Dale Inman.

Richard Petty’s Cousin Had Uncanny Ability To Communicate With ‘The King’

 

 

 

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Jan. 12, 2012) – Within the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series garage, among crew chiefs and mechanics, the most popular addition to the NASCAR Hall of Fame is one of their own – Dale Inman.

 

Inman, according to his first cousin Richard Petty, invented the position we now call the crew chief.

 

“Dale was a racing benchmark,” said Petty. “He was the sport’s first official crew chief and people modeled themselves after him. He knew what, when and where — and when he made a mistake he wasn’t afraid to admit it. Everyone respected him for that. Nobody even comes close to the number of wins that Dale has recorded.”

 

He’ll be inducted Jan. 20 as a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s third class that includes Richie Evans, Darrell Waltrip, Glen Wood and Cale Yarborough.

 

Inman’s numbers between 1958 and 1992 indeed support “The King’s” belief: eight NASCAR Sprint Cup championships, 193 victories and 129 poles.

 

The 75-year-old Inman won seven titles with Petty and another with Terry Labonte.

 

Inman began working in the Petty Enterprises Level Cross, N.C. shop for Lee Petty when he was too young to go to the track and be the team’s chief mechanic.

 

Inman’s stand-out year was 1967. That season, Inman and Petty won a NASCAR-record, 27 races – 10 of them consecutively. All 27 victories were in the same car they built a year earlier.

 

“Maurice was in the engine room and we had six employees,” said Inman, when asked if he and the team were aware of what they were accomplishing. “We were so busy we didn’t have time to think about what we were doing.”

 

In the current era, a crew chief can puzzle over a dozen or more cars before selecting which one to take to a specific race. That was hardly the case for Inman.

 

Richard Petty frequently had only two or three cars for Inman to supervise, perhaps an even more difficult task considering a 50-race schedule that featured multiple dates during a given week on both dirt and asphalt surfaces.

 

“Somebody asked me if I was nervous,” Inman said, discussing his feelings before the NASCAR Hall of Fame announcement was made. “And I said, ‘not as much as I was in some of those races.’”

 

While Inman was The King’s cousin, it seemed as if the pair could be twin brothers. The two worked in the shop on Lee Petty’s race cars but also had played football together at Randleman High School. Inman was the team’s halfback; Petty was a guard on the offensive line.

 

“It was scary sometimes how we came up with the same answers,” Inman said.

 

Inman didn’t set out to be a crew chief; it just came with the evolution of the sport. “There had to be a leadership role,” he said. “I picked that up.”

 

Unlike his cousin, Inman never had a desire to drive race cars. “I just didn’t see me tearing up somebody else’s equipment,” he said. “I always was pretty well content to work on the race cars and make them better.”

 

He also was a gifted teacher. Many of the sport’s top crew chiefs matriculated at what became Dale Inman University, among them Mike Beam, Barry Dodson, Jake Elder, Tony Glover, Steve Hmiel, Robbie Loomis, Todd Parrott, Robin Pemberton and Wade Thronburg.

 

“The things that you learned were not always about being or trying to be the best race car mechanic or your win-loss record; they were also about how you represented your team on and off the track,” said Pemberton, a winning crew chief for Mark Martin, Kyle Petty and Rusty Wallace and now NASCAR’s Vice President, Competition and Racing Development, recalled of his time working under Inman. “Dale was very good at a lot of things but I really think he was one of the best race strategist I have ever seen week in and week out. The vast majority of the time Dale made the right call to get the most out of the day.”

 

Inman didn’t disagree but put it this way: “I kept up with who we we had to beat and what their weaknesses were,” he said. “We also surrounded ourselves with good people.”

 

Inman left the team shortly after Petty’s 1981 Daytona 500 victory. The decision to move on was incredibly emotional – for both Inman and Petty.

 

“After I told him I was leaving the team in ’81, he looked at me like he was going to cry,” Inman said in a feature published later in “Stock Car Illustrated.” “’Dale,’ he said, ‘when I go off down into one of those turns at 170 mph, who am I going to depend on so I know that all the bolts are tight?’ I went home and cried.”

