Bill
France Sr. was born in Washington, D.C. and lived there until his
early 20s. His father was a teller at Park Savings Bank in Washington, and
his son might have followed in his footsteps with the exception that he had
a fascination with the automobile and how it performed. As a teenager, Bill
Sr. would often skip school and take the family car to a nearby track and
run laps until he had enough time to get the car, a Model-T Ford, back home
before his father got home. He held several hands-on jobs until he
eventually owned his own service station. He made a name for himself and
built a customer base by getting up early in the wintry mornings and going
out to crank the cars for white collar bureaucrats.
In
1934 the Frances loaded up their car and headed for the south with a total
of $25. Where they were headed has never been clearly established but some
say Tampa and others say Miami Beach. Two days later they arrived in Daytona
Beach. Rumors say that they were broke and had to settle there while some
say his wife had a sister in nearby New Smyrna Beach and still others say
that their car broke down and they had no choice but to settle in and stay
there. However years later Bill Jr. stated that his mother did not have a
sister living in New Smyrna Beach and that a broken down car would never
stop his father from getting where he wanted because he was an experienced
mechanic.
The hard packed sand between Daytona Beach
and its northern neighbor Ormond Beach was the site of the world-record
automobile speed trials. They started in 1902 and picked up speed right up
to the '30s. By then the speeds were approaching 300 miles per hour along
the firm and smooth inviting sand. In the spring of 1935 Sir Malcolm
Campbell was taking his Bluebird rocket car to Daytona Beach in hopes of
running at 300 miles per hour for yet another land-speed-record. Along with
this and the weather and the smaller hospitable and more affordable area
maybe this is the reason behind the Frances staying in Daytona Beach.
Campbell never did get his record of 300 mph at Daytona, instead his best he
could do was 276.82mph and on March 7, 1935 Campbell announced that he was
moving the speed trials to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It was the
shifting winds and changing tides that made Campbell realize that he would
not reach his goal of 300 mph if he kept working out of Daytona Beach.
Campbell did beat the 300mph speed at Bonneville in late 1935.
Daytona Beach area officials were determined
to bring in speed-related events after Campbell left and this was how Bill
France Sr. got his start in race promotions in late 1935. City officials
asked championship dirt track racer and local resident Sig Haugdahl to
organize and promote an automobile race along a 3.2 mile course which
included Highway A1A southbound from Daytona Beach and the same beach that
had been used for the land speed record runs. The 78-lap, 250 mile event for
street-legal family sedans was sanctioned but the American Automobile
Association for cars built in 1935 and 1936. Daytona Beach posted a
$5,000.00 purse, with $1,700.00 for the winner. The biggest problem was that
people arrived there earlier than the ticket-takers and established their
spots on the beach. The turns at each end very virtually impassable, leading
to stuck and stalled cars which created scoring disputes and technical
protests. Then the race was called after 75 laps with Milt Marion declared
the winner. France finished fifth behind Marion, Shaw, Elmore, and Sam
Purvis. Ben Shaw and Tommy Elmore both protested the race but their appeals
were squashed. That was the first and last race the City of Daytona Beach
ever promoted. Well how would you feel if your City lost $22,000.00 from one
race promotion?
Haugdahl and France had become very good
friends and were not about to give up. Together they talked the Daytona
Beach Elks Club into helping promote a race over Labor Day weekend of 1937.
Despite a paltry $100.00 purse and improved management, promotion, and track
conditions the Elks lost money too. They also like the city lost their
interest in motor sports promotion. With that Haugdahl decided that he too
had enough and he bowed out of the motor sport promoting as well. This left
France all to himself to try and get the area interested since he could
still see a future for stock car racing, however he was a struggling
filling-station operator and didn't have enough cash to cover a purse,
advertise and promote the race plus pay the city to set up the course.
