RELATED: Baker dies at age 74 | Drivers, teams react to Baker’s passing
Was Buddy Baker ever scared? Probably not very often. And rarely, one would guess, while he was in a race car.
The larger-than-life Baker, who won 19 times in NASCAR’s premier series and was the first stock car driver to eclipse the 200 mph mark on a closed course, died Monday after a battle with lung cancer. He was 74.
He was a former Daytona 500 winner and drove for some of the sport’s best-known teams during a career that spanned three and a half decades.
In 1971, and for a portion of the 1972 season, Baker competed for the legendary Petty Enterprises organization. Two of his 19 wins came while he was a teammate of seven-time champion Richard Petty.
PHOTOS: Buddy Baker through the years
Saturday at Watkins Glen International, site of Sunday’s Cheez-It 355 at The Glen, NASCAR Hall of Fame crew chief Dale Inman, Petty’s crew chief during the King’s run to seven titles, recalled one instance that shook up the driver known both as “Leadfoot” and the “Gentle Giant.”
“It was 1970 or ’71, ’71 I believe; Buddy was driving for us and Richard was running for the championship,” Inman said while teams prepared for inspection and qualifying at the 2.54-mile WGI. “Buddy and one of our guys had bought these two dirt bikes and they’d go riding them in the woods. Somebody gave Richard one of those small ones; the handlebars on it weren’t hardly no wider than anything.”
According to Inman, “Richard kept nearly falling off the bike this way and that, finally fell off altogether I think. And the other guy ended up about 10 feet up a tree.
“Richard came back to the shop and was showing me all his bruises and cuts and everything and I started yelling at him, really giving him down the road and telling him I wished he’d been hurt worse. ‘Cause we were in the middle of the championship and here he was doing something foolish like that.”
Inman’s tone and obvious displeasure with what could have happened caught the easy-going Baker off-guard.
“Well, I guess it scared Buddy so bad the next thing you knew he had loaded up his bike on the trailer and got out of there,” Inman said, laughing at the recollection.
Baker won 38 poles during his career and finished fifth or better 202 times in 699 starts.
Buddy’s father Buck was the first driver to win back-to-back series titles (1956-57) and was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2013. Both he and Buddy were named on NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers list, selected in 1998.
Buddy is a member of the National Motorsports Hall of Fame as well as the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.