Atlanta's inaugural event just what track needed (cont'd)

Black and the others had hoped to open the track with a 400- or 500-mile race, but NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., having concerns about how the asphalt surface would hold up, insisted on a shorter race.

"We even discussed a 250-miler," Black said.

The fears were unfounded. The track itself held up just fine.

"It was a glorious, fun-filled day," Black said. "It was a great race, and there were lots of cars still running at the end."

Fireball Roberts (left) sits with Smokey Yunick at Atlanta.

“

It was the best thing that could have happened.

”

JACK BLACK, on Roberts' win

Black said somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 people witnessed the first race. Attendance was difficult to track, he said, because all the fencing wasn't up and many fans simply walked in for free.

The top drivers of the day, and a good many Georgians, were in the starting field.

Bobby Johns, a Miami native who later that year won the inaugural Atlanta 500, said a car preparation mistake on his part cost him a shot at the win in the opening race. In changing the rear end in his car, he wound up with one size lug nuts on the front wheels and another on the rear.

"We ended up having to change tires with a manual lug wrench and lost a lap in the pits," Johns said. Still he wound up fourth.

Rex White, the series champion that year, blew a tire and finished 23rd.

Gerald Duke of College Park was knocked out by a faulty distributor in his '59 Thunderbird. "I loved that track, but I never had any luck there," he said.

Wilbur Rakestraw of Dallas, Ga., finished 11th, but felt he could have done much better had he not been so lacking in funds. "I never had the equipment those other guys had," he said.

Perhaps no one had a worse day than flagman Ernie Moore, who suddenly collapsed in the flagstand during the race, an event that left the talkative track announcer Jimmy Mosteller almost speechless. Mosteller was calling the race from an announcer's booth that he describes as a box just big enough for him and an amplifier when Moore slumped over.

"I didn't know whether Ernie'd had a bad time the night before or what," Mosteller said. "But it turns out that a piece of metal off of one of the cars had hit him in the throat."

Moore was treated at a local hospital and recovered. His assistant, Roby Combs, flagged the remainder of the race.

Cotton Owens and Jack Smith, who were credited with second and third place, respectively, challenged the scoring, but lost their appeal.

In the end, the legendary Fireball Roberts, driving a Pontiac prepared by the crafty mechanic Smokey Yunick took the checkered flag.

Black said the outcome couldn't have been any better had it been scripted, because Roberts was NASCAR's top drawing card at that time.

"It was the best thing that could have happened," he said.

But Mosteller, the announcer and others say the real winners that day were the residents of the Atlanta area and motorsports fans everywhere.

"The opening of that track had the same effect then as building a stadium in downtown Atlanta today," said Mosteller, who still calls an occasional dirt-track race at an Atlanta-area track. "It brought people to this area who wouldn't have come otherwise, and they spent their money in hotels and restaurants and gas stations."

Races at the Atlanta track, as well as others at the then-new tracks in Daytona and Charlotte, also brought national media attention and the first TV coverage to the then-fledgling sport of stock-car racing.

But in that era, it was Atlanta, not Charlotte or Daytona, that was the hub of NASCAR racing.

"In those days, Atlanta was the place to be if you were in stock-car racing," Johns recalled, explaining that the moonshine runners around Atlanta had played a huge role in the formation of the sport and dominated it for years. "I was a graduate of the University of Miami and I never hauled a drop of moonshine, but when I was racing, Atlanta was my second home. The people there loved their racing."

And Atlanta International Raceway, now Atlanta Motor Speedway, was just what they were looking for nearly 50 years ago. That tradition continues with the Kobalt Tools 500 on Sunday.

Also
• A young Brian France sorts out winner of '78 Dixie 500
• Greatest race of all time? 1992 Hooters 500 had it all
• Intimidator's final Atlanta win one battle for the ages