PART
TWO . . . France was finally able to convince local
restaurateur Charlie Reese, rich and well known, to post a $1,000.00 purse
and let France recruit drivers and spread the word. Danny Murphy beat France
in the 150-miler that generated just enough profit to convince the
co-promoter to do it again. They managed another successful stock car
promotion on Labor Day weekend of 1938. France beat Lloyd Moody and Pig
Ridings in that race and then organized and promoted three more races in
March, July, and September of 1939. They did it again in March , July 4, and
September of 1940 France fared well in those three races of 1940 finishing
fourth in March, first in July, and sixth in September. France was able to
promote two races in March, one each in July and August of 1941 prior to the
war breaking out. The war brought a stop to motor sport racing and France
went to work for the Daytona Boat Works while his wife handled the family
filling station. Shortly after the war ended
and things started returning to normal, Bill France left the boat works.
France was obsessed with the idea that a single, firmly governed sanctioning
body was necessary if stock car was to be a success. He was well aware, as a
driver and promoter, that the minor-league sanctioning bodies reeked of
inconsistency. France wanted an organization that would sanction and promote
races, bring uniformity to race procedures plus technical rules. He wanted
an association that would oversee a membership benefit and insurance fund,
and one that would promise to pay postseason awards, and crown a single
national champion using a clearly defined points system.
At that time there were several
organizations who claimed to sanction national championship races. One was
the American Automobile Association (AAA), but they were more concerned with
open-wheel, open-cockpit, champ car racing. The A.A.A eventually became
known as the USAC/CART league (Indy-car racing). The other groups were the
United Stock Car Racing Association, National Auto Racing league, and
American Stock Car Racing Association. The Georgia based National Stock Car
Racing Association was only interested with-in the state and so they didn't
crown a national champion. The Daytona Beach Racing Association only
promoted within the city so they made no claim to a national champion
either. France was so devoted to creating a racing association that would
adhere to the rules mentioned above. With that in 1947 he retired from
racing so he could concentrate all his time and attention to organize that
body.
The first meeting of the National
Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing was held on December 12, 1947 at
the Streamline Inn Motel in Daytona Beach, Florida. The organization named
Bill France Sr. as its first president. William Henry Getty France, aka, Big
Bill France, gathered together a group of racing promoters, drivers, and
mechanics with the dream of establishing an organization to set a standard
set of rules and regulations to help promote stock car racing.
Incorporated on February 21, 1948, the
organization hired Erwin "Cannonball" Baker to be the first Commissioner of
Racing. The new organization sanctioned its first race on the Daytona Beach
road/beach course in February of 1948, several days before it was legally
incorporated. More than 14,000 fans watched that first event, a 150-miler
that Red Byron won ahead of Teague, Raymond Parks, Buddy Shuman, and Wayne
Pritchett.
France's original plan was for NASCAR to
oversee three separate and distinct classes of cars: Strictly Stock,
Modified, and Roadsters. Perhaps surprisingly, the Modified and Roadster
classes were seen as more attractive to fans than Strictly Stock. As things
turned out, though, the audience NASCAR attracted wanted nothing to do with
Roadsters, a "Yankee" series more popular in the Midwest and Northeast. It
didn't take long for France to recognize that he didn't need the Roadster.
After the war was over the big automakers
had to switch production from Tanks and Jeeps back to their makes of cars.
This got France to thinking that the fans would want to purchase cars when
they see them winning at the races and he knew that productions were going
to be slow for a while. He decided that NASCAR would run pre '40s Fords and
Chevrolets plus a handful of new Buick's were allowed. The 1948 schedule
covered 52 dirt-track races for modified's and Red Byron was the national
champion that year.
