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Then & Now

NASCAR.COM pays tribute to two outgoing vets
and welcomes two rookies to the Cup fold.

Each week will preview one year in the career of the retiring drivers,
as well as a pop-culture look at what's going on in the world today.
Mark Martin

Mark Martin

Rusty Wallace

Rusty Wallace

Neither Mark Martin nor Rusty Wallace were in the field Aug. 4, 1957, when Buck Baker won the inaugural NASCAR race at Watkins Glen. But when the Cup Series returned full time in 1986, Wallace finished sixth and has been in each race since.

Martin's first event at the 2.45-mile serpentine track was in 1988, when he finished 28th -- his only finish outside the top 15 in 17 starts.

Martin has 12 top-fives and 15 top-10s with an average finish of 6.2. Wallace has seven top-fives and nine top-10s with an average finish of 16.5 and two DNFs.

Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch

Travis Kvapil

Travis Kvapil

Kyle Busch and Travis Kvapil will make their first Cup starts at Watkins Glen International.

Busch has one start on a road course -- June 26 at Sonoma. He started 13th an finished 40th, 13 laps off the pace.

Kvapil also has only one road-course start. He qualified 39th and came home 21st at Sonoma.

Busch currently leads the rookie of the year standings by 51 points over Kvapil. Through 21 races, Busch has five top-five finishes and eight top-10s. Kvapil has only one top-10.

Also in 1957 ...

  • News
  • Nov. 3 -- The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter space, a dog named Laika. She was kept alive for several days with a sophisticated life-support system.
  • Entertainment
  • March 31 -- Cinderella, starring 21-year-old Julie Andrews, and with songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, airs in color on CBS.
  • Sports
  • May 3 -- Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Los Angeles. "Dem Bums" played their first game in L.A. on April 18 -- and won 6-5 against the San Francisco Giants.
  • Deaths
  • Actor Humphrey Bogart ... gangster George "Bugs" Moran ... U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy ... FBI agent Eliot Ness

Also in 2005 ...

  • News
  • Aug. 8 -- Sgt. William Hamrick II witnessed the birth of his daughter in Parkersburg, W. Va., on Monday. That may seem unremarkable -- except that Hamrick was in Iraq. Click here for story.
  • Entertainment
  • Aug. 9 -- Judith Rossner, 70, died. Her hugely successful novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar was made into a movie starring Diane Keaton.
  • Sports
  • Aug. 5 -- The NCAA announced, starting in February, any school with a nickname or logo considered racially or ethnically "hostile" or "abusive" would be prohibited from using them in postseason events.
  • Still to come in 2005 ...
  • November -- The BBC is expected to launch software for downloading and watching its television programs from the Internet.
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