Early stock car racing

Early stock car racing

Junior Johnson, seen here in 1985, was a popular NASCAR driver from the 1950s who began as a bootlegging driver from Wilkes County, North Carolina.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Daytona Beach became known as the place to set world land speed records, supplanting France and Belgium as the preferred location for land speed records, with eight consecutive world records set between 1927 and 1935.^[10] After a historic race between Ransom Olds and Alexander Winton in 1903, the beach became a mecca for racing enthusiasts and 15 records were set on what became the Daytona Beach road course between 1905 and 1935. By the time the Bonneville Salt Flats became the premier location for pursuit of land speed records, in 1936, Daytona beach had become synonymous with fast cars.^[11] Drivers raced on a 4.1-mile (6.6 km) course, consisting of a 1.5 to 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of beach as one straightaway, and a narrow blacktop beachfront highway, A1A, as the other. The two straights were connected by 2 tight, deeply rutted and sand covered turns at each end.^[12]
Stock car racing in the United States has its origins in bootlegging during Prohibition, when drivers ran bootleg whiskey made primarily in the Appalachian region of the United States. Bootleggers needed to distribute their illicit products, and they typically used small, fast vehicles to better evade the police. Many of the drivers would modify their cars for speed and handling, as well as increased cargo capacity, and some of them came to love the fast-paced driving down twisty mountain roads.
The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 dried up some of their business, but by then Southerners had developed a taste for moonshine, and a number of the drivers continued "runnin' shine," this time evading the "revenuers" who were attempting to tax their operations.^[13] The cars continued to improve, and by the late 1940s, races featuring these cars were being run for pride and profit. These races were popular entertainment in the rural Southern United States, and they are most closely associated with the Wilkes County region of North Carolina. Most races in those days were of modified cars. Street vehicles were lightened and reinforced.^[14]

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