McQuagg, top rookie in '65, succumbs to cancer at 73

Sam McQuagg, the 1965 NASCAR rookie of the year, died of cancer Saturday in Columbus, Ga. He was 73.

McQuagg made his Cup Series debut on Aug. 25, 1962, at Valdosta (Ga.) Speedway. He started ninth and finished 12th in the 13-car field.

He earned top rookie honors in 1965 with two top-five finishes and five top-10s in 14 starts.

McQuagg

McQuagg had one win in 62 career starts -- the Firecracker 400 on July 4, 1966, at Daytona International Speedway. His final race was the World 600 on May 26, 1974, at Charlotte Motor Speedway; he finished 32nd.

McQuagg ended his career with one win, nine top-five finishes and 21 top-10s.

McQuagg was inducted into the Jacksonville (Fla.) Speedway Hall of Fame and the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association.

He also was a major player in an incident in one of the wildest NASCAR races ever. McQuagg was leading the 1965 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, when Cale Yarborough tried to muscle past McQuagg for the lead. Yarborough flew over the guardrail, barrel-rolled six times and came to rest at the end of the parking lot. Uninjured, Yarborough waved to the crowd as he walked back to the pits. A video clip of the wreck was used on ABC's Wide World of Sports for several years.

Dodge eventually hired McQuagg to drive for its factory team. He was the first driver to use a spoiler -- and used the spoiler to win the Firecracker 400 at Daytona driving a Nichels Engineering Dodge Charger.

"Not a lot of race cars drivers have done that, I feel like I'm in a very privilege few," said McQuagg of his Daytona victory. "I still got my trophy and gave my checkered flag to my grandson and he has it on his wall with a lot of the signatures from the old race car drivers."

During the 1966 season, Dodge teams were battling aerodynamic issues on the new Charger with air lifting the back end of the car and engineers came up with the perfect solution -- a spoiler.

"We went down [to Daytona] with the Chrysler engineers the month before [the race]," McQuagg said. "We were down there for two or three weeks in the month of June. The car wouldn't run at all. You start down the backstretch at about 180 and it would start lifting. The back end started spinning the back wheels. The engineers came up with this little spoiler. It was an inch and half tall across the back of the car and the car immediately picked up about five or six mph."

The spoiler helped make McQuagg unstoppable during the Fourth of July event. He had the field covered as he dominated the 160-lap race leading all but 34 laps. His margin of victory over second-place finisher Darel Dieringer was 1 minute, 6 seconds.

"It was a very good car," McQuagg said. "We lost an engine in the car the day before the race. We put another one in it and we didn't know how it would run and it ran better than the other one. It was just a very good car that day.

"It meant an awful lot to win at Daytona," McQuagg said. "It's the Taj Mahal of race tracks."

He is survived by his wife, Joy Baggett McQuagg, and three children, Sam McQuagg Jr., Mark McQuagg and Rita Renfroe, all of Columbus.

Visitation will be Monday from 6-8 p.m. ET at McMullen Mortuary. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at McMullen.