1974 Talladega 500

NC HillBilly

NC HillBilly

Back home where I belong
Joined
Mar 3, 2011
Messages
275
Points
203
Location
NC
Can one of you old timers give me some info on this race? I know the cars were "sabotaged" in the garage area before the race but I can't find much on it beyond that.
 
Last edited:
I searched around google some more and found out that someone cut the brake lines on about half the cars. There was sand found in the gas tanks too. Most of what I found is related to the track begin cursed though so I was hoping someone could fill me in on the incident itself. There doesn't seem to be many details about it on the web.
 
#17D500winner said:
Buddy Baker was quoted as saying that "someone was trying to commit mass murder."


Do you mean Sanskrit? Still funny as hell :XXROFL:
Click to expand...
Yeah that one! Aha was a little fuzzy on my language history. I havent had my tea yet :D
 
NC HillBilly said:
I searched around google some more and found out that someone cut the brake lines on about half the cars. There was sand found in the gas tanks too. Most of what I found is related to the track begin cursed though so I was hoping someone could fill me in on the incident itself. There doesn't seem to be many details about it on the web.
Click to expand...

There aren't many details because nobody knows what happened.
 
ChexOrWrex said:
@Johali might know. But you better write your post in hieroglyph next time for him ;) :p
Click to expand...
#17D500winner said:
Buddy Baker was quoted as saying that "someone was trying to commit mass murder."


Do you mean Sanskrit? Still funny as hell :XXROFL:
Click to expand...
:XXROFL:Here, this will help when I revert back to my old self.


meroitic-hieroglyphics-upper.png
OldSlavonic.gif
 
Last edited:
SlicedBread22 said:
Sooooo no one actually knows anything? I'm kind of interested now.
Click to expand...
as far as i can remember, they never found out anything as to who done it....the good thing is the deeds were found before they hit the track
 
Johali said:
I had to look it up but the wife works with PowerPoint a lot so she knows what it is. That would be a lot to remember. webdings, wingdings, wingdings 2, wingdings 3.
Click to expand...

johali......is that sorta like thingamajigs .......or doofuncheez ??
or more like whatcheemacallits .
i remember them ! 1958 i think.
 
http://www.thatsracin.com/2010/10/30/50566/the-curse-of-talladega-1987.html

The curse of Talladega, 1987

By Tom Higgins - ThatsRacin.com Contributor

Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010

Editor's note: The following was filed by Tom Higgins, the longtime Charlotte Observer motorsports writer and regular contributor to ThatsRacin.com, for the editions of July 26, 1987. Higgins was on hand when the first flag waved at what was then known as Alabama International Motor Speedway and the Observer's tradition of being there continues at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, led by Jim Utter and bolstered by Ron Green Jr.

The Curse of Talladega

TALLADEGA, Ala. – There appears nothing sinister about the setting of Alabama International Motor Speedway.

The track is in a broad, peaceful-looking valley between mountainous ridges of the Talladega National Forest, which covers 200,000 acres of lush greenery. Mount Cheaha, the highest point in Alabama at 2,497 feet, looms in the distance behind the third turn.

Prospering farms and ranches dot the countryside, along with community churches and schools.

But appearances deceive.

An aura of something mysterious and evil lurks about the valley and its speedway, where a NASCAR Winston Cup Series stock car racing classic, the Talladega 500, is scheduled today.

The track is "Phantom Of The Opera" organ music. ... It`s a Transylvanian castle on a stormy night. ... It`s the Victorian home overlooking the Bates Motel.

When Bobby Allison`s car became airborne and almost slashed into the speedway's frontstretch grandstand in May during the Winston 500, the near-catastrophe continued a history of incredible incidents that have struck the facility since its opening in 1969.

