Story of spoiler began with McQuagg, '66 Firecracker (cont'd)

After Bill France legislated the winged cars out of the sport in the early '70s, the spoiler returned and remained a mainstay until the current chassis design -- and like hemlines, the size of the spoiler has grown and shrunk with every modification to the rulebook. But that's not to say that the spoiler hasn't had its share of controversies.

In 1981, NASCAR mandated a downsize of the Cup chassis, which gave teams fits in practice for the Daytona 500. After several harrowing crashes in practice and the qualifying races, officials agreed to allow the installation of larger spoilers on the cars to help with rear-end stability.

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It was a little spoiler that was probably about an inch-and-a-half high and it was contoured, you know, to give it a little sweeping effect. It really worked, too. It made a lot of difference in that car. It kept the car from flying.

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-- SAM McQUAGG

Two years later, Cale Yarborough had become the first driver to officially lap Daytona at more than 200 mph on his first lap of qualifying. However, on the second, his Chevrolet went out of control and flipped. Again, the size of spoiler came into question -- and Yarborough ended up winning the race in his backup car, a Pontiac.

Spoiler height rules have been at the forefront of disagreements ever since. In 1991, larger spoilers were introduced again in an effort to improve handling and reduce speeds. And during the rest of the decade, NASCAR officials fiddled with spoiler sizes and angles in an effort to equalize competition, mainly drawing the ire of Ford owner Jack Roush.

In 2002, NASCAR changed the rules twice before that season's Daytona 500, allowing Ford and Chrysler teams to cut their spoilers in an effort to keep them competitive with the faster Chevrolets.

So how will NASCAR officials deal with the return of the spoiler? With a common chassis template and a spoiler supplier, the cars should theoretically be equal. But as past history has shown, the sanctioning body can -- and will -- manipulate the rulebook in any way it wishes.

As of McQuagg, racing with a spoiler wasn't his only NASCAR first. He was also the first driver allowed to park his motorhome in the Daytona paddock area.

"I talked to Mr. France and told him what the deal was, that it was a place for the drivers, and my wife made sandwiches for everybody and everything," McQuagg said. "So he said we could 'go tell [competition director Norris Freel] I said it was all right.' I don't remember if it was the 500 or the 400.

"I'm almost certain it would have been 1967, maybe 1968, right along there, but we brought it in and it worked out real well. And after that, you know what's happened since. The only difference is we had cheap Winnebagos and they got these luxury motorhomes. A lot of difference in the money."

In addition to his win at Daytona, McQuagg will be remembered for two huge accidents at Darlington. He and Yarborough got together in the 1965 Southern 500, with Yarborough's car flipping over the guardrail and into the parking lot -- a scene replayed in the credits of ABC's "Wide World of Sports" for years.

Two years later at the same venue, McQuagg tangled with Dick Hutcherson coming out of Turn 4, sending McQuagg's car into the pit wall, then barrel-rolling at least eight times. McQuagg was able to climb from his car before collapsing. He was rushed to the hospital, treated and released.

He cut back on his involvement in NASCAR after that, running less than a dozen more races in his career, including a pair of top-10 finishes at Darlington and Talladega in 1974. Having learned to fly airplanes before his NASCAR career took off, McQuagg returned to the skies as a corporate pilot for W.C. Bradley Co. in his hometown of Columbus.

"We used to run in Jacksonville, Fla., on Sunday afternoons," McQuagg said. "They always had an afternoon race on Sunday, like at 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. When that race would be over, like at 3:30 or 4, we'd get in the car and try to get to Atlanta in time to run a Peach Bowl Sunday night, which was starting like at 7:30 or 8. This would have been 1958 or 1959, along there.

"So I told my wife, 'I'm going go learn to fly an airplane, buy me an airplane, then I won't have to fool with these cars all the time.' I did that and started flying, and some of the drivers started traveling with me. Some drivers had airplanes earlier, but at that time I was about the only person that had one that was racing. We would even we go up to run in the northeast and I had a lot of the drivers that always rode in the airplane with me. It worked out real good and turned out to be a very good job after I retired from the racing."

McQuagg, a member of the Jacksonville (Fla.) Speedway Hall of Fame and the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association, died of cancer last January. He was 73.