Legends live on at Hickory Speedway

Hickory Motor Speedway may be the “Birthplace of the NASCAR Stars.” It’s also a source of memorable stories.

Take Dale Jarrett, the 1999 Winston Cup champion. In the ’70s, Dale was hanging out with Andy Petree (a future championship crew chief with Dale Earnhardt) and Jerry Punch (before he became Dr. Jerry Punch). Jarrett drove, with Petree his crew chief and Punch a helper.

“I was driving a little pickup truck, with an engine riding on back,” Jarrett recalls with a smile. “We were taking it to put it in a car. Andy and Jerry Punch were sitting on a tire, holding the engine down, and we were going through downtown Newton.”

Besides running races at Hickory, Jarrett would take one win in 19 Busch Series (now Nationwide) starts at Hickory. (Earnhardt would have less success, with no wins in four starts at the track.)

“The first time I drove in there was a race in May of 1977,” Jarrett says. “Bobby (Isaac) was racing a Late Model Sportsman race that night, and he told Dad, ‘I thought you said Dale was driving the 32 car tonight.’ I was late, with no practice, and I started in the back of the field and finished ninth. Bobby made his way to me to congratulate me.

“I played golf with Bobby; he was a great friend and a great competitor. He said, ‘If you decide to do this (racing), you have a future in it.’ That was pretty inspiring to me.”

Then there’s Jack Ingram. The Iron Man is famous for his Busch Series exploits; he posted eight wins in 31 Busch starts at Hickory.

But Ingram still thinks of his Cup starts at the track.

Take a Cup race on Sept. 10, 1965. Elmo Langley put Ingram in his car at Hickory and told him to park it early in the race. Ingram stubbornly drove on – he wanted to race – but they finally parked him after four laps. Ingram finished 26^th, last, and Richard Petty, David Pearson, Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson filled out the top four spots.

Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett were track champions in 1952 and ’55, respectively, and Ralph Earnhardt, the father of Dale, was a five-time track champion.

The list of Nationwide winners at Hickory, from the series’ inception in 1982 until 1998, is pretty solid. Ingram started sixth in a Pontiac and won the first race, in ’82. There were five more Busch races at Hickory that year, with Morgan Shepherd, John Settlemyre, Tommy Houston and Ingram (twice) finishing first.

Back then, it hadn’t even become Busch Grand National; maybe it was Budweiser Late Model Sportsman.

You can check out Hickory’s Nationwide statistics at Racing Reference online.

Who has the most Nationwide starts? Tommy Houston, with 38. Most wins? Tommy Houston and Ingram, with eight each.

They ran Cup races at Hickory, of course, although it was Strictly Stock, then Grand National and then Winston Cup. Among the giants of NASCAR, Richard Petty had five wins at Hickory, David Pearson four, Lee Petty two wins and Herb Thomas one. Another giant, Cale Yarborough, posted two top-10s in four starts.

One of them was a win that Ingram thought got away.

“I came closest to winning a Cup race there in ’68, maybe,” says Ingram, who finished second on Sept. 8, 1967. “Richard Petty was leading the race, but I was catching him fast. A caution came out, and they called the race for no reason I could see. I guess they didn’t want a hillbilly with a homemade car (a ’66 Chevelle) to outrun them (factory cars).”

Not all of the Hickory winners have been stars, of course. A.J. Frank won Saturday’s Pro Cup race at Hickory, but who would have imagined in 2007 that Hickory Pro Cup winner Trevor Bayne would go on to win the 2011 Daytona 500? He was driving for the Wood Brothers, no less.

Oh, here’s a quick Ned Jarrett story. Jarrett, who later promoted at Hickory, made his first start in 1952 at the first race ever held at HMS. Driving a Sportsman Ford that he co-owned with his brother-in-law, he finished 10th. His dad told him that he could work on the cars, but he couldn’t drive them.

Later, Ned’s ill brother-in-law asked him to drive for him in a race. Ned used his brother-in-law’s name and finished second. Jarrett drove in a few more races under an assumed name, but his dad caught him after a win.

His dad said something like, “If you’re going to drive, as least use your own name.”

And he did pretty well with it.