The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 64

I i 'l A noisy pack of stock cars moves past the Indiana State Fairgrounds barn which houses other racers the four-footed kind. By PAVE OVEttPECK Star porta writer AnYONE WHO takes an occasional glance at the sports pages of his daily newspapers realizes that stock car auto racing is on the verge of becoming the favorite sport of our cousins down in Dixie. Lynching has finally died a long overdue death and football is seasonal so our Sort hern neighbors have taken to following the tAp.oits of the Richard Pettys, the Cale Yarboroughs and the Buddy Bakers in their souped-up versions of Fords, Plymouths, Mercurys and Dodges. The major races of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) draw the top sports crowds all over the South. The Daytona (Fla.) 500 annually pulls upwards of 90,000 viewers and now ranks second to our own 500-Mile Race among the nation's speed classics.

Other major races at Atlanta, Darling, S.C., and Charlotte, N.C., pack in crowds ranging upwards of 60,000. And a new 2 -mile oval a-btiilding in Alabama may have that state's citizens turning their gaze to things other than Bear Bryant and the University of Alabama's gridiron Crimson Tide. LrfOVE OF AUTO racing isn't exactly restricted to the South. We Hoosiers have built 'up a pretty passionate affair with the sport ourselves, what with the 500 and the Hoosier Hundred. But, traditionally, our interest has been directed toward the open-cockpit, open-wheeled Speedway cars.

Stock cars may have been fine for the Southerners, but Hoosiers wanted their race drivers out in the open where they could be seen. As one fan once put it, "It's like watching tanks run. You can't see the driver at all. I like to watch their hands and arms as they fight a car through the turns. You can't see that in the stocks." That attitude kept promoters leery of trying major stock car events in this area for many years.

About the only "sedan" racing available were minor league events on small tracks and weekend jalopy fender-benders. Then in 1961, Indianapolis Raceway Park, in its initial year of operation, scheduled several United States Auto Club stock car events on its -miIe oval. Champion Don Whrta has won four straight stock car contests on tha Indiana Fairgrounds track. 22.