50 Years Of nascar racing ~ fuelish pride (Post 23)
By Matt McLaughlin
Post 23
Editor's note: This article is part of a special reprise of Matt
McLaughlin's "50 Years of NASCAR Racing", written and published in 1998 in
commemoration of NASCAR's 50th Anniversary celebration that year. Matt has
kindly granted me permission to run the entire series. Please, sit back and
enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and perhaps
relive a memory or two. Many thanks to Matt for his
generosity in sharing. God bless you, my friend.
In the fall
of 1973, the Arab nations, producers of most of the world's crude oil, banded
together and formed OPEC, which was quickly to become the
most despised organization in this country short of Congress. The new
cartel quickly announced that in order to achieve their political ends they
would stop importing oil to Japan, Western Europe and the United States. The
politics behind the decision are for another forum, but the results were
devastating. Cheap imported Arab crude oil was the life blood that kept this
country's economy thriving, and satisfied our car-crazy life style. Gas prices
skyrocketed, and gas lines that caused motorists to have to wait for hours even
to buy gas became an everyday occurrence. That is when gas could even be had. A
troubled populace looked to their government for answers, and among the laws
enacted were the now despised 55 MPH speed limit, and a ban on gas sales from 9
o'clock Saturday evening until midnight Sunday starting November 25th 1973 , to try to curtail "wasteful" gasoline use.
Of course, in the political climate of long on style and short on substance, it
was not long before some congressmen were casting an eye at all those big block
stock cars bellowing around the NASCAR tracks across the country. A ban on auto
racing wasn't going to solve the gas crises, but it would play well with the
voters back home, sitting frustrated in those miles long gas lines.
Fortunately,
Bill France Sr. saw the challenge to his beloved organization forming, and took
action. Big Bill had turned the reins of NASCAR over to his son in 1972, but he
still kept a watchful eye from the sidelines and knew trouble when he saw it.
During the Second World War, the only sport actually banned by government edict
was automobile racing, and it looked like racing was going to be the
politicians' whipping boy again. France quickly called for a meeting with the
heads of every major auto racing sanctioning body in the United States, to map
out a unified response. The initial response was a brilliant one. A committee
headed by Bill France Sr. quickly began calculating how much gas was consumed
by certain "non-essential" activities. While it is true your average
linebacker or shortstop doesn't drink much fuel, other sports teams flew
chartered jets, fans drove to the stadiums in their cars, and indoor arenas
needed to be heated in Northern climates. Not surprisingly, the committee
quickly issued a study that showed as far as using gasoline, auto racing ranked
a distant ninth. Among other activities that burned more fuel, were the big
daddy of non-essential users, "Vacations", but football, basketball,
and even horse racing consumed more gas as well. In retrospect, those numbers
were compiled so quickly their accuracy is more than a little questionable, and
no mention was made of all the small auto races held at local tracks, just the
major events sanctioned by the sanctioning bodies. But they were the only
numbers the government had to work with at that point. A congressman might earn
big points with the voters back home by calling for a ban of auto racing, but
the committee's report had them backed into a corner. Those same voters weren't
going to react so well to being told NFL football was going to be suspended and
that they couldn't take the family truckster over the
river and through the woods to Granny's house on Christmas day.
Instead, a
newly appointed "Energy Czar", John Sawhill,
called for all organized sports to submit plans to his office detailing how
they would curtail energy usage 25%. In his statement, Sawhill
also thanked the auto racing industry for having the "foresight" to
produce the documentation on how much fuel such sports used. Auto racing had
scored a publicity coupe. Once again Bill France Sr. took the initiative,
preferring to submit his own plan rather than have government regulations
shoved down his throat at a later date. He vowed he would not only meet, but go
beyond the 25% requirement to show auto racing's good faith.
The most
memorable of the plans to cut gas usage was cutting back the length of all
races ten percent. Thus the Daytona 500 became the Daytona 450 in 1974. The
practice dates at the track for each team were cut from 8 to five days, with
each team limited to 30 gallons of gas a day during practice. The 24-Hour
sports car race, traditionally the kickoff event to Speed Weeks was canceled.
After enacting these measures, France proudly claimed that fuel usage had been
cut 30.1 % during the 1974 Speed Weeks festival.
It was left
to other track owners how they wanted to go about making similar changes. Most
cut their races by 10 % in length, cut down on the size of the field and
limited practice as well. The major concern those owners had was the size of
the crowd attending their races. With gas stations closed from 9 Saturday night
until Midnight Sunday, race fans driving a distance to the track were not going
to be able to make the trip, especially in those massive motorhomes that were
almost as popular with race fans back then as they are today. A few events were
moved to Saturdays to accommodate the gas sale ban. The track president of the
Texas World Speedway, Dan Holloway, took a bit more drastic action. He canceled
the event at his track and announced that the facility would remain closed
until the energy crises was over. TWS had been in financial trouble since it
opened, due to poor ticket sales, and it was located well out in the boondocks,
so rather than take a financial bath, Holloway just removed the track from
financial life support. Racing didn't return to the Texas track until 1979, and
it lasted only three more dismal seasons before closing.
One positive
that came from the dire situation was increased television coverage of NASCAR
racing. Up until that point, some track owners had been nervous about what live
broadcasts of their events on television would do to ticket sales, but faced
with the prospects of fans not being able to get to the track, the television
money was a handy way to offset the lost revenue. That year, the second half of
the Daytona 500 was broadcast live for the first time.
The energy
crisis may also have played a part in NASCAR's decision that year to start
handicapping the legendary big block engines, which were still the mainstay in
stock car racing, though what few big block passenger cars had been available
to that point had by and large died on the vine when the fuel crisis hit.
NASCAR began adjusting the rules to give an advantage to the small block
engines that were powering production cars of that era.
Fortunately, the
fuel supply stabilized, as member nations of OPEC found the increased price of
crude oil and the quick fortune that could be made producing more oil rather
than adhering to the cartel's limits, too tempting to pass up. Starting at
Daytona in July, races went back to their full length, and gas stations
reopened on weekends so fans could attend events, even if the cost of a tank of
gas stung them in the wallet a bit. NASCAR had once again weathered the storm.
As a side
note, it seems only fitting that in that year of the fuel crisis, Cale
Yarborough won the first race of the year, at Riverside, but only just barely.
While crossing the line to take the checkered flag, Cale ran out of gas.
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