 

Inman later worked for Rod Osterlund, J.D. Stacy and Billy Hagan – the latter owner of Labonte’s championship-winning team – before returning to Petty Enterprises to manage the organization’s business affairs in 1986. He helped mold the careers of John Andretti and Bobby Hamilton, both race winners.

 

Inman retired from NASCAR in 1998 but remained close to the sport. He helped Kyle Petty complete the Victory Junction camp. When the NASCAR Hall of Fame was opened, Inman brought in its first artifact, the restored Plymouth Belvedere in which Petty set the records in 1967.

 

In 2006 a national motorsports’ journalism organization proclaimed Inman NASCAR’s second greatest crew chief. Always humble, Inman responded, “I’m not sure I should even be ranked.” He called Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers – fellow NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Glen Wood’s brother – the best crew chief he’d ever seen.

 

Glen Wood Never Set Out To Create NASCAR Sprint Cup Dynasty

Glen Wood Never Set Out To Create NASCAR Sprint Cup Dynasty

Virginian’s Decision To Race Instead Of Cut Wood Benefited Many Racing Stars

 

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Jan. 13, 2012) – Glen Wood began his working life hauling timber to Virginia’s sawmills before deciding that racing cars offered a more exciting – and ultimately profitable – way of life.

 

It turned out to be a decision well made. The complete story of Wood’s accomplishments in NASCAR has yet to be written but the next chapter unfolds Jan. 20 when the 86-year-old Wood is inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

 

Though Wood won just four times – all at Bowman-Gray Stadium in North Carolina – he planted the seeds that germinated into NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing history that continues to be made today.

 

Glen Wood and brothers Leonard, Delano, Clay and Ray Lee went from weekend racers to the Stuart, Va.-based team that for more than 50 years has employed some of NASCAR’s greatest names. Glen Wood won his first race in 1960.

 

Trevor Bayne won last year’s Daytona 500 bookending a litany of superstar winners that includes NASCAR Hall of Fame member David Pearson, fellow Hall inductee Cale Yarborough, Tiny Lund, Marvin Panch, A.J. Foyt, Buddy Baker, Neil Bonnett and road racer Dan Gurney.

 

Wood’s team has won 98 times in seven different decades, a total that includes five Daytona 500s. The Wood Brothers also excelled outside the NASCAR world, sending Jim Clark to victory in the 1965 Indianapolis 500.

 

“It’s such a long trip from 1950 to now. It’s sort of hard to believe,” said Wood following the announcement of his selection to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “It’s one of the biggest honors you could have. I didn’t come here alone; I had a lot of help. There’s five of us brothers. All of those helped at one time or another.”

 

Wood’s brother and choreographer of the modern pit stop, Leonard, has been nominated for future NASCAR Hall of Fame consideration.

 

Glen Wood – whose early racing nickname was “Woodchopper” because he owned a saw mill – began racing in an era where stock cars actually were street cars.

 

When Speedy Thompson won the inaugural National 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1960, the Ford he drove had been junked because of fire damage. The fire saved the Woods from having to removing heavy soundproofing and other materials – ultimately removing weight as well.

The victory was the team’s first on a superspeedway. Wood would later say that his share of the $12,710 purse was a turning point.

Wood purchased his first race car, a 1938 Ford Coupe, for $50 in 1950. As a NASCAR premier series driver, Wood was active from 1953 through 1964 ultimately competing in 62 races. His first victory came on April 18, 1960; his fourth and last on July 13, 1963. He was one of the day’s better qualifiers winning the pole 14 times. Wood’s average starting position was 6.1.

 

In 1959, he ran a career-high 20 races, finishing 13 times in the top 10. The following season statistically was his best: nine races, three wins, four poles and six top-five and seven top-10 finishes.

