got the body back from the bike when Larry carrier took the racetrack back he saw the night race had been successful he saw that NASCAR was starting to grow there were a lot of product sponsors getting into NASCAR there was a lot of money coming into NASCAR that wasn't there in the 1970s you had a lot of commercial products off the store shelves that were sponsoring race cars and race teams and so he jumped on that bandwagon very quickly and actually became a leader in in terms of growth and development and expansion of the racetrack but in the mid 80s cable TV changed the way we watch sporting events and Bristol was ready in the mid 1980s Larry carrier had an arrangement with ESPN which was just getting started up in Bristol Connecticut and they were searching desperately for programming to do a 24-hour sports cable network and Larry had an arrangement with ESPN that they were going to cover some of the I trade drag races that Larry sanctioned and also that they would cover the Winston Cup races at Bristol in the grand national races at Brother the Busch Series or what is now the Nationwide Series and so that went along for a year or so they did the spring race they did not do the night race because they said the lighting wasn't good enough but they did they did a couple of races in the spring there was some conversations and Larry worked really hard with the folks at ESPN and finally convinced them that they really needed to come do the night race and so after a lot of negotiating and a lot of a lot of work the first night race was broadcast in 1985 and it rained and they were late getting started and it had all the potential to be just this terrible disaster because I mean there's nothing worse than the rain programming from a sporting event because people tuned out automatically if nothing's going on and here was this this sporting event on a Saturday night prime time before the NFL season got started and when they finally got going Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip and Tim Richmond put on a whale of a show and there were I don't know how many million people watching maybe a million maybe two million because the ESPN as I said wasn't that big at the time but all of a sudden the week after that race was on TV the phone lines at the Speedway lit up with people wanting to get tickets for next year because they wanted to come to Bristol they had seen what Bristol was all about in 1996 Larry carrier sold the Speedway to Bruton Smith Speedway Motorsports for the bargain price of 26 million dollars in the following years the capacity of the track would grow from 71 thousand to the astonishing capacity of 160,000 seats and while many other smaller tracks were taken off the NASCAR schedule Bristol remains one of the most popular tracks in the sport the popularity of Bristol and the speed of Bristol is what separates it from the other short tracks that have fallen off the NASCAR schedule everyone who is owned Bristol Motor Speedway from from Larry and Carl through Lanny Hester and Gary Baker through Warner Hodgdon Larry again in Albert and Smith every one of them has recognized that Bristol is different Bristol is special and they have played upon that and built upon that well yeah it like I said the track itself is so unique because you've got to have many people kind of on a fishbowl and every seats a good seat even is not a bad seat 30 and you see the cars action eating suit gonna drivers faces on and inside the car just kind of thing you know Bristol is just I got a lot of tracks but Poconos are home track always missed I don't never missed that one but I never miss Bristow either we come to this race every year this is just the epitome of a short track raising and this is where it's at this anybody that comes to breast bowl or anybody asked me about race thing I say go to Bristol it's just it's just the greatest time and so it's a great place look at all the cool things here fun time we have I go to so many different track we see fights and people that are nasty and doing things yeah we fact we talked about that in the way down how nice everyone is as you can see we just met people around here last year was the first time in this site and everybody remembers you and they talk to you and it's just a great it really is a friendly spot just after the first race back in 1961 the drivers wanted to win at Bristol this is not the track where you look into a win if you win here you've earned it and fifty years later that still holds true if you look back at the history of the 50-year history of Bristol the drivers who have had the greatest success here are the greatest drivers in the history of the sport it is it's the highest skill level that that gets you around Bristol and you look at the guys who were in the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte North Carolina you look at the guys who have won the most Cup championships and those are the guys who have won at Bristol Bristol Motor Speedway has put the city of Bristol into the vernacular of every race driver and race fan in the country I've been I've been in politics a long time and state Senate for 16 years and where I go from Bristol well I was race track down because give me tickets and then they don't know about Bristol except for race track so it's done a lot to really promote Bristol in it the whole entire Tri City area really so what about the next 50 years without a doubt it will still be racing the way it ought to be they arrested me and they put me in jail and call my habit to throw my bail he said son you're gonna drive me to drinking if you don't stop driving that hot rod Lincoln

Channel: FlyingCameradotnet

Views: 17,222

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

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Id: UBVXM-wh9fc

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2015