by Kris Johnson
LONG POND, Pa. – In an era now when Nextel Cup dates are so highly coveted, Pocono Raceway owner Dr. Joseph Mattioli has to laugh when he thinks back on how his track landed its now-prized second race.
“At first I didn’t want it,” Mattioli said yesterday. “Ontario went bankrupt, and they asked me.”
They were the Frances, Bill Sr. and Bill Jr., and Ontario was a track in California that suffered a fate Pocono almost endured on multiple occasions in the 1970s.
With his track teetering on the brink of extinction in the late ’70s, Mattioli was thinking of selling Pocono Raceway.
Mattioli said in 1979 the Frances “used to call me almost every day. ‘You need this?’ ‘You need that?’ ‘Why don’t you do it this way?’”
It was one such call from France Sr., and then a subsequent meeting with him in New York, that persuaded Mattioli to hold onto his venue.
France Sr., on the back of his business card, wrote for Mattioli, “On the plains of hesitation die the bleached bones of millions who within the grasp of victory sat and waited! And [in] waiting died.”
By 1982, Pocono Raceway was hosting two annual Cup races, as it does today.
How much longer it continues to do so is anybody’s guess, but Mattioli is sure glad he listened to the father-and-son France tandem.
France Jr. was honored today prior to the Pocono 500. Like his father before him, he is gone now, but his association with Pocono Raceway won’t soon be forgotten.
“Without Bill France Jr., Pocono Raceway wouldn’t be here today,” Mattioli said
LONG POND, Pa. – In an era now when Nextel Cup dates are so highly coveted, Pocono Raceway owner Dr. Joseph Mattioli has to laugh when he thinks back on how his track landed its now-prized second race.
“At first I didn’t want it,” Mattioli said yesterday. “Ontario went bankrupt, and they asked me.”
They were the Frances, Bill Sr. and Bill Jr., and Ontario was a track in California that suffered a fate Pocono almost endured on multiple occasions in the 1970s.
With his track teetering on the brink of extinction in the late ’70s, Mattioli was thinking of selling Pocono Raceway.
Mattioli said in 1979 the Frances “used to call me almost every day. ‘You need this?’ ‘You need that?’ ‘Why don’t you do it this way?’”
It was one such call from France Sr., and then a subsequent meeting with him in New York, that persuaded Mattioli to hold onto his venue.
France Sr., on the back of his business card, wrote for Mattioli, “On the plains of hesitation die the bleached bones of millions who within the grasp of victory sat and waited! And [in] waiting died.”
By 1982, Pocono Raceway was hosting two annual Cup races, as it does today.
How much longer it continues to do so is anybody’s guess, but Mattioli is sure glad he listened to the father-and-son France tandem.
France Jr. was honored today prior to the Pocono 500. Like his father before him, he is gone now, but his association with Pocono Raceway won’t soon be forgotten.
“Without Bill France Jr., Pocono Raceway wouldn’t be here today,” Mattioli said