 

Wood and his brothers bought a 1961 Ford Starliner which they tested at Charlotte Motor Speedway on behalf of Ford, which had no factory-supported presence in the series at the time. The Woods and Ford entered NASCAR premier series racing together and have been paired since – the longest association between a race team and a manufacturer.

 

Tiny Lund claimed the team’s first Daytona 500 victory in 1963, substituting for Marvin Panch, who’d been injured the day before in a sports car race. Fellow NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Yarborough won the race in 1968, followed by Foyt in 1972, NASCAR Hall of Famer Pearson in 1976 and Bayne in 2010.

 

The team’s association with Pearson was most notable. Pearson and the Woods won 43 times between 1972 and 1978, seasons in which the team pursued partial schedules comprising only the sport’s most significant events.

 

Between 1964 and 1968, Dan Gurney won four times at the old Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway road course driving for the Woods.

 

With children Eddie and Len Wood and Kim Hall, the organization scored its most improbable victory in last year’s Daytona 500. Bayne, driving in just his second NASCAR Sprint Cup race, gave the Woods their 98th victory. “It was unbelievable that that happened, we go down there with a rookie driver. He’d driven one time for us at Texas, and ran real well,” said Wood. “But I don’t think anybody would ever have dreamed he would’ve won the Daytona 500.”

 

Glen Wood remains a humble man – regardless of the history that he and his team continue to write in NASCAR. “I’d like to be remembered as a fair competitor, a man whose handshake was his word,” said Wood.

 

Yarborough’s Route To NASCAR Hall Of Fame Had Many Twists, Turns

 

 January 4, 2012

 

Youth Fraught With Adventure Led To Record-Setting Stock Car Racing Career

 

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Jan. 4, 2012) – Larger than life.

Those three words describe Cale Yarborough – before the Sardis, S.C. native even became a racing legend who will be inducted along with Richie Evans, Dale Inman, Darrell Waltrip and Glen Wood on Friday, Jan. 20 as the third class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Now 72, Yarborough flew an airplane without benefit of lessons, somehow forgetting that flight was easy; but landing was another story. He wrestled an alligator and survived being struck by lightning.

At 5-feet-7 inches and 130 pounds, he was a ferocious prep fullback and linebacker at Timmonsville (S.C.) High School and likely could have been a collegiate football star. He “worked out” wrestling bales in a tobacco barn and credited that labor with making him one of the era’s most fit competitors. And in his spare time, Yarborough drove a school bus.

Oh, and Yarborough was ejected – three times – from his first race, the 1957 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway – because NASCAR officials found out he’d lied about his age on his license application. The 18-year-old, who said he was 21, qualified 44th. He’d hidden on the Ford’s floorboards and took the wheel as owner Bobby Weatherly exited while inspectors’ were looking elsewhere.

Yarborough actually started the race – wearing a helmet and goggles, he got “lost” in the pre-race crush – but received a quick black flag when it was apparent the driver of the No. 30 car was not Weatherly.

From those beginnings, William Caleb Yarborough became the first to win three consecutive NASCAR premier series championships (1976-78) and three times finished second in the standings. During a career that began ignominiously in 1957 and concluded after the 1988 season, Yarborough won 83 races – sixth on the all-time list.

He won the Daytona 500 four times. Driving Chevrolets prepared and ultimately owned by NASCAR Hall of Fame member Junior Johnson, Yarborough won nine or more races in four different seasons. He also won 69 poles, fourth all-time, including a record 12 at Daytona – four in the Daytona 500.

What had become a dynasty ended after the 1980 season – leaving, many say, more victories and championships on the table. Yarborough, whose father was killed in a plane crash when he was 11, felt he needed to spend more time with his children and never again pursued a full-time driving schedule. Ironically, the seat in Johnson’s Chevrolet went to Waltrip who won championships in 1981-82 and 1985.

“I gave up a lot but I gained a lot more,” he wrote in his 1986 biography “Cale,” a book co-written with Bill Neely. Fourteen of Yarborough’s victories – including the 1983 Daytona 500 and his fourth Southern 500 – came in the post-Johnson years behind the wheel of cars owned by M.C. Anderson and Harry Ranier.