Lives have been lost at Alabama International Motor Speedway – including Charlotte driver Tracy Read's on Saturday – in the freakest of accidents on the track as well as off it. ... The only driver boycott in NASCAR history was here, in the very first race. ... A top driver once heard a voice commanding him to park his race car, and he did. ... Several of the foremost cars were sabotaged prior to one race. ... Last year the pace car was stolen from pit road just before the parade lap was to begin. ... The list of strange occurrences is a long one.

Some contend the area where the track is located is cursed. The idea has been traced almost two centuries to the time when Gen. Andrew Jackson and his troops marched through Northern Alabama, forcing the Talladega Indians to flee.

A tribal medicine man, the legend goes, put a curse on the valley and all white men who came to it.

Hexed or not, there has been a pattern of trouble at the track, far more than experienced at other speedways.

A partial chronology

1969

Amid much fanfare about 200 mph speeds, which would be a first for NASCAR, the track opens for the 1969 Talladega 500. The cars do run very fast.

Too fast for conditions because of construction delays at the track, engineers haven't had time to conduct thorough tests to develop a proper tire compound for the new speedway. The tires shred after only a few laps.

This failure emboldens the drivers, who are working to form a union, the Professional Drivers Association. They charge ahead with their plan, organizing a boycott, citing the tire problem.

Practically all the top drivers go home, but NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., who is also president of the Talladega track, stages the 500 anyway.

He waives the rules to fill the field with cars from other NASCAR and ARCA divisions. A relative unknown named Richard Brickhouse wins the race.

Spring, 1973

The biggest wreck in NASCAR history occurs on the 10th lap of the Winston 500, sidelining 19 cars, or approximately half the field.

The accident is triggered when Ramo Stott's car blows its engine right in front of the lead pack, paced by Buddy Baker and Cale Yarborough. Cars smash into the wall and each other.

Baker recalls the scene vividly:

"I knew there was big trouble. ... Cale's car sailed over top of mine. I mean literally over it, airborne. I hit the wall and the impact knocked the engine out of my car.

"After we got stopped, Cale and I ran over to each other and hugged, we were so glad to be OK. I guess we might have been in shock. We got up on the inside wall to get out of the way.

"I guess a minute and a half passed and I got down off the wall, figuring the wrecking was over. Then I heard something coming. It was Joe Frasson, doing about 180 mph backward in the grass.

"He barely missed me. I got back on the wall and stayed there. About that time another car came by upside down in the air higher than a telephone pole."

The starting position of Stott, whose engine failure began the massive accident? He was lined up 13th.

Still more of a sinister nature is to occur later in the race.

After completing Lap 89, Bobby Isaac, the champion in 1970, suddenly pulls in and cuts off his car's ignition while in contention for the Bud Moore team.

"What's wrong with the car?" asks Moore.

"Nothing," answers Isaac.

"Then why... ?"

"Bud, a voice told me between turns 3 and 4 to park this thing, and that's what I'm doing," Isaac says.

Summer, 1973

Larry Smith is killed in what appears to be a minor single car wreck in the Talladega 500.

Smith's car hits the wall a glancing blow, damaging only the right-front fender. His roll cage, seat belt/shoulder harnesses and other safety equipment all work properly.

But Smith is dead of a skull fracture. NASCAR officials speculate the injury occurred when the impact snapped his head back into the headrest.

The lap just completed by Smith? Lap 13.

1974

About 12 top cars are sabotaged on the eve of the Talladega 500. The damage is discovered when the crews arrive on race morning.

Oil and gas lines have been loosened just enough to become disconnected when the cars reach racing speed. Sand has been poured into gas tanks. The inner sidewalls of tires have been sliced so that they'll blow out when pressure is applied to them.

"Someone tried to commit mass murder here," says Buddy Baker.

The start of the race is delayed about three hours. The culprit has never been caught.

1975

Randy Owens, 18, brother-in-law of all-time NASCAR victory leader Richard Petty, is killed during the Winston 500 when a water tank explodes in Petty's pit area.

Owens, a member of the crew, had been watching the race from a spot nearby. He dies instantly.

