By the time the 1973 NASCAR Cup Series season rolled around, I had evolved into a motorsports writer who was no longer wet behind the ears – or so I thought.
In 1971, I had been a two-races-per-year reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin because it was the hometown newspaper for Martinsville Speedway.
By 1972, I had moved to The Roanoke (Va.) World-News, an afternoon paper (something virtually extinct today) that had a much larger circulation. It also had company cars and expense reports.
It startled my imagination when I learned I was going to cover races at NASCAR tracks other than Martinsville and drive the company’s car and spend its money to do it.
So, I eagerly anticipated the 1972 season and felt the lure of covering races at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Richmond Raceway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Rockingham Speedway.
I walked into the middle of a war.
The battles raged between Richard Petty, the established star and multi-champion at Petty Enterprises, and Bobby Allison, the veteran who was aboard Junior Johnson’s No. 12 Chevrolet, the most popular car in America.
Allison viewed the Johnson ride as his best chance to win the Cup title. As good a competitor as he was, he found it difficult to stay employed. In fact, he lost his ride with the vaunted Holman-Moody team just a season earlier.
Petty wasn’t about to surrender the Cup throne to which he had ascended in 1971 – for the third time in his career.
The two raced hard against each other, especially at the short tracks, where they beat, banged, pushed and shoved so hard and so often that after each race, their cars looked like big lumps of bent and broken sheet metal.
They managed to be civil to each other on and off the track, but you couldn’t say that for their supporters.
It seemed that crowds at each race were composed of two camps, one for Petty and his Mopar wheels and the other for Allison, who was greeted at each race by shouts of “Chevy’s back!”
Depending on the results of each event, several members of each camp often became confrontational with catcalls, swearing or, uh, worse.
The war that was the 1972 season ended with Allison the winner of more races – 10 – but with Petty the champion for a fourth time.
For me, the season was the greatest learning experience of my young career. The Allison-Petty duel commanded so much media attention that I found myself doing more news gathering than…
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