Yarborough fielded his own team between 1987 and 1999 employing among others Dale Jarrett, Derrike Cope and John Andretti. Andretti scored the organization’s lone victory in July 1997 at Daytona International Speedway.

Growing up, Yarborough considered himself a risk-taker. If the tree limb from which he and his friends hung the tire over the swimming hole wasn’t high enough, Yarborough would find a way to make it higher. He built an 80-foot platform to dive into the Lynches River – which was only five-feet-deep.

That went well, at least until Yarborough came up and touched a log that wasn’t a log but an alligator. “There was no way I could outswim him to the banks so I did the only thing there was to do,” he wrote in “Cale.” “I grabbed him around the head. It rolled and rolled. First I saw the sky; and then my vision was blurred by the sandy river bottom.”

Yarborough and the gator made it to the bank where friends drove the reptile off. “Aside from swallowing about half the Lynches River and looking like I’d been in a hatchet fight, I was all right,” said Yarborough. “I hoped I had given up alligator wrestling for all time.”

His first taste of wheeled competition was the Soap Box Derby for which he and his father, who owned a general store and cotton gin, built a car. Yarborough lost his first race which turned out to be a sobering experience that would remain with him throughout his racing career.

“I never forgot how bad it felt to lose,” he said.

Getting his driver’s license at age 14, Yarborough’s first car was a Model A Ford he purchased working for 25 cents an hour in the tobacco warehouse. He and his friends would race on the long, straight rural roads around Sardis and Timmonsville. “One of the old timers in Sardis said to me, ‘every time we heard a fast car go by, we’d say there goes Cale.’”

Yarborough bought a 1953 Ford coupe while a senior in high school, tuned it up, painted his football number – 35 – on the doors and with friends towed it to a local dirt track. He finished third in his first heat race, the last car running. That was all it took.

“There was metal scraping and dust flying everywhere,” he said. “Man, this sure beat anything I had ever done. I was as happy as a kid in a candy store.”

Yarborough soon was driving for others. His car lacked power and Yarborough lacked money to make it faster.

His first NASCAR premier series victory came June 27, 1965 in a 100-mile race over a ½-mile dirt track in Valdosta, Ga. Yarborough, driving a 1964 Ford, beat J.T. Putney by three laps. The field included two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Buck Baker and NASCAR Hall of Fame member Ned Jarrett as well as Wendell Scott and Buddy Baker.

Yarborough drove for fellow Hall of Fame inductee Glen Wood from mid-1966 through 1970 winning 13 times. They won three consecutive races at Daytona International Speedway in 1967-68 including the 1968 Daytona 500.

Yarborough admits he hated to lose. He ranks ninth all-time with a 14.77 winning percentage. “When you get right down to it, there are only two parts to racing: winning and losing,” he wrote in 1986. “No second, third or fourth. You win or you lose.”

Emmy Award-winning NASCAR Media Group produced a biography series of all five 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductees that are currently airing on SPEED. The series started on Friday, Dec. 9 with back-to-back shows featuring Cale Yarborough and Dale Inman, followed by the feature on Richie Evans on Friday, Dec. 16. A re-air of the Yarborough biography will broadcast on SPEED on Jan. 22 at noon ET.

The remaining biographies will air on SPEED this month. Darrell Waltrip on Friday, Jan. 6 at 8 p.m. ET and Glen Wood on Friday, Jan. 13 at 8 p.m. ET.

2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame Class

2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame Class Announced

Yarborough, Waltrip, Inman, Evans And Glen Wood Comprise List Of New Inductees

 CHARLOTTE, N.C. (June 14, 2011) – NASCAR announced today the 2012 class of inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The five-person class, which will be officially inducted in a ceremony during the weekend of Jan. 20, 2012 at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C., consists of: Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Inman, Richie Evans and Glen Wood.

