Nashville 1984 – A Teammate Protests A Victory, NASCAR Goofs

In all my years of covering NASCAR events, I never worked a race in Nashville — not at what was known at Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville (everybody called it “Nashville”) or the new Nashville Superspeedway.

Can’t explain that, really. It just happened. When a Nashville race rolled around, reckon I had to be somewhere else.

Nashville’s fairgrounds track was a staple in NASCAR for years. It held its first race in 1958, won by Joe Weatherly.

At 0.596-miles, it was one of NASCAR’s resilient short tracks, which, at one time, were being abandoned in great numbers amidst the invasion of superspeedways and the reduced schedule created by the formation of the Winston Cup circuit.

But Nashville was the first of the modern-era short tracks to be dropped by NASCAR. It held its last two races in 1984. The first of those races was held in May of that year. And it has gone down in NASCAR lore as one of the most unusual, controversial — and in the case of the sanctioning body, embarrassing — events in the sport’s history.

The race ended and there was a winner. However, his victory came under protest from the driver who finished second. Nothing new about that. However, and get this, the drivers involved were teammates.

Now, logic dictates that as members of the same team, drivers would just accept the circumstances in the spirit of teamwork. Apparently, that’s not the case. And Nashville isn’t the only example.

In 1959, Richard Petty had seemingly won the first race of his career at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta. However, Lee Petty, Richard’s father and teammate at Petty Enterprises, protested.

The elder Petty said that his son had indeed taken the checkered flag, but the scoring was wrong. Lee had lapped his son twice, not once. Richard hadn’t fully made up the lost distance when the race ended. NASCAR agreed and Richard had to wait until Feb. 28, 1960, to earn his first career victory at the Charlotte Fairgrounds.

In 1984, Junior Johnson had formed the first multicar team in his long career as a team owner. His initial driver was Darrell Waltrip, who came on board in 1981 and had already earned two Winston Cup championships. He was joined by Neil Bonnett, a rising star from Alabama whose potential was easily recognized by Johnson.

It was Bonnett, in fact, who took the checkered flag at Nashville. But it was Waltrip who was declared the victor by a NASCAR official in the press box.

Confusion reigned as both Waltrip and Bonnett went to…