PART
THREE . . . In February of 1949, France staged a 20 mile
exhibition race near Miami for his Strictly Stock division. Fearing he would
lose out to a promoter in North Carolina, France decided to stage a Strictly
Stock points race. This race took place in June and was scheduled as a
200-lap, 150 mile race around a 3/4-mile dirt track in Charlotte, North
Carolina. It carried a purse of $5,000. for 33 street-legal family sedans
that had been built since 1946. Pole sitter Bob Flock led the first five
laps in a 46 Hudson, Bill Blair led laps 6 thru 150 in a 1949 Lincoln, and
Glen Dunnaway led the remaining laps in a 1947 Ford. After the race
Dunnaway's car was inspected and failed because he had altered the rear
springs. He was disqualified and moved to the back of the field and stripped
him of the win and money. This moved Roper to the first place spot followed
by Fonty Flock in second, Byron in third, Sam Rice in fourth, and Tim Flock
finished out the top five. Hubert Westmoreland owner of Dunnaway's car sued
the new sanctioning body for $10,000. however a North Carolina Judge ruled
that the officials had the right to make and enforce their rules without
outside interference and dismissed the suit. That mid-summer race attracted
13,000 plus fans, far more than was expected. NASCAR promoted seven more
Strictly Stock races that year: two each in North Carolina and Pennsylvania,
one each in Florida, New York, and Virginia. Byron won the Strictly Stock
class that year in what was to become the Grand Nationals and Winston Cup
series. Lee Petty finished 2nd in points followed by Bob Flock, Curtis
Turner, and Jack Smith. Fifty drivers raced in at least one race each that
year and between 16 and 45 drivers showed up for each race.
France wondered what was missing
from his Strictly Stock division. He had to come up with a blockbuster event
to draw more attention to his Strictly Stock cars. The USAC champ car
circuit had the Indy 500, and NASCAR Modified and Sportsman division had
their annual beach/road races in February at Daytona Beach. In 1950 Harold
Brasington built a 1.25 mile, high-banked, egg shaped speedway just west of
his hometown of Darlington. He stunned the racing world by paving it and
saying that he wanted to someday host a 500-mile stock car race. Brasington
himself a retired racer had known France from their old racing days at
Daytona and other dirt tracks throughout the Southeast and Midwest. He was
aware that France's new organization wanted to expand their image and he
figured a 500-mile race would be the answer.
In the fall of 1949
Brasington bought a 70 acre farm from Sherman Ramsey and he began carving a
superspeedway out of what had been a cotton and peanut field. Instead of
developing his track into a true oval, he was forced to create an egg-shaped
facility with one end tighter, more steeply-banked and narrower than the
other end. You see he promised Ramsey when he purchased the land that the
track wouldn't disturb the minnow pond on the property's western fringe. So
that meant that Barrington could make the eastern end as wide, sweeping, and
flat as he wanted but the western end had to be just the opposite because of
the minnow pond.
It took almost a year to
build and pave the new track. In the summer of 1950 as Sam Nunis spoke of
promoting a 500-mile NASCAR race at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, Barrington
and France were making the final
arrangements to run a 500-miler at Darlington on Labor-day. The inaugural
Southern 500 carried a stock-car record purse of $25,000. and was
co-sanctioned by NASCAR and the rival Central States Racing Association.
Over 80 cars showed up and it took two weeks to get them all qualified. The
race started with a 75 car field aligned in 25 rows and three abreast.
After filling all 9,000
seats fans were directed to the infield where a sea of over 6,000 people
watched the race. It took Johnny Mantz more than six hours to cover the full
500 miles. He drove a 1950 Plymouth owned by France, Westmoreland, and a
couple more guys. Fireball Roberts finished second, Red Byron was third, and
Bill Rexford was fourth. The Southern 500 was NASCAR's only paved track
event in 1950. There were only four paved events in 1951 and they were two
at Dayton, Ohio and one each at Darlington, and Thompson, Connecticut. Paved
tracks didn't begin to gain acceptance until the late '50s. Darlington and
the half-miler at Dayton each had two races in 1952. In 1953 Darlington and
the new 1-mile asphalt track at Raleigh, North Carolina each had a Grand
National race. In 1954 Darlington, Raleigh, and the paved road course at
Linden, New Jersey Airport had a race each. In 1955 Martinsville, Virginia
had one race, Darlington one race, and Raleigh had two races.
NASCAR's future began to
come in focus in 1956. NASCAR sanctioned 11 paved-track races among 56
events. They had 14 out of 53 venues in 1957, and 24 out of 51 venues in
1958. Not only were they racing on oval tracks France also scheduled road
course races at Watkins Glen, New York, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, and
Bridgehampton, New York. Suddenly, almost overnight, it seemed NASCAR racing
was becoming a national series rather than a regional series, Bill France's
dream was heading toward the future. *****
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