Driver Tiny Lund is killed during the Talladega 500, a race he wasn't even supposed to run.

Lund originally fails to qualify fast enough for the lineup. However, rain postpones the race until the following Sunday.

Before the race is delayed, though, a crewman for driver Grant Adcox suffers a fatal heart attack on pit road. Adcox withdraws from the event, opening a spot the following Sunday for Lund, the first alternate.

Shortly after the race begins, Lund spins coming off the second turn and careens through a grassy area on the inner portion of the track. He appears to momentarily regain control, but the car makes one final, slow loop back onto the pavement - and into the path of another car.

Struck in the driver's-side door, Lund dies instantly.

1977

Spectators are stunned early in the Talladega 500 when the car of David Sisco wheels into the pits and he leaps out and sprints frantically up pit road toward the garage and the infield infirmary.

Has he somehow hurt himself in the car?

It's worse. Sisco's mother, strolling through a paddock reserved for drivers' families, has been struck by a small truck and killed.

1979

As Buddy Baker charges toward the lead entering the homestretch early in the Winston 500, his car swerves sideways without warning. Following drivers, suddenly forced to take evasive action, lose control. Their cars collide.

Seventeen cars are swept into the wreck, but the only driver injured is Cale Yarborough, who has bruised legs.

Yarborough had become pinned between his car and that of Dave Marcis after climbing out to check on other drivers. As he makes his way about, a second wave of cars crashes and one hits the Marcis machine, jarring it into Yarborough.

"I can't look, Dave," says Yarborough. "Tell me if my legs are cut off."

The accident occurs on May 6. It is the same date as the 19-car crash in 1973.

1981

Television coverage of the Talladega 500 is knocked off the air as the race winds down. An electrical storm several miles away damaged a vital transformer and telephone lines.

Television viewers miss a three-abreast finish in which Ron Bouchard edges Darrell Waltrip and Terry Labonte. It's the first and only Winston Cup victory for Bouchard, then a rookie. Home in Massachusetts, Bouchard's father throws an object through his television screen in anger upon missing the sight of his son winning.

1985

Tornadoes and thunderstorms rumble through Talladega County, interrupting time trials for the Winston 500. Driver Waltrip warily eats lunch as the storms threaten, wearing his racing helmet to the table as a precautionary measure.

Shortly after Winston Cup qualifying is completed another twister approaches during time trials for a companion event, the ARCA 500.

The storm arrives so suddenly that hail is pounding down in Turn 2 while a car is on the track running full speed in Turn 4. Luckily, officials get a warning to the driver.

The swirling cloud forces evacuation of the press box.

As the national anthem is sung prior to the Talladega 500, a Boy Scout color guard begins raising the flag on a pole near Victory Lane.

The flag reaches half-staff and stops. Try as they might the scouts can`t get the flag to go higher.

Spectators who notice are aghast at what the incident suggests.

The scouts take the flag down and try again with the same result.

Rather than leave the flag at half-staff, they remove it from the pole altogether and the race is run without Old Glory flying.

1986

The start of the Winston 500 is delayed when a fan steals one of the pace cars on pit road and drives almost two laps around the speedway before police block the track and stop him.

"I was getting ready to escort the grand marshal into the pace car and when I turned around it was gone," says speedway official Larry Balewski.

1987

There is apprehension along pit road before the Winston 500 as speeds have escalated well above 200 mph, topped by Bill Elliott's record time trial mark of 212.809 mph.

Early in the race Bobby Allison's car slips sideways after a tire is cut in the homestretch. The car lifts into the air, rear end first, and slashes into the fence fronting the grandstand.

After taking out 150 feet of fencing and nine heavy support posts, Allison's car spins back onto the track.

Allison is not hurt. However, debris from the crash has spewed into the stands, leaving two fans with eye injuries and dozens with slight cuts and nicks.

Spooky and sinister?

