Ross carries flag alone as Cup winner from Canada

Earl Ross holds a special place in NASCAR history as the only Canadian-born driver to win a Cup race. But his NASCAR career, all of 26 races during a four-year span, still has a feeling of "what if?" surrounding it, more than three decades later.

In the early 1970s, Canadian-based Carling Beer had ventured heavily into the American southeast, opening a brewery in Atlanta and focusing its marketing efforts on NASCAR's Cup Series. In 1972, they sponsored Larry Smith, who won rookie-of-the-year honors. But the following season, Smith was killed at Talladega, and Carling officials were forced to look elsewhere for a driver.

Enter Earl Ross.

"I had been racing in Canada and was winning quite a bit," Ross said from his welding and fabrication shop in his hometown of Ailsa Craig, Ontario. "Carling O'Keefe Breweries wanted to race a couple of races in 1973. So they decided in 1974, they wanted to race a few more races. Halfway through the season, they decided to run the rest of the season, so I ended up running 21 races that year."

Before the 1973 Daytona 500, Carling brought Ross down to test their car at Daytona. Unfortunately, things went poorly right from the start.

"Carling owned the car and Junior [Johnson] provided it," Ross said. "When we first started, we were going to try to make the Daytona 500 in 1973, so we bought two cars and three engines off Bobby Allison. We rented the track for three days and Donnie Allison was going to tell me a few things about racing at Daytona. We ended up blowing all three engines, so then we went to Junior Johnson for engines, because obviously we needed engines that would hold together."

Ross eventually made the race, finishing 39th in his NASCAR debut. He also ran Talladega and Michigan later that year. But with increased interest from his sponsor -- and a NASCAR rules change on the size of the engine blocks -- Ross found himself with a full-time ride halfway through the 1974 season.

"At that time, everybody was running big blocks," Ross said. "But they were restricted. In 1974, they came out with the small blocks, but you could still run the big blocks. They were trying to get everybody switched over to the small blocks, but the small blocks kept blowing up. So you'd find big blocks out there, and you'd have less horsepower but you'd finish the race."

"At any rate, in 1974, Junior built us some big-block engines to start with. Once we got started, Carling cut another deal with Junior to supply us with a place to work on our cars down there. Three or four guys from my crew went down there to work on my cars." (Continued)