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Of the five newest members inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the career of the late Bobby Isaac was perhaps the most unusual.
Isaac was inducted Saturday, along with fellow drivers Terry Labonte, Jerry Cook, Curtis Turner and track owner Bruton Smith.
Isaac, who died in 1977 after suffering a heart attack, won the NASCAR premier series championship in 1970, driving for team owner Nord Krauskopf and with the help of noted crew chief Harry Hyde.
It was a perfect combination of talent and ingenuity -- the team won 31 races during a three-year span from 1968-70.
Isaac wound up with 37 victories in a career that spanned just 15 years at the top level. He won 49 poles, a mark that today remains 10th best for the series.
WATCH THE SPEECHES: Isaac's family | Jerry Cook | Curtis Turner's daughter | Bruton Smith | Labonte's speech
According to reports, he also abruptly quit racing for a time when, in the middle of an event, he heard a voice tell him to get out of the car.
It's an often-told story, particularly when NASCAR's top series prepares to head to Talladega Superspeedway, site of Isaac's early departure.
"Well, obviously I wasn't there with him in the car when that happened," Patsy Isaac, who was married to the driver at the time, said Saturday following his induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. "But I will tell you that as soon as he got out of the car and was able to get to a telephone, because we didn't have cell phones then, he called me and he repeated to me exactly what happened to him in the car.
"And he said, a voice told him that he needed to get out of the car, and so he radioed to (owner) Bud Moore. He said, 'find somebody to fill in the car. I've got to get out.'"
The race was the Talladega 500, the 20th stop of the '73 season and the second of two annual races at the 2.66-mile superspeedway. Isaac was three years removed from his championship, and had been hired to drive owner Moore's No. 15 Ford. He had finished second to Richard Petty in that year's Daytona 500, and placed in the top 10 in five other races.
The race seemed cursed from the outset -- fellow Catawba County native Larry Smith was killed when his Mercury struck the wall barely 15 laps into the event.
With the race nearly halfway complete, Isaac pulled into the pits during a caution period and unexpectedly climbed out of the car. Coo Coo Marlin, father of two-time Daytona 500 winner Sterling Marlin, relieved Isaac and eventually finished 13th.
Dick Brooks won the race. It was the only premier series victory of Brooks’ career.
"I don't know what that experience was," Patsy Isaac said of her husband's incident. "I don't know if he felt it, it was an intuition or if it was actually a verbal voice. I don't know that, but I know that it impacted him enough that he was not going to stay in the race car."
What she does know, though, is what she told Isaac when he called.
"I said, 'come home.' That was fine with me," she said.
"He had always said that it was not because someone had gotten killed earlier in the race, and that person was from Catawba County, and he knew them. That's all I can tell you is what he told me."
Isaac attempted to resume his racing career the following year although he made just 19 premier series starts during the next three seasons.
Eventually, he turned his attention to the local short tracks where he had begun his racing career. On August 13, 1977, he was competing in a Late Model Sportsman event at Hickory Speedway when he pulled into the pits, climbed from his car and collapsed.
Transported to a local hospital, Isaac, 45, died the following morning.