| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 35 of 45 in the 1955 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season | |||
1955 Southern 500 |
|||
| Date | September 5, 1955 | ||
| Location | Darlington Raceway (Darlington, South Carolina) | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 1.375 mi (2.221 km) |
||
| Distance | 400 laps, 500 mi (800 km) | ||
| Weather | Minimum/maximum temperature: 73.9 °F (23.3 °C)/82.9 °F (28.3 °C)[1] Maximum sustained wind speed: 11.10 miles per hour (17.86 km/h)[1] |
||
| Avg Speed | 92.281 miles per hour (148.512 km/h) | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Fireball Roberts | Bob Fish | |
| Time | 44.723 seconds[2] | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Joe Weatherly | Charlie Schwam | |
| Laps | 140 | ||
| Winner | |||
| 9 |
Herb Thomas |
Herb Thomas | |
| Television | |||
| Network | WJMX (local AM radio) | ||
| Announcers | Local radio announcers | ||
The 1955 Southern 500 (also known as the 1955 Darlington Southern 500) was a NASCAR Grand National (now Sprint Cup Series) racing event that took place on September 5, 1955 at the Darlington Raceway in the American community of Darlington, South Carolina.[3] This race officially spanned 500 miles (800 km) on a paved oval track.[3] An unofficial 30-minute highlight film of this race would appear on the collector's set of Stock Cars of 50s & 60s – Stock Car Memories: Darlington-Southern 500; which was released in 2008.[4]
Television coverage of the 1955 Southern 500 was impossible due to the then-niche demographics of the burgeoning motorsport. However, the local radio station WJMX made it possible for housebound fans (i.e., young boys and housewives) to hear their favorite drivers from the first green flag to the checkered flag.[4] School children who lived in the area could either watch the race live or listen on the local radio because the race took place on Labor Day.[5] Coverage of the race would be spotty outside the Darlington area due to the broadcasting limitations of AM radio. No school was held that day because it was a legal U.S. statutory holiday.[5] Confederate flags were still legal to utilize in all parts of the state back then;[6] they were shown with pride alongside the Stars and Stripes.
Contents |
This event commenced during the daytime hours and finished sometime before dusk because lighting was not available at Darlington Raceway during that era.[7] This luxury would not appear until after the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season.[7] The lights that people would see at the current Darlington Speedway races would be first used at the 2000 Mall.com 400 race (which became the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 from 2001 to 2004 and is currently under the schedule as the Showtime Southern 500). The Motor Racing Network would not be established until 1970; they would make national coverage of the later NASCAR races starting in the sport's "modern era." Its rival, the Performance Racing Network, would eventually be founded at a later date by Speedway Motorsports.
Smoking was unrestricted during this race as spectators, crew chiefs, and even drivers were often smoking cigarettes when they were not expected to perform a duty on the track. It would not be until the 1970s when the American Medical Association started to discourage people from smoking due to its newly discovered link with lung cancer. During the start of the post-Winston sponsorship era, smoking cessation programs began to emerge in NASCAR teams and officials (most notably in Hendrick Motorsports when Jeff Gordon starting sponsoring Nicorette).[8] This mentality would also extend to the flammability of the 100% petroleum-based gasoline that all the stock cars had to use from the original 1949 season to the beginning of the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.[9] By the end of the 20th century, it became against the rules of NASCAR to smoke cigarettes near the gas pump because ashes from the cigarette could cause the gasoline to turn to fire.
Being the thirty-fifth race of the 1955 season, there would be only ten races after the conclusion of the 1955 Southern 500 in the entire season.[3] This race was the major race of any NASCAR season that came prior to the very first running of the Daytona 500. Once the Daytona 500 was established in 1959,[10] the Southern 500 quickly became another NASCAR event.
