NASCAR loses one of its stars in 1964 World 600

Sometimes major gains in safety are made at great cost. That was the case in the 1964 World 600, when NASCAR lost one of its first superstars in a fiery crash.

Edward Glenn Roberts was born and raised in Central Florida, earning the nickname "Fireball" from his ability to throw hard while pitching, but most of his friends knew him as Glenn. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps near the end of World War II but was discharged because he was asthmatic. He then attended the University of Florida for four semesters, studying mechanical engineering. But his first and foremost love was racing, which he did on the weekends and during the summer.

Roberts

Roberts made his NASCAR debut in a modified race on the old Daytona Beach road course in 1947, just after his 18th birthday. He won for the first time the following season, and scored his first Cup victory at Hillsborough, N.C., in 1950. Robert then followed that with a second-place finish in the inaugural Southern 500 at Darlington.

But with a wife and young daughter at home, Roberts realized he could make more money running dirt modifieds several nights a week rather than running the full NASCAR circuit, and for the next five years, only competed sporadically in Cup events.

However, things changed at the beginning of the 1956 season when Pete DePaolo hired Roberts to drive one of his factory Fords. The team struggled early, but Roberts dominated to win at Raleigh on July 4, and then followed that with a last-lap pass of Jim Paschal at Chicago's Soldier Field two weeks later. Fireball scored three more wins by the season's close and wound up seventh in the points.

The 1957 season brought more of the same for Roberts, who won eight more races, including three consecutive in April, and was named the series' most popular driver. But when Ford pulled its factory support, Fireball resumed his part-time driving duties. Amazingly, he never missed a beat, winning six of the 10 races he entered in 1958, including the Southern 500, which earned him honors as Florida's professional athlete of the year.

Roberts led 21 laps of the inaugural Daytona 500 but was sidelined a quarter of the way through the race with a broken fuel pump. However, he returned later in the year to win the Firecracker 400, the first of three July 4 wins at what would be considered his home track. He followed that up with a win at the new Atlanta superspeedway in 1960, and finally captured an elusive Daytona 500 victory in 1962.

After winning another Southern 500 in 1963, Roberts came into the 1964 season in the prime of his career. He considered retirement, but wanted to add a World 600 victory to his resume before hanging up his helmet for good. And after qualifying 11th in the lavender-colored No. 22 Holman-Moody Ford, he was considered one of the favorites to win.

But on Lap 7, Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson hooked bumpers coming out of Turn 2 and began spinning down the backstretch, with Jarrett's gas tank splitting open and sending a wall of flames across the track. Roberts, following directly behind, lost control and spun into an open section of the infield retaining wall, flipped over and burst into flames. Roberts was pinned inside the car as fuel from the nearly full gas tank poured into the cockpit.

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Jarrett, able to escape from his car uninjured, ran to help Roberts, who was unwilling to wear a uniform dipped in fire retardant chemicals -- the only protection available at that time against fire -- because it affected his breathing. Fireball was wearing just a T-shirt and jeans.

"I got to him as soon as I could and the first thing he said was, 'Oh my God, Ned. I'm on fire. Please help me,'" Jarrett later said. "His pants were burning but I got as much of that out as I could before the firemen got there."

Lee Roy Yarbrough was directly behind Roberts at the time of the crash.

"He hit the wall and exploded into flames," Yarbrough said. "I wasn't more than six car-lengths back of him, and when I went through those flames on the track, they just about blistered me."

Buck Baker narrowly avoided becoming involved as well.

"I was running right behind them when it started to happen and really, I didn't know what to do," Baker said. "When something like that happens, there's so much smoke and dust and everything, you can't see anything. When [Roberts'] car burst into flames, I couldn't see where the car was because the track was on fire and the wind was blowing smoke back across the track.

"I started to go low, came within an inch of doing it. I don't know why, but at the last minute I decided to go high. If I hadn't, I'd have been right there with Fireball."

A huge cloud of black smoke rose from the accident site as flames were reportedly more than 30 feet high. Safety crews were able to extinguish Jarrett's car within a minute but Roberts' damaged Ford burned until all of the fuel was gone.

"It has to be bad," Banjo Matthews said. "There were 60 gallons of gas in those three cars and it look like it's all burning. It has to be bad."

The race resumed and Paschal wound up winning, but the focus remained on Roberts, who had been taken to Charlotte Memorial Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition with second- and third-degree burns covering 80 percent of his body. The hospital received more than 400 calls from worried fans in the first few hours after the crash.

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Roberts lived for another six weeks before he lapsed into a coma and succumbed to pneumonia, blood poisoning and fever on July 2, just as qualifying for the Firecracker 400 was about to begin. He was buried at Bellevue Memorial Gardens, within a few miles of Daytona International Speedway.

Just like Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001 spurred NASCAR to tackle major safety initiatives, Roberts' death -- along with those of Joe Weatherly, Jimmy Pardue, Billy Wade, and Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald at Indianapolis -- resulted in a number of changes to the cars. After Weatherly's crash at Riverside, NASCAR made shoulder harnesses and window netting mandatory, and strengthened the rollcage on the driver's side door. The accidents involving Pardue and Wade led to the introduction of inner safety liners and were mandated for use by NASCAR in 1966.

Following Roberts' fiery crash, the sanctioning body immediately required all drivers to wear fireproof uniforms and gloves. In addition, NASCAR required rubber bladders inside fuel tanks to keep fuel from spilling out if the tanks were damaged. Plus, fuel check valves were added to stop the flow of fuel in case a car flipped upside down. Gas cans in the pits were also retrofitted with catch valves.

The foam-filled fuel cells and Nomex racing suits used today are the direct result of actions taken following the accident that claimed the life of Roberts at Charlotte more than four decades ago.

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