The first 600-mile race at the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway was held on June 19, 1960.
It wasn’t a glorious debut event for NASCAR or the new track. The fact is, it was an uncompetitive mess.
Sixty cars started the race and only 16 were running at the finish, largely due to engine failure, other mechanical maladies and a disintegrating track surface. The race was slowed by eight caution periods for 45 of its 400 laps – and it took over five and one-half hours to complete.
Averaging just over 107 mph, Joe Lee Johnson of Chattanooga, Tenn., won the race by four laps over Johnny Beauchamp.
Johnson should have never won.
Jack Smith, a veteran from Georgia, was leading comfortably by five laps (he had already led 139 laps) when a flying chunk of asphalt flew into his fuel tank. Johnson led the final 72 miles.
Smith wasn’t the only driver to suffer from an asphalt missile. The track had been crumbling almost from the start of the race.
Given all the trials, tribulations and financially exhausting calamities that spawned during the track’s construction, it’s not incorrect to speculate the race should have never been held when it was.
In fact, it had already been delayed once due to lagging construction. Another postponement to address the many problems would have been appropriate.
But the track’s owner/operators, entrepreneur Burton Smith and NASCAR veteran driver Curtis Turner (whose popularity was due to his leadfoot racing style) couldn’t afford to wait. They needed to generate desperately needed cash.
The concept of a new, handsome superspeedway in the Charlotte area seemed to be appropriate. It was conceived by the construction of the massive Daytona International Speedway, which staged its first race, the Daytona 500, in February 1959.
The race was so successful it prompted other enterprising entities to think that another race on a big track – and not on another half-miler that littered the NASCAR Cup Series schedule – could be fan appealing and thus, financially successful.
To that end, it had to be built at a much larger venue than some hamlet located in Georgia or the Carolinas.
It evolved that three such speedways were under construction in 1959, in Atlanta, Charlotte and Hanford, Calif.
The California entity had an interesting, if brief, history. Built by an extravagant sportsman named H.L. Marchbanks, who named the track after himself, the 1.4-mile Marchbanks Speedway…
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