Before the race, each part was individually inspected to make sure that every part is stock (i.e., can be bought at regular automobile shops as opposed to sneaking in "police parts" or parts intended entirely for racing).[4] Sometimes, entire vehicles had to be dismantled in order to find parts that look dissimilar to everyday passenger vehicles.[4] Only roll bars were added for extra safety during the 500 miles of racing. Every car that passed the inspection and was "certified stock" was given a certification ticket on the dash.[4] Having a certification permitted the driver to participate in the event with the full blessing of NASCAR. Intermittent periods of rain hampered qualifying and made the track wet.[4] Eventually, the stopped and the rest of the qualifying session proceeded normally with Fireball Roberts earning the coveted pole position for the race.[4]
On the night preceding the race, a beauty pageant was conducted with Fonty Flock as one of the judges; this tradition would be repeated at the 1956 Southern 500 and at all subsequent Southern 500 races.[4] Out of the numerous contestants that signed up from the Darlington area, Miss Martha Williams (from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina) won the honors of becoming Miss Southern 500 and accepted the ceremonious position that she held during the race.[4]
A marching band was also used as a part of the pre-race festivities.[4] It was unknown whether NASCAR had a pre-race invocation service or not during the 1950s as the highlight film never showed a detailed coverage of the pre-race ceremonies like today's live coverage on television. The singing of The Star-Spangled Banner (which had been the official anthem of the nation since 1931) would be performed but not filmed in the highlight video. NASCAR would become one of the first major league sports where the American national anthem was used since its inception. Even back in those days, it was customary to hear "Gentlemen start your engines" to fire up the racers into a rolling start. Qualifying would take up the whole month just like it does at today's Indianapolis 500 races;[4] regulations made in the "modern era" of the sport (1972–2003) modified the rules so that qualifying would eventually be contracted to one day.
Fireball Roberts earned the pole position for the beginning of the race driving a maximum speed of 110.682 miles per hour (178.125 km/h).[3] The average speed of the race (with full racing traffic), however, was 92.281 miles per hour (148.512 km/h).[3] Out of the 336 laps, there were eight yellow flag periods consisting of fifty-one laps.[3] Fifty thousand people attended the live event to see sixty-nine cars race (less than half of them survived the entire 366 lap race).[3] Regulations made decades after this race would finally standardize the field to forty-three racing vehicles; a far cry from the fairly unregulated days that the 1955 Southern 500 took place in.
Vehicles ranged in production year from the 1953 models that were driven by the less affluent teams to the 1955 models driven by wealthy teams like Petty Enterprises (now Richard Petty Motorsports with the merger of Gillett Everham Motorsports in 2009).[3] All drivers were expected to race in the vehicles that they personally drove to the racetrack in by virtue of NASCAR's then-strict homologation rules against producing vehicles specifically for racing. Some of the other notable NASCAR Grand National Series drivers that participated in this racing event were Junior Johnson, Ned Jarrett, and Lee Petty.[3] All of the drivers competing at this race were Caucasian American males; foreigners and minorities did not attempt to qualify for this race.[3] By comparison, at least one or two foreign-born drivers compete in today's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races (usually Juan Pablo Montoya and/or Marcos Ambrose).
Mounts' appearance at this racing event, where he would crash into Don Duckworth's stalled vehicle, would be captured on highlight films for generations.[4] While Bill Champion managed to avoid Duckworth by swerving past the vehicle rapidly, Arden Mounts managed to see the stalled vehicle too late and crashed into him in a very hard manner.[4] The proper usage of seat belts on the stock car automobiles would save the lives of both Mounts and Duckworth.[4]
Herb Thomas would end up winning the race after five hours, twenty-five minutes, and twenty-five seconds of racing.[3] He would receive $7,480 in American dollars ($61,350.92 in today's money) while the total winnings for the race were considered to be $28,270 ($231,870.4 in today's money).[3] Thomas drove a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air during a time where NASCAR was used to test the endurance of the newest passenger automobiles. However, the eventual championship winner would be Tim Flock with 18 season wins and an annual salary of $37,780 ($309,871.37 in today's money).[11] Vehicle manufacturers involved in the race were Studebaker (defunct), Plymouth (defunct), Chevrolet (active), Buick (active but not racing), Dodge (active), Ford (active), Hudson (defunct), Cadillac (active but not racing), Pontiac (defunct), and Nash Motors (defunct).[12]
More than half of the vehicles used were manufactured by Chevrolet while Nash Motors only had one vehicle in the running along with Studebaker.[12] Sponsors for the drivers in the race included Mercury Outboards, Marion Cox Garage, Schwam Motors, Helzafire (owned by Kentucky Colonel Ernest Woods),[13] The Racing Club, Paper Hangers, and Fish Carburetor.[12]
Lloyd Moore would announce his permanent retirement from HASCAR after this race.[14] He would end up having six daughters; whose names were withheld from the media.[14]
† signifies that the driver is known to be deceased
* Driver failed to finish race
| Preceded by 1954 |
Southern 500 races 1955 |
Succeeded by 1956 |