September 30, 1962
“Wilkes 320”
Top 5 finishers.....
September 30, 1962 was proclaimed to be “Fireball Roberts Day” by officials at North Wilkesboro Speedway. 15 years ago, the first stock car race took place at NWS. One of the drivers was a rookie from Florida, making his first race appearance. The rookie was Fireball Roberts. So to celebrate 15 years of racing at NWS and 15 years of racing for Roberts, the day was named after him. The weekend started off well for Roberts. His qualifying time of 24.13 seconds/93.240 mph was good enough for an 8th place starting spot. Unfortunately a blown head gasket sidelined Roberts after just 75 of the 200 laps. He finished 29th in the 31 car field.
Recording his 13th career Grand National victory was the 1962 Most Popular Driver award winner, Richard Petty, despite a spin early in the race. Petty started from the 5th position with a qualifying time of 23.98 seconds. It was Petty’s 8th Grand National race at NWS. He led 160 laps of the race. Petty won 8 races during the ’62 season and had 32 top fives and 39 top tens, but those numbers weren’t enough to win him the championship.
Marvin Panch finished second. He qualified third with a time of 23.85 seconds. Panch was driving for the Wood Brothers. His first race for the Wood Brothers was at NWS in the spring of this same year. He pretty much finished off his career with the Wood Brothers. His last handful of races were for Petty Enterprises in 1966. Panch’s best season was in 1957 when in 42 races he posted 6 wins, 22 top fives and 27 top tens in route to a second place finish in the season standings—all of which were personal bests. Unfortunately after that season, Ford discontinued factory support to race teams due to the Automobile Manufacturers Association decision to get out of auto racing after a tragic incident that took place at Martinsville. As a result, Panch struggled to find good rides and ran in just 35 races over a 4 year span from 1958-1961. Named as one of NASCAR’s Greatest 50 drivers of All-time, Panch probably could have shown the racing world a lot more than what it had actually seen.
The 1962 Grand National Champion, Joe Weatherly, finished the race in the third position. A time of 24.14 during qualifying earned Weatherly a 9th place starting spot. The ’62 season was “Little Joe’s” best as far as stats are concerned. In 52 races, he put up personal bests with 9 wins, 39 top fives, 45 top tens and 7 poles—along with an average race finish of 5.0—that’s not a typo. Weatherly earned three American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Championships before he started racing stock cars. Here’s more Weatherly good humor—years back, Tim Flock had a monkey with him in his racecar. Well, Weatherly once had a mule with him in his hotel room. Paying $100 for the mule, Weatherly and some friends took it back to their hotel and managed to get it up to the second floor balcony. I’d say is a safe bet that Curtis Turner was involved in this somehow. The mule paced back and forth on that balcony all night. Why did he do it?—just to see what kind of reaction folks would have when the saw the mule—nothing more. The next day, Little Joe slapped some race stickers on the mule and rode it in the Darlington parade.
Seventh quickest in qualifying with a time of 24.08 seconds was the 4th place finisher, Junior Johnson. He was the first finisher not on the lead lap. For 36 laps during the race, Johnson was leading the pack. It had been 8 races since Johnson’s last win at NWS, and in six of those, he finished in the top five. He would experience some hard times in both 1963 races and some respectable races in 1964 before good fortune came his way at the track.
Also a lap down, Jim Paschal finished 5th while in a Petty Enterprises Plymouth. It was his second top 5 Grand National finish at NWS. It had been 3 ½ years since his last top five finish at the track. Paschal went on to score 25 career Grand National victories—12 of them while driving for the Petty Enterprises and Julian Petty. A victory at NWS in the future would be one of the 25.
The pole sitter, Fred Lorenzen (23.77 seconds/94.659mph) finished sixth in the race. Lorenzen led 124 laps early on in the day. A reported 11,000 were on hand to witness Petty’s victory—about 14 seconds, a little more than half a lap. The crowd also saw Speedy Thompson take to the track during qualifying. He hadn’t been in a NWS race since 1959. It turns out that he was just qualifying a car in which Gary Sain raced that day. He qualified the car 21st. Jack Smith improved the most spots during the day, 17, going from 30th at the start of the race to 13th at the finish. The race lasted 2 hours, 19 minutes, 14 seconds and was slowed three times for cautions.