There was a time, and it wasn’t so long ago, when we couldn’t say, “Hey, I’m looking forward to the racing at North Wilkesboro Speedway.”
That’s because there wasn’t a North Wilkesboro Speedway. Rather, it was a big pile of crumbling concrete and overgrown weeds.
Today, there is one. Big time.
North Wilkesboro is, once again, the site of NASCAR’s popular All-Star Race, an event that features its best and most well-known competitors.
As it has been for years, the race is not open to everybody.
What is perhaps the most interesting thing about today’s All-Star Race, formerly known as The Winston, is that the 0.542-mile track on which it is held is one of the oldest and most unpretentious in NASCAR.
It certainly isn’t the same as it was when it conducted its first NASCAR event in October of 1949. There have been many changes, but their effect on the speedway’s overall atmosphere has been minimal.
It is, by and large, the same as it was in NASCAR’s pioneer days, even throughout the sanctioning body’s periods of venue growth and track expansion and modification.
In one man’s opinion, North Wilkesboro remains the closest representation to that down-home Southern track where a family could go to church on a Sunday morning and, afterward, still walk up to the ticket office and get good seats.
Parking was free and mostly available on grassy hillsides. Most likely, the seats were concrete. The fences were chicken wire. If one was provided, a program seldom cost more than fifty cents.
For the longest time, plumbing – at least in the men’s room – consisted of a packed dirt floor.
The rickety concession stands usually offered plenty of hot dogs and popcorn, but many North Wilkesboro patrons were typical race goers. They bought their own lunch, which was routinely fried chicken.
Sure, they could buy soft drinks. However, North Wilkesboro and the surrounding area was moonshine country – and how. The number of working stills could not easily be counted.
So, it was only natural that customers smuggled in (or perhaps carried in for all to see) mason jars filled with clear liquid.
Practically no one cared. North Wilkesboro, built at the foothills of North Carolina’s Brushy Mountains, reveled in the moonshine traditions.
Enoch Staley, who helped build the track and was its president for years, knew the moonshine business. He also knew what it meant to his home, and so he had the track capitalize on it.
His speedway played host to several moonshine races in which the daring, fast-driving haulers pitted their souped-up vehicles against each other to determine who had the fastest.
One of those men who navigated small country roads at night ran his first-ever “organized” race at North Wilkesboro.
At 17, Junior Johnson had already been hauling moonshine for his father, Robert Glenn Johnson, for three years. He was an integral part of the family business.
But in 1949, he was behind a mule plowing a corn field when his older brother, L.P., ran up to him and asked him if he wanted to drive his race car at North Wilkesboro. L.P. had been dabbling in stock car racing.
Seems that due to the large crowd that attended his last NASCAR event — 9,000 — Staley wanted to stage a “preliminary” event to lure even more people to the current race.
By “preliminary,” Staley obviously targeted moonshine haulers and told L.P. to “get Junior.”
Johnson, of course, was interested. When he and L.P. got to the track, he was even more interested.
He saw about 20 cars ready to run the race, and every one of them was to be driven by a bootlegger. Johnson knew them all.
“So, I felt I had a good chance,” he said later.
The dirt racing surface, which was broken up and gutted throughout the race, was familiar to Johnson. He spent many nights hauling product on similar country roads.
That helped him finish second in his first attempt at racing on a real speedway.
Johnson would become an integral part of North Wilkesboro’s history, but it wouldn’t begin until several years afterward.
I think that it is true every speedway that has conducted Cup races over the years plays a part, however big or small, in driver careers.
But few have played a larger such role than North Wilkesboro.
Consider Petty Enterprises. Its founder, Lee Petty, was a three-time champion who won three consecutive races at North Wilkesboro from 1959-60.
His son, Richard Petty, took over almost immediately by winning at North Wilkesboro for the first time in 1962 and twice in succession after that.
He would win 10 more, including three in a row from 1971-72. His two victories in ’72 were achieved after furious, metal-crunching battles with rival Bobby Allison – who was driving for Johnson at the time.
Johnson’s career as a driver began in 1953, but it would be a few years afterward before he competed in multiple races per season.
His first victories at North Wilkesboro came in succession in 1958, while driving for Paul Spalding.
He won two in a row in 1965, this time driving for himself. He retired from competition a year later, and if he had left the sport completely, he certainly would not have been a major part of North Wilkesboro’s history.
However, Johnson became a full-time NASCAR team owner and won at North Wilkesboro in 1967 with Darel Dieringer behind the wheel.
Then, starting in 1973, there began years of Johnson dominance at North Wilkesboro, the kind that helps shape Hall of Fame careers.
Cale Yarborough joined Johnson in 1973, and in 1974 won at North Wilkesboro for the first time in his career – which had begun in 1957.
In 1976, Yarborough began a series of four North Wilkesboro victories, including three in a row, from 1976-78, which were also the years the driver from Timmonsville, S.C., won three consecutive Cup championships.
Yarborough did not win again at North Wilkesboro up to his retirement in 1988, but Johnson wasn’t done.
Darrell Waltrip, already an established star with DiGard Racing Co., joined Johnson in 1981 and immediately continued the owner’s North Wilkesboro dominance.
Waltrip won six of seven races at the speedway from 1981-84, including an incredible streak of five in a row. He claimed two of this three Cup championships in 1981; again in 1982; and his third, also with Johnson, came in 1985.
I am certain Johnson, Petty, Waltrip and Yarborough all would have made the Hall of Fame even without their numerous achievements at North Wilkesboro.
But it’s obvious the old track greatly enhanced their careers.
It’s also obvious that its return to life has greatly enhanced NASCAR lore and tradition.
And that is a good thing.
Steve Waid has been in journalism since 1972, when he began his newspaper career at the Martinsville (Va.) Bulletin. He has spent over 40 years in motorsports journalism, first with the Roanoke Times-World News and later as publisher and vice president for NASCAR Scene and NASCAR Illustrated.
Steve has won numerous state sports writing awards and several more from the National Motorsports Press Association for his motorsports coverage, feature and column writing. For several years, Steve was a regular on “NASCAR This Morning” on FOX Sports Net and he is the co-author, with Tom Higgins, of the biography “Junior Johnson: Brave In Life.”
In January 2014, Steve was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame. And in 2019 he was presented the Squier-Hall Award by the NASCAR Hall of Fame for lifetime excellence in motorsports journalism. In addition to writing for Frontstretch, Steve is also the co-host of The Scene Vault Podcast.