Driving with the Devil

by Neal Thompson

  Parks was a self-taught gentleman and fiercely loyal to friends. He had also been a businessman long enough to handle the sharp elbows of a roughly played game. Still, he wasn't entirely prepared for France to play rough with a friend, especially one who had bailed him out financially on more than a few occasions. “He used his lawyers to draw up legal papers giving him all rights to our organization,” Parks said.

  “That's how Bill France stole NASCAR from the [rest] of us that were there.”

  For Red Byron, NASCAR's corporate details were of little concern. Though he served as NASCAR's drivers' representative, his official position meant little. There weren't regular board meetings or votes. From the very start, it was a dictatorship, and that wasn't such a bad thing. The sport needed a strong leader, and Byron mostly trusted that France was the right man for the job. Like many drivers of the day, he viewed France as a thin-skinned bully but also a determined leader of a sport that he truly loved.

  All Byron really cared about in 1948 was racing. Over the years, he'd convinced himself it was perfectly reasonable to spend all his time and money on races and cars. In the wake of his mother's death and its disruption of his Colorado childhood, he had spent his teens and twenties in peripatetic pursuit of races. Then came the gaping crevasse of world war, and then hospitals and recovery. Then more racing, and now finally some success on the track, although not much money. But now, he thought, maybe this year, with a solid new organization, I might make some cash. He was thirty-three, at least a decade older than most of his competitors, and probably too old and smart to still be pursuing the dream of becoming a champion race car driver. But he couldn't let it go.

  Despite their modest income, Byron was settling into his year-old marriage to the stunning, Cherokee-blooded Nell, who was finding her husband to be more contemplative, even sophisticated, than the coarsely handsome, limping war vet she'd first spotted in Daytona Beach. Together, they were enjoying something like a family life, even though much of their time was spent on the road, traveling to races. In fact, at some point during their trip to or from Daytona Beach for the first official NASCAR race, in February of 1948, in the town where they met, Nell became pregnant.

  Before that first race, they stopped at Byron's favorite Italian restaurant, on the beach at Daytona, where Red had gotten to know the owner and liked to sample red wines. Nell still wanted to live in Florida someday and surely reminded him of that during their stay at Daytona. But Red wasn't ready for that yet. He wasn't ready to slow down and ease into a safe and healthy retirement. He wanted to achieve something first. And maybe this new NASCAR organization could help legitimize his obsession.

  NASCAR's first official race was scheduled for February 15, 1948, a 150-mile contest at Daytona Beach that France promised would be a “real corker.”

  As the day neared, even jaded veteran drivers got caught up in the excitement of the inaugural race, the new racing organization, and the start of a new season. With all the buildup and the promise of a better stock car-racing system, Tim Flock, competing for the first time at Daytona against his two older brothers, called it “one of the greatest days in stock car history.” The only glitch was that Daytona's rich folk and town fathers, who had been accommodating for a decade, had recently decided to put down their collective foot.

  France's racecourse had brought stock cars to Daytona in 1936, had hosted scores of races across a dozen years, and earned the city a reputation for speed that would last ever after. But postwar construction had turned the famous Beach-and-Road course's oceanside straightaway into a strip of cottages and motels. Those who'd built homes along the beach preferred seagulls to race cars in their backyards. Led by the Oceanfront Cottage Association, residents' gripes about the noise, wrecks, shards of car parts, spilled oil, and shredded tires on their beach grew louder, finally forcing France to shut down his racecourse in late 1947, a frustrating setback during NASCAR's infancy.

  Because France leased the property for the track—from the city, county, and a few private landowners—he was at the mercy of those who owned the land. Luckily, Daytona city officials helped France find property south of town, away from the beachfront cottages, where he scrambled to build a new 2.2-mile oval in time for NASCAR's first big race. France worried that abandoning the old course would damage Daytona's “reputation as the hub of stock car racing.” When he finally unveiled the new course in early 1948, just in time, he boasted that the new track was even better than the old one.

  “The turns of the new course are something to see,” France gushed to the press. “There won't be any dull moments when the boys come roaring through that south turn.”