To say the least....
 
http://insiderracingnews.com/Writers/Guest/PK/042510.html

Tales of the Talladega Curse An Opinion
April 25, 2010
By Guest Columnist Patty Kay

I bid you welcome, gentle readers. Today let’s talk about the legend of the “Talladega Curse.” Since the giant 2.66-mile track opened in 1969, there have been some strange, if not downright eerie things happen there. This is a compilation of some of them, a tale spun for your enjoyment, though certain to make you a bit uneasy at the same time.

“You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!” ~ Rod Serling

There was a time in racing history when there was no racetrack in Talladega, Alabama. What there was, in fact, was a huge, empty plot of land that had been purchased by Big Bill France, with a dream in his head of building a racetrack so awesome as to put to shame even his own Daytona International Speedway. A little story goes along with that land though. Rumor has always had it that it had belonged to a Native American tribe, and depending on which tale you listen to, was either a burial ground for tribal members or sacred ground used for tribal rituals. Whichever it was, the story goes that the tribe was quite unhappy about its planned use and sent their Medicine Man to try to change Big Bill’s mind, a feat that was tougher than moving mountains. True to form, France refused to budge and they say that the Medicine Man put a curse on what would soon become the new “Alabama International Motor Speedway,” or Talladega, as we know it today. I’m sorry, I have no idea what the fine for cursing was in those days, but Smokey Yunick could have told you.

Now, I’m not sure that I believe in curses and in reality I’m not even sure how much, if any, of that story is true. Still, the legend lives on and gains strength and popularity every time something eerie occurs at the giant racetrack.

The very first race was held there on September 14, 1969, and lent credence to the saga of the curse. The surface of the new track was extremely rough and throughout practice and qualifying, it destroyed several different tire compounds offered up by Goodyear and Firestone. The PDA (Professional Drivers’ Association), headed by Richard Petty, confronted France and asked that the race be postponed until the track could be repaved. Big Bill of course, was having none of that, and more or less dared the drivers to do something about it. When he announced over the track PA system on Saturday night that any driver not competing in Sunday’s race should leave the grounds immediately, there was a long moment of silence, followed by the engine of the #43 hauler coming to life and pulling out. It was followed by every regular driver at the track that was a member of the PDA. (Almost all of them) There was a race on Sunday, but it was peopled almost entirely by drivers from the companion series (Grand Touring, I believe) that had run on Saturday. It was won by a driver named Richard Brickhouse that you’ve probably never heard of, and now you know why.

It seems that 1973 was a particularly bad year at Talladega. The Winston 500, held there in the spring, started with a field of 60 cars, but on the ninth lap, twenty-one of them were gone in a spectacular wreck that would rival the “Big Ones” of today. According to Buddy Baker (who had been the leader until getting caught up in oil from Ramo Stott’s blown engine), “The whole backstretch was cluttered with engines, transmissions, pieces of doors and other parts. I’ve never seen a bigger pile-up anywhere.” Cale Yarborough, who had been right behind Baker said, “I hit one car and sailed through the air. I didn’t ever think we were going to stop.” Bobby Allison opined that much of the blame lay with the oversized starting field. “The extra 10 or 20 cars were needed to fill up the track. They did that all right….all over the backstretch.” That wreck would end the career of pioneer African-American driver Wendell Scott, hospitalized with three broken ribs, a lacerated arm and a cracked pelvis.

In the August race of the same year, Talladega claimed the life of the 1972 Rookie of the Year, Larry Smith in a manner that seems all too familiar today. On lap 14, Smith’s car hit the retaining wall, and though damaged, looked quite reparable. The racing world was shocked to hear of his death from such a seemingly innocent hit. The cause of death was listed as “Massive head injuries and a basal skull fracture.” Later in the same race, on lap 90, Bobby Isaac, in response to a voice in his head, radioed car owner Bud Moore and told him to find a relief driver. CooCoo Marlin took over the wheel and finished 13th. Isaac, on the other hand, retired from Winston Cup racing on the spot. “Something told me to quit. I don’t know anything else to do but abide by that.” (Introduce the theme from Twilight Zone please.)

