Birth of the Busch Series

'You could take a little bit of money and do a whole lot with it'

Some things in racing never change, such as the precise timing and execution it takes to achieve a victory.

And when racing history looks at the decisions made by NASCAR and Anheuser-Busch in the early 1980s that resulted in the launch, in February 1982 of the Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series, which is being feted this season for its 25th anniversary in 2006 in February 1982, no doubt it will say the time was right.

Kevin Harvick is the seventh driver to win two Busch Series championships. Credit: CIA Stock Photo

Busch Series Champions Year Driver 2006 Kevin Harvick 2005 Martin Truex Jr. 2004 Martin Truex Jr. 2003 Brian Vickers 2002 Greg Biffle 2001 Kevin Harvick 2000 Jeff Green 1999 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 1998 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 1997 Randy LaJoie 1996 Randy LaJoie 1995 Johnny Benson 1994 David Green 1993 Steve Grissom 1992 Joe Nemechek 1991 Bobby Labonte 1990 Chuck Bown 1989 Rob Moroso 1988 Tommy Ellis 1987 Larry Pearson 1986 Larry Pearson 1985 Jack Ingram 1984 Sam Ard 1983 Sam Ard 1982 Jack Ingram • All-Time Busch Series Standings

"I think at the time, we needed a place for guys coming from weekly racing, or short track racing, into something that was more competitive -- but not at the Cup level," NASCAR vice president for corporate communications Jim Hunter said. "We also had a lot of tracks at that time that wanted events, but we didn't have enough Cup races to go around."

The Busch Series was born at a time when local racers were struggling to contend with a Late Model Sportsman Series schedule that required them to travel literally far and wide to compete for small purses.

"We had sanctioned Late Model Sportsman racing for decades, and had as many as 60 or 70 races in a year, right up until the time that the Busch Series was formed," Hunter said. "That made it a lot more difficult for the guys that were trying to run Late Model Sportsman cars as a business."

The Sportsman division resembled the current Nextel Cup Series prior to the so-called "Modern Era," when an exorbitant number of races were scheduled.

Venerable Morgan Shepherd, who celebrated his 65th birthday Oct. 12 in the Nextel Cup garage area at Lowe's Motor Speedway and hopes to race into his 40th year in motorsports in 2007, was part of that transition.

During a break at Lowe's the career 15-time Busch Series winner recalled a time, on the eve of the Busch Series' formation, when racers of a different era perhaps had more fun, but faced some more daunting challenges.

Once they got to a venue, they might find themselves stacked up against local racers who had cars that were legal for their racetrack -- but possessed a distinct advantage over cars that were prepared to Sportsman rules in a different region.

"When we first started running, I can remember Ray Hendrick at Martinsville had a ram manifold with the carburetor sticking up through the hood," Shepherd said. "And he was just smoking everybody with the stuff that he had.

"So when NASCAR started policing the sport, they started putting templates on the cars, and having height requirements and restrictions on the motors.

"They had always had cubic inch requirements for the motors, but there were so many things you could do to them."

"I can remember the Oxford [Maine] 250 being one of the biggest short track races in the country," Hunter said. "And even after it became a Busch Series event, I remember our guys complaining about having to run against the 'space ships' that were the type Late Model cars raced in New England at that time."

Shepherd started racing in the Sportsman Series in 1970, winning seven races in what was definitely a different era.

"I didn't just race at Hickory Speedway," Shepherd said of one of his home ovals. "I'd go to Columbia, S.C., on Thursday night; Friday night at Asheville [N.C.]; then maybe to Hickory [on Saturday night].

"Maybe on Sunday I'd go to an outlaw track in Shelby or Fayetteville [N.C.], because we run, like, three or four nights a week. I think, in 1980 when I won the [Sportsman] championship, I ran 58 races to win the championship.

"I think I finished second 22 times and won, like, nine races. I run outlaw races on top of that and, I think, ran maybe 68 races that season."

	Jack Ingram was the inaugural Busch Series champion in 1982, when it was the Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series. Credit: AP
	All-Time Victories Through Oct. 20, 2006 Rank Driver Wins 1. Mark Martin 47 2. Jack Ingram 31 3. Kevin Harvick 24 4. Tommy Houston 24 5. Sam Ard 22 6. Jeff Burton 22 7. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 22 8. Tommy Ellis 22 9. Dale Earnhardt 21 10. Harry Gant 21 Martin celebrates his 47th victory, at Las Vegas in 2005 Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

The barnstorming nature of that time led to legendary stories -- and statistics. The late Don MacTavish, who won the 1967 Sportsman title, raced a staggering 122 times in the process.

In fact, Shepherd's 1980 total pales in comparison to some other seasons -- like Harry Gant's 92-race card in 1970, or something like the late Ralph Earnhardt would achieve in the '50s -- racing upwards of 75 events in a season.

When brewer Anheuser-Busch and NASCAR got together, it was a marriage whose time had come.

"It was corporate America wanting to get involved," Shepherd said, "because we as drivers and owners didn't really have that much to do with it. NASCAR was looking to bring more money and more sponsors into the sport, and they could kind of see where it was going.

"Busch got involved, and that's what made it grow; and made NASCAR work harder to police it."

As the Busch Series has grown, what started as popular events in Milwaukee and Indianapolis have expanded to included races from coast to coast.

"The Busch Series took on a life of its own, and has grown to be the second most popular form of motorsport in this country, behind the Nextel Cup Series," Hunter said. "It's been important because if a guy wanted to race and make a living at it -- but didn't want to race in Nextel Cup, there was a way to do it."