  Racers who'd been driving the old Beach-and-Road course for a decade wondered how the new course would compare. Many of them arrived early to scope out the logistics of the historic event. During pre-race practice and qualifying laps, Byron and a few other veterans criticized the south turn. The entrance into the sandy curve off paved Highway A1A was very tight, with little margin for error. If the timing wasn't perfect, a driver might sail off the crest of the steep bank. Racers were also concerned that the sand of both the north and south turns was too soft. On the old course, that sand had been tamped down by thousands of race cars over the years. The mushy, unpacked sand of this new racetrack was worrisome.

  Fans began pouring into Daytona Beach during the days before the race. On the morning of February 15, France opened the gates and began collecting tickets from a streaming crowd of fourteen thousand—one of the largest crowds ever at Daytona. They paid $2.50 apiece and, in the words of one sportswriter, “were thicker than the seeds on rye bread.” Fans ran to pick out their spots, most of them choosing the borders of the north and south turns, where the best action would likely occur. There hadn't been enough time to build elaborate new grandstands or safety barriers at the new track. So, on the south turn, spectators stood behind a fence consisting of rope strung between wooden posts. On the north turn, they clustered tightly against the course, creating a narrow chute of bodies, just feet from where the cars would soon barrel past.

  As he had done a decade earlier, France had planted signs along the dunes reading “Careful—Rattlesnakes” to prevent gate crashers. Some sneaky spectators just wandered down the beach with fishing poles as props and managed to blend into the crowd. A few of the bolder ones landed on the beach in airplanes and strutted right up to the racetrack.

  A record number of drivers entered the historic race, and at 3:30 in the afternoon, fifty-six growling machines—mostly Fords but also a few Buicks and Chevrolets—lined up at the start of a sixty-eight-lap race that would total just shy of 150 miles.

  Back in 1941, the first stock car race of the season had been a Bill France-sponsored contest at Daytona that he called the Rayson Memorial, named for a British Royal Air Force pilot killed at the start of World War II. France wanted the Rayson race to become the annual opener of every stock car season. He had a trophy maker create a tall “Rayson Memorial” loving cup and announced before the 1941 race that the driver who won the event three times during his career would take home the silver trophy.

  In 1941, twenty-year-old Roy Hall had won the inaugural Rayson in style. After the war, Red Byron won the next two, in 1946 and 1947. France felt the Rayson Memorial was the perfect event to kick off NASCAR's first season, and the 1948 season, and to inaugurate his new track.

  As he sat eight rows back from the front, Byron knew he had a chance to win his third Rayson and end the day with the silver trophy in his hands. But his first two Rayson victories had been on the old course, and Byron was concerned about getting a good feel for the tricks and timing of the new track. He also thought about the monkey on his back. He had failed in his last two attempts at Daytona, due to frustrating engine problems. Both times, Bob Flock had led from start to finish.

  This time, Flock was a bit handicapped. Bob had still not entirely recovered from his back-breaking accident in late 1947. He had lost weight and appeared frail an
d disturbingly thin, his fragile body locked inside a constricting back brace that was supposed to prevent him from rebreaking his barely healed vertebrae. Surely his doctors had told him to quit racing, probably for good, if he wanted to live. And yet, looking as if he should be in a hospital bed and nowhere near a racetrack, Flock gingerly slid behind the wheel of Raymond Parks's number 14 Ford, the same V-8 that Roy Hall had raced to victory back in the 1941 Rayson Memorial.

  Fonty and Tim Flock were also in the lineup, as were Ed Samples, Gober Sosebee, and a dozen other moonshiner/racers, including a wild and handsome whiskey tripper from Virginia named Curtis Turner, in his first Daytona Beach race.

  Byron at least felt good about his number 22 car. After the two engine blowups the previous year, Vogt had decided to build Byron a new V-8 motor for 1948. He'd spent all of January in the back room of his neat-as-a-library shop, working day and night assembling handmade parts into an engine that finally purred like a thousand angry cats.

  This time, Vogt wasn't seeking just speed, but stamina. He wanted everything about the engine to be spotless, smooth, and perfect, so that Byron would never again lose a race due to engine problems. Vogt wouldn't let anyone else touch that engine, which is why he kept himself locked in his secret room. As in a hospital OR, the tools were all laid out in perfect rows, the workbench and floors spotless, the overhead lighting just so.

  It had gnawed at Vogt that Fonty Flock won the 1947 NCSCC championship driving other mechanics' cars. Vogt was now desperate to recapture something—prestige, glory, or at least respect. Winning NASCAR's first official race, being the mechanic for that historic first victory, might also ease the sting of insult he felt France had inflicted by not including him as an official NASCAR partner or shareholder. It wouldn't bring national fame or fortune, but those within his fraternity would know it had been his engine, his car. And that meant a lot to Vogt. Because without a fast car, he was just a strange, bulky man with a crew cut, white uniform, and dirty nails; a twice-divorced, chain-smoking, obsessive-compulsive insomniac.

  To be safe, Vogt and Parks decided to bring three cars to Daytona. In keeping with the practice he'd begun a year earlier at Langhorne, Parks figured the third car might come in handy if one of the other two wrecked or experienced engine problems. So, in addition to Byron's Ford and Bob Flock's Ford, they towed to Daytona an extra Vogt-tuned ′39 Ford, which had briefly been Byron's car the previous year.

  At the last minute, a racer who said his name was “J. F Fricks” decided to race the backup car, numbered “22-A.” Byron would be racing against his old car, which had the uneasy feel of racing against an old friend.

  With so many cars—and a track that was a mile shorter than the old Daytona track—France was concerned about a massive pileup on the first lap. Rather than start all fifty-six cars at once, he decided to “stagger” the start. Each row of four cars took off at one-second intervals. Local driver (and NASCAR treasurer) Marshall Teague—a happy-go-lucky war veteran who, like Byron, had been a flight engineer on bombers—had qualified with the fastest time and took off with the first group. Byron started eight rows back, with Fonty and Bob Flock nearby.

  Teague took the early lead, with Fonty slowly working his way into second. By the midpoint of the race, Fonty finally managed to pass Teague and by lap fifty—with eighteen laps to go—pulled half a mile ahead of Teague and the rest. But as Flock was tearing down the back-stretch at one hundred miles an hour, his front wheel spindle snapped, and the wheel twisted off the car. The front wheel hub dug into the pavement and acted as a fulcrum, like a pole vaulter's pole that whipped Flock's car into the air and off the course at full speed. Just as in his horrendous Daytona crash seven years earlier, he roared off the track and into the brush, bounced off an embankment, and commenced tumbling, end over end. The car flipped three times, missed slamming into a telephone pole by mere inches, and finally came to a stop in a clump of palmettos. This time, the car fortunately landed on its wheels, instead of the roof. When the tumbling came to a halt, Flock examined his extremities, shook his head, checked gingerly for broken bones or bloody gashes, and found that he was, remarkably, intact. His race, however, was over.

  Brother Bob's race seemed to have ended, too. Despite the painful back brace, which was chafing against his skin, Bob was positioned solidly in fourth place after fifty miles. But when the engine began smoking, he had no choice but to pull into the pits. He and Vogt stood helplessly beside the wounded number 14 car, about to call it quits for the day, when another race car suddenly pulled off the track and roared up beside them. It was the yellow number 22-A Ford coupe, Parks's backup car. The driver jumped out and ran toward Flock—it was Parks himself, who had entered the race under the fictitious name of J. F Fricks, in his second-ever stock car race.

  “Get in,” Parks yelled, just as he had to Byron a year earlier at Langhorne.

  Because of his back brace, Flock needed help getting into the yellow coupe, but he quickly rejoined the chase behind Byron and the leader, Marshall Teague.

  And J. F. Fricks melted into the crowd.

  Meanwhile, a number of drivers found themselves unable to handle the tricky south turn. A driver from Indianapolis missed the sharp left off AlA's pavement and sailed over the banked turn to land with a crunch twelve feet below the crest. A few laps later, another driver made the same mistake and landed smack on top of the first car. By the end of the race, five cars would be mashed together in a lifeless heap of smoking metal carcasses at the bottom of the gulley beside the south turn.

  With Fonty Flock out of the race, Teague regained the lead, but Byron soon pulled up behind Teague and was driving right on his tail. Byron was about to pass him and take the lead for the first time of the day when another driver nudged up beside him. The fenders of the two cars became locked together, and when Byron tried to pull free, part of his fender ripped off and began clanging against the car, threatening to shred his tire. Furious, Byron pulled into the pits to have Vogt reattach the fender—with a coat hanger. It took fifteen more miles for Byron to again catch the leader. For the next few laps, he kept looking for a slot to Teague's left or right through which to pass.

  Byron began to notice that Teague was consistently cutting his turns hard to the inside. He would learn afterward that Teague's brakes had begun to fail, forcing him to use his emergency brake to enter the turns more tightly and slowly. Teague would hug the inside arc of each turn so his momentum didn't carry him too wide and possibly off the track into hundreds of spectators, or off the south turn into the wreckage of cars beside it. After realizing how consistently Teague was cutting to the inside of the turns, Byron decided to make his move—to the outside— with sixteen laps remaining.

  With his new engine accelerating to nearly 120 miles an hour down the beach, Byron seemed as if he was about to slam right into Teague's rear end. His plan was to slice quickly to Teague's right just as Teague began to hug to the left. As they reached the north turn, Byron made his move and was about to pull beside Teague, but they both were suddenly confronted by the slower car of a driver named Mickey Rhodes. Teague eased off the gas and cut sharply to the left, to the inside of Rhodes. Byron kept his pedal to the floor and swung hard to Rhodes's right, roaring widely and wildly around the outer edge of the turn, his spinning tires spewing rooster tails of sand into the crowd. As fans shielded their faces from the sting of flying grit, Byron churned and bounced through the thick ruts, sliding both sideways and forward at the same time and hoping that the intense strain of the high-speed turn wouldn't snap off his right front wheel.

  Losing a right front wheel in a turn was a common and very dangerous affliction in the early days of stock car racing, as Fonty Flock had experienced a few laps earlier. But Byron's wheel and its reinforced lug nuts held fast, and he passed both Teague and Rhodes on the outside, hitting the blacktop of A1A thirty yards ahead of them both.

  For the final fifteen laps, Byron blocked Teague's attempts to recapture the lead. On the fina
l straightaway, he pulled far ahead of Teague, again pushing Vogt's new engine to well over a hundred miles an hour, and took the checkered flag of NASCAR's first race. Byron built up such an impressive lead on the final lap that Teague crossed the finish line a full fifteen seconds behind. His Ford immediately ran out of gas and died.

  Bob Flock, after pulling out with engine troubles on the twenty-fifth lap and then taking the wheel of the Parks/Fricks backup Ford, had amazingly caught up to the leaders. Across the final laps, he drove like mad to catch Byron, passing car after car, his barely healed back screaming in protest. It was an impressive performance, but he just couldn't match Byron's pace and settled for third place, a half mile behind Teague. When he exited his car at the finish, Flock's shirt was soaked with blood—the metal clasps of his back brace had rubbed his flesh raw.

  Byron was exhausted, too, and his leg throbbed as Red Vogt helped him out of his Ford. Looking much older than his years, Byron limped toward a chair and collapsed into it, where he grudgingly spoke with reporters who'd come to chronicle NASCAR's first race. “This was the hardest race I ever won at Daytona Beach,” Byron said. “I had to work all the way. Teague was stiff competition. I was lucky to catch him.”

  With typical humility, Byron thanked Vogt for the new engine he'd recently built for him. “I've always said the car is 90 percent of winning,” he said. “The driver and luck take care of the other 10 percent.” Byron then reminded the reporter that every major race at Daytona, seven in a row dating back to the prewar victories of Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall, had been won by a Vogt engine in a Parks car.

  “You can't win a horse race without a good horse, and you can't win a stock car race without a good car. What the trainer is to the horse, a mechanic is to the car, and I've got the best mech in the racing business,” Byron told the press. “Red Vogt is the reason I win. He puts those motors together like a watch. When other mechanics learn his secret gear ratio, there won't be any stragglers in a race. They'll all travel.”