If 1973 was eerie, then 1975 at Talladega was tragic, but again in strange ways. On lap 141 of the spring race, the dominant car of the race, driven by Richard Petty, hit the pits with a left front wheel bearing on fire. Crewmember Randy Owens, Petty’s brother-in-law, came over the wall with a pressurized water tank to extinguish the blaze. When engaged, the tank blew up, sending Owens some 30 feet into the air and killing him instantly. Petty said tearfully, “I had just gotten out of the car and stepped across the pit wall. Randy reached over to turn the pressure on and the thing blew up. That’s close to home. He was just a kid and had those two little, bitty boys. The bad part about it is somewhere along the line it could have been prevented.” Gary Rodgers, from Benny Parsons’ team suffered head lacerations when struck by a jagged piece of the water tank.

On August 17 of that year, Tiny Lund was driving his first Winston Cup race in over two years, but he only raced until lap six. Lund lost control in the midst of a group of cars fighting for position and spun down into the infield. As his car rested there, it was struck in the driver’s door by rookie Terry Link. Lund was pronounced dead of massive chest injuries in the infield care center. Link, who had been knocked unconscious in the wreck, was hauled from his burning car by two spectators who jumped the infield fence to assist him. It was reported that they had to fight off security guards to get to him. One said later, “I just didn’t want the man to die.” Buddy Baker won the race, but on hearing of the death of his friend Tiny, Baker dropped to his knees and said, “We were fishin’ buddies. This is terrible. It takes all the joy out of winning this race.”

On May 1, 1983, Phil Parsons (Benny’s younger brother) and Darrell Waltrip got together on lap 71, touching off an eleven-car wreck in turn one. Both cars hit the wall, but while Waltrip’s stayed there, Parsons’ car became airborne, flipping and barrel rolling a dozen times before landing on the roof of Ricky Rudd’s Pontiac. Once more, there were heroes (or angels) on duty, as two photographers ran to Phil’s car and pulled him to safety just as it caught fire. Although I’m not positive that it’s still there today, that car was housed at the Talladega Hall of Fame Museum for many years, as a “Worst wreck” example.

After the May race of 1985, you could have gotten good odds in Vegas that the curse had been lifted. Bill Elliott had started from the pole with a qualifying record of 209.398 mph and seemed destined to win just as he’d done on almost every Superspeedway that year. Then, on the 48th lap, his Coors sponsored Thunderbird began trailing a huge plume of smoke. Bill came to the attention of his brother Ernie (Crew chief), who quickly repaired a broken oil fitting and sent him back onto the track, just ahead of the lead pack, but 5-miles behind them. Elliott put his foot in the carburetor and though he was running alone, left the pack behind and set sail on an awesome voyage. Unbelievably, he drove around that 2.66-mile track and made up a lap. Without benefit of cautions, Elliott continued to fly around the track until at lap 145, he caught and passed Cale Yarborough for the lead. He went on to win the race with a record setting speed of 186.288 mph. If you ever wondered where that “Awesome” nickname came from, now you know. Curses don’t always work!

By 1987 however, the track was up to its old tricks. On lap 21 of the spring race, Bobby Allison cut a tire and the car went airborne. “Something bounced under the car and cut a tire” Allison said. “Up in the air it went….around backwards. There was nothing I could do.” The car struck the catch-fence with its underside, ripping the fence and spewing debris into the crowd in the grandstand. Several spectators were injured, with a few hospitalized, but it could have been so much worse, had that 3600-pound car made it through the fence. The red flag period to repair the damage took 2 hours, 38 minutes and 14 seconds. The onset of darkness forced officials to shorten the race by ten laps, and in some sort of poetic justice, rookie Davey Allison, Bobby’s son, won the race. This was the race in which Bill Elliott set a never again to be challenged qualifying record of 212.890 mph and the race that precipitated the onset of those dreaded contraptions we call restrictor plates.