However, as NASCAR moved to the Busch Series format, where the championship has always consisted of around 30 races, with it currently being 35; Shepherd said the consumption of time, and more importantly, money, grew exponentially.

"In 1980, when I won the championship, I only had one guy working for me, by the name of 'Biscuit' -- and in fact, I didn't even have a garage, because my garage had burned down," Shepherd said. "So we worked outside and just threw a cover over everything -- but we run 68 races that year.

"They had to cut back the schedule because NASCAR had to work on policing the sport, to make it more fair for everybody," Shepherd said. "But we could build an engine in a car pretty quickly. You could build an engine in a day's time and we could build a car in a week-and-a-half.

"Now, the hours are unreal. I can't even tell you. It's probably more than 300 man-hours or whatever, that goes into a car. So the [number of] races had to cut back as far as how many races you run because of how the cars were policed."

While the ascension of the Busch Series has magnified the exposure competitors can receive, the money they can make and the steps they can make with their careers, it's not come without a price, Shepherd says.

"It's a lot harder [to race] now, because it's a lot harder to find the kind of dollars [in backing] that it takes to be in this sport," Shepherd said. "I'll tell you, back in 1970, I could go to the Chevrolet place, buy an LT-1 engine for $750, take it and tear it down. I wouldn't have but $1,300-1,400 in it, I'd go out and win a race that paid $1,000.

	Dale Earnhardt Jr. won consecutive Busch Series titles before joining the Cup Series in 2000. Credit: Autostock
	Busch Series Champions Drivers with multiple titles Driver Years Sam Ard 1983, 1984 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 1998, 1999 Kevin Harvick 2001, 2006 Jack Ingram 1982, 1985 Randy LaJoie 1996, 1997 Larry Pearson 1986, 1987 Martin Truex Jr. 2004, 2005

"Now, our engines cost some $70,000 -- or they cost that much to lease -- so you've got to have corporate America involved to make it happen. But NASCAR has seen all this and made the sport a big advertising deal for corporate America - and corporate America can now see the bang for their buck."

Racing is still enjoyable, but it's not as much pure fun as it was, for example, when Shepherd drove for four different men, including himself, to win the 1980 title -- or had the experience he did in the mid-1970s.

"I finished second in the championship in 1975 and didn't even own a racecar," Shepherd said. "I drove 17 different cars when L.D. Ottinger won the championship -- but things have changed and you're not going to do anything like that, now."

Shepherd said that, as much of many of the early group of racers that ran in the Busch Series, including men such as Larry Pearson and Sam Ard, are part of the sport's fabric -- he himself doesn't feel that special about doing something he's loved throughout his career.

"I just feel that I was part of the group -- Harry Gant and Jack Ingram and Bosco Lowe and Bob Pressley -- all of the guys that we raced with over the years," Shepherd said. "We were almost the start of that sport and -- like in Nextel Cup, which goes back through Winston Cup to the Grand National days -- where Richard Petty and David Pearson and the Wood Brothers and Bud Moore were the guys that really brought that sport up.

"On the average, Bob Pressley, at that time, was the toughest one to beat -- on the average, and everywhere we went. Then, when we went somewhere like Hickory, it would be Jack Ingram and Tommy Houston and Bosco Lowe who were winning races there.

"When we went somewhere else, like Kingsport [Tenn.], I'd pretty much smoke 'em -- and Jimmy Hensley was pretty good at Kingsport, too. At Southside Speedway up outside of Richmond, Tommy Ellis was the one to beat, like he also was at Langley Speedway: Him and Sonny Hutchins, and Butch Lindley were good at Langley.

"Of course, a lot of the time they was fighting, so you could win the races."

The fighting aside, Hunter said that honor roll of drivers was part of the Busch Series' initial fabric, which remains similar today.

"We had a lot of guys who wanted to race against the best drivers in different regions of the country, and that was what the first couple years of the current Busch Series involved," Hunter said of the schedule that included a majority of short track races. "Guys like Morgan Shepherd, Jack Ingram, Sam Ard, Tommy Houston -- and Red Farmer was part of that group that raced for a living and traveled to do it -- after being very successful at their local racing."

The so-called extracurricular activities call to mind Shepherd's assessment that the sport has lost a little of its rollicking aspect as it's "cleaned up its act."

"In those days, it was a very fun sport," Shepherd said. "Let me say something else. I was driving Monk Tate's car over at South Boston Speedway, and I walked over to his toolbox and I picked up a pair of brass knuckles.

"So I said, 'Monk, what are these for?' And he said, 'Now Morgan, we don't race all the time.' So that's kind of how the sport was, back then. It got pretty serious when you got spun out.

"But it definitely was a lot more fun because you could take a little bit of money and do a whole lot with it. And the tires lasted a long time.

"I know in '69, in the Late Model Sportsman Series I run then, I won 21 out of 29 races -- and the left front tire on that car won all those races -- and I only changed the right sides one time and run all year long.

"So it's the money that really takes the fun out of it -- that, and the manpower you have to have now. It was more fun to race because you didn't have to do as much work. Even though we worked all night, it just didn't take as many people."

With everything he's seen and done, Shepherd still has a goal he wants to achieve in NASCAR.

"I reckon I'm one of the last of the Mohicans and the longest one, as far as driving a racecar," Shepherd said. "I started driving in 1967, and if I can continue into next year, it will be 40 years that I've been racing in NASCAR."

ALSO READ:
• Dave Rodman -- Birth of the Busch Series
• David Newton -- Where are they now?
• David Newton -- Tale of a Busch Series lifer
• Ryan Smithson -- Whatever happened to ...
• NASCAR.COM -- Gone, but not forgotten
• NASCAR.COM -- Busch Series Firsts & Records