 Members of the 55-member NASCAR Hall of Fame Voting Panel met today in a closed session in Charlotte, N.C., to vote on the induction class of 2012. The announcement was made by NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France in the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s “Great Hall.”

The class was determined by votes cast by the Voting Panel, which included a nationwide fan vote conducted through NASCAR.COM. The accounting firm of Ernst & Young presided over the tabulation of the votes.

 As was the case for the first two classes of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the results of this year’s voting were competitive. Yarborough led with 85 percent of the vote, followed by Waltrip (82%), Inman (78%), Evans (50%) and Wood (44%).

 Also receiving votes were Jerry Cook, Cotton Owens, Raymond Parks and Herb Thomas.

 The fans’ five picks, in alphabetical order, were Richard Childress, Benny Parsons, Fireball Roberts, Waltrip and Yarborough.

The five inductees came from a group of 25 nominees for induction into the 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame class that included:

Buck Baker, Red Byron, Richard Childress, Jerry Cook, H. Clay Earles, Richie Evans, Tim Flock, Rick Hendrick, Jack Ingram, Bobby Isaac, Dale Inman, Fred Lorenzen, Cotton Owens, Raymond Parks, Benny Parsons, Les Richter, Fireball Roberts, T. Wayne Robertson, Herb Thomas, Curtis Turner, Darrell Waltrip, Joe Weatherly, Glen Wood, Leonard Wood and Cale Yarborough.

The NASCAR Hall of Fame opened on May 11, 2010 in Uptown Charlotte, N.C. The 150,000 square foot entertainment complex honors the history and heritage of NASCAR and the many who have contributed to the success of the sport.  In its first year of operation, the NASCAR Hall of Fame entertained more than 270,000 customers, making it the second most-visited sports hall of fame in North America.

 Class of 2012 Inductees:

Cale Yarborough

William Caleb Yarborough was the first driver to win three consecutive NASCAR premier series championships, from 1976-78. During his three-year dominance, Yarborough won 28 races – nine in 1976, nine in ’77 and 10 in ’78. His final championship points margin in those three years was never fewer than 195 points and was as much as 474 in 1978. Yarborough totaled 83 victories in his 31-year career, which ranks sixth all-time. His 69 poles rank fourth all-time. He also won the Daytona 500 four times (1968, ’77, ’83-84), a mark that ranks second only to Richard Petty’s seven. He was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998.

Darrell Waltrip

A three-time NASCAR premier series champion (1981-82, ’85), Waltrip won all three with legendary driver/owner Junior Johnson. Waltrip is tied with Bobby Allison and Jeff Gordon for third all-time in series victories with 84. His 59 poles rank fifth all-time in NASCAR premier series history. He competed from 1972-2000, which included a 1989 Daytona 500 victory in a Rick Hendrick-owned Chevrolet. He currently is a commentator on FOX’s NASCAR broadcasts. He was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998.

Dale Inman

Dale Inman, NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty’s crew chief at Petty Enterprises for nearly three decades, set records for most wins (193) and championships (eight) by a crew chief. Inman won seven of those championships with Petty (1964, ’67, ’71, ’72, ’74, ’75 and ’79), and a final one in 1984 with Terry Labonte.

Richie Evans

The recognized “king” of Modified racing, Evans captured nine NASCAR Modified titles in a 13-year span, including eight in a row from 1978-85. In the first year of the current NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour format in 1985, Evans won 12 races, including a sweep of all four events at Thompson, Conn. Evans ranked No. 1 in the 2003 voting of the NASCAR All-Time Modified Top 10 Drivers, and he was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998.

Glen Wood

Glen Wood laid the foundation for the famed Wood Brothers racing team as a driver in NASCAR’s premier series. Competing on a semi-regular basis, mostly at tracks close to his southern Virginia home, Wood won four times – all at Bowman-Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C. Wood, of course, is best known for his collaboration with brothers Leonard and Delano in Wood Brothers Racing. The Stuart, Va.-based team, which dates to 1950 and remains active, has amassed 98 victories.