At the spring race in 1993, there was a frightening incident, which seemed to be more the creation of NASCAR than the result of any curse, but it was scary nonetheless. After it rained at the track, NASCAR put out the red flag, completed the track drying and set up a restart with only two laps to go in the race. (Please bear in mind that it takes about that long for these cars to get up to maximum speed) The resulting shootout made the OK Corral thing look like a Girl Scout meeting. Lined up behind the pace care were Dale Earnhardt, (Who had dominated the race until the rain came) Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin and Ernie Irvan, four of the hardest racers of the time. After all of the bumping and banging (at about 190mph), coming to the wire it was Irvan in the lead, followed by Jimmy Spencer (Mr. Excitement). Dale Earnhardt had fallen back just a bit but was coming hard. When he reached Rusty’s car, Wallace tried to shut the door on him for fourth place, but the two came together, sending Wallace around and into the air, flipping wildly as he crossed the start/finish line. The finishing order showed Irvan, Spencer, Dale Jarrett, Earnhardt, Joe Ruttman and Wallace. After the finish, a distraught Dale Earnhardt circled the track and came back to the crash scene, where he assisted the rescue workers with his friend. Wallace wound up with a broken wrist, a concussion, facial cuts and a chipped tooth, but readily accepted blame for the accident. Jimmy Spencer summed it up well when he said that the two-lap shootout was “A bunch of bull….! I don’t care what anybody says, nobody’s life is worth what was going on out there on the last lap.” Ah, but Jimmy, it was Talladega!

On my birthday, July 12 of that same year, the curse seemed to go to work in earnest and there wasn’t even a race. Young Davey Allison, who many thought should have been Champion the previous year, flew his helicopter to Talladega to watch Neil Bonnett’s son David practice for an upcoming race. Along with Davey was long time family friend, Red Farmer. As the helicopter neared a landing, witnesses reported that it suddenly shot straight up in the air, rolled to one side and crashed hard into the ground. Farmer was seriously injured but recovered in time. Davey was pronounced dead from massive head injuries the following morning. Eventually, some ten years later, a court ruling was issued concerning the crash. The court found the cause of the crash to be a stress break in the collective yoke, the device that controls the pitch of the rotor blades on the helicopter. It never was pilot error as we were led to believe for all that time. Could it have been the Talladega curse at work? We don’t really believe in curses, do we?

Two weeks after Davey’s death, the Winston Cup teams rolled into Talladega, still mourning the death of one of the brightest stars on the circuit. This time, there would not be an Allison in the field. The track without forgiveness hosted a horrendous crash on lap 70 that sent ARCA driver Jimmy Horton cascading over the first turn wall and onto an access road outside the track. Miraculously, Horton received no serious injuries and even managed to joke later on that, “I knew I was in all sorts of trouble when I saw dirt flying.” (He’d started the race on asphalt) Stanley Smith, a part-timer who hadn’t raced since the twin 125s in Daytona, wasn’t as lucky. He had barely grazed Horton’s car but was sent hard into the inside wall and was hospitalized with critical head injuries, never to race in the Cup ranks again.

A bit later in the same race, Neil Bonnett, in his return to racing after a three year hiatus brought about by a severe crash at Darlington, lost control of his car while racing hard with Dick Trickle and Ted Musgrave. The car turned sideways, and then became airborne, flying over the hood of Musgrave’s car and directly into the catch fence in front of the main grand stand. It was a scary repeat of the Bobby Allison incident six years before, and the first time since then that Talladega had seen a red flag. This time the fence repairs only took an hour and 10 minutes. Bonnett received no serious injuries that time, but it prompted NASCAR to adopt Jack Roush’s “roof flaps” as a means of keeping the cars from “flying.”

