How Racing’s First Superteam Won the Inaugural NASCAR Cup in 1949
- The biggest bootlegger in Atlanta, if not Southeast, and always flush with funds, group proprietor Raymond Parks, pictured earlier mentioned still left, favored profitable.
- A flight engineer, driver Red Byron, suitable, tended to look at racing from an engineering point of view.
- An obsessive perfectionist, NASCAR’s initially master mechanic Crimson Vogt, middle, was renowned for generating prodigious horsepower from flathead Ford V8s in Modifieds.
There would by no means be a different driver, mechanic and car or truck operator trio quite like Crimson Byron, Red Vogt and Raymond Parks, the a few guys who put together to get NASCAR’s initially Strictly Stock championship in 1949.
World War II veteran Byron experienced a shrapnel wound on board a B-24 bomber, which left him with some metal in his still left leg, a limp and regular discomfort. But he obtained on perfectly with his mechanic not only because Vogt crafted a specific clutch pedal with pegs where by he could relaxation his remaining foot.
A flight engineer, Byron tended to glance at racing from an engineering standpoint. He claimed the eight-race Strictly Stock details title on board an Oldsmobile, successful at Martinsville and Daytona. But when his details ended up docked for competing in non-NASCAR events for the duration of the 1950 period although contending for one more title, the gentle-spoken, tricky-driving Byron switched to athletics vehicles.
An obsessive perfectionist, Vogt was renowned for developing prodigious horsepower from flathead Ford V8s in Modifieds. A cam expert, he certainly employed some tips of his trade in the motor of the successful “stock” Oldsmobile.
At his two-car or truck garage on Spring St. in Atlanta, Vogt had been creating vehicles for bootleggers on one particular side and for Revenuers on the other given that the 1930s. “The bootlegger cars and trucks had been normally more quickly,” he reported, “because there were being so lots of rules you experienced to comply with on the governing administration cars.”
The biggest bootlegger in Atlanta, if not Southeast, and constantly flush with hard cash, Parks favored successful and the attendant publicity. In 1948, his crew captured NASCAR’s “other” to start with factors championship, this a person for Modified vehicles, with Byron profitable 11 of 52 races.
A male of couple words and phrases who constantly dressed in a suit, tie and fedora, Parks was a inventory car racing pioneer, a male of quite a few firsts. He bought hooked on racing when Lloyd Seay, a single of his whiskey trippers and a fellow Dawsonville, Ga. native, gained the very first stock vehicle race on Atlanta’s Lakewood Mile in 1937 on board a 1934 Ford Roadster ordered by Parks. “If he hadn’t received,” reported Parks, “I may not have at any time gotten the racing fever.”
The initially multi-vehicle staff operator, Parks started barnstorming the East Coast with a trio of Modified Ford entries organized by Vogt just before and soon after the war, when Alabaman Byron first caught his awareness, and was a mainstay in NASCAR founder Monthly bill France’s attempts to boost the Seaside & Street Program races in Daytona with his 3-automobile entries.
France himself often drove one particular of Parks’ Fords to victory. Driver Gober Sosebee and the late Parks’ spouse Violet afterwards confirmed that the bootlegger on situation equipped France with a briefcase loaded with income to support his advertising initiatives.
Generally wanting to be in the middle of the racing action, for the duration of the to start with Southern 500 at Darlington in 1950 Parks helped change tires on his Cadillac entry driven by Byron when carrying his at any time-current costume shirt and tie. But he quickly retired from racing owing to enhanced general public scrutiny of bootlegging, a business he unrepentantly ongoing to pursue in shot homes all around Atlanta—until he briefly grew to become a guest of the federal federal government at the massive house in Chillicothe, Ohio.
