11/11/2022 0 Comments Cmt nascar the rise of american speed![]() ![]() In 2017, Parks was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which features a bootlegging exhibit and an authentic moonshine still built by Junior Johnson himself. The closest NASCAR comes to grain alcohol these days is in the ethanol filling up gas tanks, but the sport’s moonshine history is beginning to be recognized. “He worked very quickly in the 1950s to whitewash the connection between the sport and moonshiners.” “France saw an opportunity to develop NASCAR into more of a family-friendly sport that could make more money over time, and to do that he needed to downplay the connection between that sport and its illegal roots,” says Thompson. Under France’s leadership, NASCAR embraced corporate sponsorship and downplayed its bootlegging past, becoming more associated with Mountain Dew than mountain dew. “I don’t believe NASCAR would have developed as quickly or in the same way without the moonshine money from Raymond Parks and others that helped sustain it through those early years,” Thompson notes.īill France, however, sought to distance NASCAR from its bootlegging origins as he took control of the organization, and that tension contributed to the decision by Parks to leave NASCAR and sell his race cars in 1951. (Credit: ISC Archives via Getty Images)Ī team assembled by Parks with Red Byron behind the wheel won the first two NASCAR championships. Red Byron (left) with his race car owner Raymond Parks in front of Byron’s automotive garage, circa 1950s. In December 1947 France assembled the leading stock car drivers, mechanics and owners in Daytona Beach, Florida, to standardize rules, a meeting that ended with the formation of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). Hall took the checkered flag.Ītlanta, however, did not welcome the moonshiners back, and another top stock car driver named Bill France began to recruit the bootleggers to race in Virginia and the Carolinas. With 30,000 fans chanting for Hall, who had his driver’s license revoked after being arrested no less than 16 times, the authorities relented and let the bootleggers race. When stock car racing resumed after World War II in September 1945, a riot nearly ensued at Lakewood Speedway after police banned five racers, including Hall, who had been convicted of liquor-hauling violations. Seay won the first big stock car race in 1938 at Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway in front of 20,000 fans, and Hall would eventually win the national stock car championship in 1941. Soon, Parks began to invest his ill-gotten gains in legitimate enterprises such as service stations and the growing sport of stock car racing. ![]() Working at a still and hauling corn whiskey around Atlanta, Parks made a fortune bootlegging. Parks ran away from his home in the mountains of northern Georgia at age 14 to become an apprentice to a moonshiner he had met in the county jail after being locked up for buying hooch for his father. That included Raymond Parks, “the first person to put together a formalized, legitimate racing team,” says Thompson. Pierce in Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay and Big Bill France, “is that a large percentage of the early mechanics, car owners, promoters, and track owners had deep ties to the illegal alcohol business.” “What most chroniclers of stock car racing and NASCAR have failed to note,” writes Daniel S. It wasn’t just the drivers who had moonshine in their blood. 1932 First NFL playoff game is played indoorsĭuring the 1930s, moonshiners began to race their whiskey cars at local fairgrounds and racetracks, where they discovered that people-sometimes tens of thousands of them-were willing to pay to watch them showcase their driving skills. ![]()
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