In August of 1996, with rain threatening to end the race, we watched lap 117 with Dale Earnhardt leading the race. On his right was the nose of Sterling Marlin’s car and on his rear bumper was Ernie Irvan. Slight contact from Irvan turned Marlin just enough that his left front clipped Earnhardt’s right rear, sending him from the lead straight into the outside wall, then tumbling down the track as it bounced off the wall. Besides Earnhardt and Marlin, nine other cars were swept up in the accident, but it was Earnhardt who emerged from his car in obvious pain. With his right arm across his chest so that his hand might grip his left shoulder, the seven-time champion walked unassisted to the waiting ambulance. His injuries included a broken sternum, a broken left collarbone and a bruised pelvis. The champion that had been seeking his eighth crown would not win another race until the Daytona 500 in 1998 and would never live to win another championship.

On April 6, 2003, the race was only four laps old when Ryan Newman cut a tire and went hard into the outside wall at some 190+ mph. Gravity and the 33º banking took over, caroming the car off the wall and down the track. Newman’s car was hit at least four times by oncoming traffic before bursting into flames at the bottom of the track. He managed to get free of the car and walk away with minor injuries, considering what could have happened. That wreck, before it was through, involved 27 cars and set a NASCAR record as the biggest of the “Big Ones.” Had the curse reasserted itself?

Moving on to the spring race of 2006, two fans in the campgrounds of the Talladega infield were electrocuted while setting up a metal flagpole. It’s a customary practice in the infield for fans to do that, so they can fly banners announcing to the world their favorite driver. Unfortunately for those two men, their flagpole came in contact with high voltage wires and Talladega claimed yet two more unsuspecting victims.

These are merely highlights of selected races from Talladega, spanning many years. How then do we look at this track? To what do we credit these and many more unhappy endings that seemingly stem from its cruelty? Is she truly unforgiving, or just too tough to tame? (Oops, that one’s already been used) Think about it when the drivers start their engines this week at the world’s fastest track. We don’t really believe in curses, do we? Are you sure? We might want to key the theme from Twilight Zone one more time.

Personal note: As always, I view the race at Talladega with trepidation. All of my friends are quite familiar with the fact that I inhale at the green flag and exhale at the checkers. In between, I am a devoted, card-carrying member of the white-knuckle brigade, and this year will be no exception. I fall among those folks that detest restrictor plate racing and the forced closeness that it produces, thereby almost ensuring that since the drivers are merely mortal, at some point during the afternoon, there will be a violent wreck...or more than one...involving many cars, damaging millions of dollars in equipment and endangering many lives. Are we having fun yet?

Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!

~PattyKay
 
I have never been a bigger believer in a curse or this one, I am just not superstitious. I was interested enough to google 'Talladega curse' and I posted the previous two articles. There is a lot more I just stopped with those two to avoid repetition. If one wants more I would encourage them to google the topic.

I was just a kid in 1974 with no way to prove or disprove anything. Cutting brake lines was just an act of vandalism imo by someone that should have been punished not the work of some type of spirit.

The fatalities at a place that is just spooky fast is easily understood. Especially in the more of a run what you brung world of the 70s, that had far less specs or applied safety technology.

Davey Allison' death was a very tragic event. Being disrespectful is the last thing I want to do, but Davey had not been flying helicopters very long and his inexperience was the attributed cause.
 
I can disprove the Talladega curse with a theorem. It alone is empirical evidence strong enough to withstand a rigorous scientific peer review.

No self serving Waltrip exploitation of this topic proves that it doesn't exist . Case Closed game, set, and match.

When Darrell has not fueled speculation about a Nascar topic from the 70's you can rest assured it is because there is nothing to say about the said topic. Darrell only leaves actual nothingness or voids from the era unsaid.

More profoundly Michael has not exploited the subject with the following promotional profiting phrase;
the "Talladega Aarons unlucky dog award"

That run in the ground, torture crap is a curse in its own right.
 
Good lord Greg. You're letting out your inner yakketyass wordiesm today. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom