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Kyle Busch came up short in his attempt to win four consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races, his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota running out of fuel on the final lap of Sunday’s Windows 10 400 at Pocono Raceway.
Twelve drivers have won four or more consecutive premier series races. NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Cale Yarborough was the first, in 1976. Six-time series champ Jimmie Johnson was the most recent, in 2007.
And then there was Billy Wade. Notable here because Wade’s fourth and final win came in 1964 at Watkins Glen International, site of this weekend’s Cheez-It 355 at the Glen (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM).
Driving for car owner Bud Moore, Wade strung together wins at Old Bridge (N.J.) Stadium, a half-mile oval; Bridgehampton (N.Y.) Raceway, a 2.85-mile road course; Islip (N.Y.) Speedway, which measured a mere two-tenths of a mile; and Watkins Glen.
The stops were part of what was known as the “northern tour” for the series at that time; the four races came in a span of 10 days.
Wade’s success came against some of the series’ toughest competition of the day. At Old Bridge, he outlasted Ned Jarrett; two days later he held off two-time series champ Buck Baker; on Wednesday evening he bested Jarrett once more; and on the following Sunday, Wade beat LeeRoy Yarbrough to the checkered flag.
Lee and Richard Petty, David Pearson and Marvin Panch were among those also in the field for the four races.
A native of Houston, Wade had won the NASCAR Rookie of the Year title the previous year, tops among a group that included Bobby Isaac, Larry Manning and J.D. McDuffie.
Three of his four wins during the streak came from the pole position, including the victory at Watkins Glen. Although he competed in only 35 of the season’s 62 events, Wade finished a career-best fourth in the final points standings.
Sadly, those were the only victories of Wade’s brief NASCAR career. Less than a year later, the 34-year-old was killed during a January 1965 tire test at Daytona International Speedway when his Mercury blew a right-front tire and slammed into the wall.
According to reports, the wall had been built barely a month earlier as a safety measure to keep cars inside the 2.5-mile track.
Wade was the fourth driver to lose his life on the track in less than a year’s time. Two-time series champ Joe Weatherly was killed in a crash the previous January while racing at Riverside (Calif.) Raceway; Glenn “Fireball” Roberts died in July of ’64 as a result of injuries suffered in a crash at Charlotte Motor Speedway earlier that season; and Jim Pardue, twice a winner, was killed when he crashed at CMS during a Sept. tire test in ’64.
Such tragedies did spur safety developments in the sport, such as the driver’s side window net, the inner liner for tires and the fuel cell.
Similar safety developments continue today, and were in evidence this past weekend at Pocono.
When Brad Keselowski slid through his pit box during the race, he sent his crew scrambling. Jackman Braxton Bannon was upended and landed on his back; front tire carrier Jeremy Ogles, headed around the front of the car, managed to leap onto the hood of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford.
No one was injured, and the crew, wearing helmets, managed to complete the pit stop.
WATCH: Pocono pit problems for Keselowski
Since 2002, NASCAR has required crewmen going over the wall to service a vehicle on pit road in all three national series, Sprint Cup, XFINITY and Camping World Trucks, to wear a helmet.
More than a decade earlier, in 1991, pit road speed limits had been put into place. The action was taken after a crewman, Mike Rich, was killed on pit road at Atlanta in the season-ending race of 1990.
Limiting pit road speed doesn’t eliminate the danger, as the Keselowski incident clearly revealed. But it has, fortunately, lessened it considerably.
