April 19, 1964
“Gwyn Staley 400”
Top 5 finishers.....
It was career win #14 for “The Golden Boy.” It took Fred Lorenzen 3 hours, 3 minutes, 5 seconds to complete the 250 mile race and capture his 1st career North Wilkesboro Grand National win. Lorenzen started from the pole (24.45sec./94.024mph). He led 368 of the 400 laps in the race. Lorenzen ran in 10 Grand National events at NWS. The ten races combined added up to 3777 laps. Lorenzen led 1160 of those laps—better than 30%. Keep in mind that he fell out of 3 races early. He actually raced 3211 laps, meaning that he led better than 36% of the laps he competed in. Junior Johnson’s numbers aren’t too far from these, but no other driver having competed in multiple races at NWS comes close to those numbers.
Ned Jarrett finished second. Jarrett took his 1964 Ford from a 30th place starting spot and finished 2nd. It was and still is the best finish for a driver who started a race from the last spot at NWS. His 28 spots gained in the race ranks 2nd to the record of 29—which will be just a handful of races away. Jarrett’s car finished a reported 200 yards behind Lorenzen. At the speeds that were run then, the difference would be somewhere around 4.5 seconds. Jarrett led 3 laps during the race.
Finishing one lap of the pace was the man they called “Pancho.” Starting 3rd and finishing 3rd was Marvin Panch. The winner of the 1961 Daytona race went on to finish 10th in the season points championship in 1964.
Starting sixth and finishing 4th was Junior Johnson. He was five laps behind the leader at the end of the day. Johnson did something this day at NWS that he did only one other time—he finished the race without leading any laps. Johnson drove his cars so hard that if they didn’t win, they usually broke or crashed.
Finishing fifth, also five laps down, was Darel Dieringer. Dieringer led for 25 laps. The happy-go-lucky driver was known by some of his close friends as “Daddy Ding-a-Ling” because of some of his crazy antics. He pissed off car owner Bud Moore one time at Darlington. Dieringer showed up for practice over an hour late. When Moore asked what happened, Dieringer said that the bearings in his hotel room door needed replacement. It was reported that as Moore walked away, his comments had something to do with “needing a bigger hammer.”
An announced crowd of 17,000 was at the track this day. 30 cars took to the track, 20 finished. The lead changed 5 times between 4 different drivers—7th place finisher Richard Petty led 4 laps during the day. There were 7 caution periods for 35 laps, although track reporters said they witnessed 13 spins in turn one that never brought out the caution flag. 25 year old William Caleb Yarborough (“Cale”) ran his first NWS Grand National race. He started 11th and finished 23rd. Engine problems took him from the race after just 220 laps.
The fans had Junior Johnson to cheer for each race, but there was also another local favorite who ran in his 10th Grand National race at the track—Jimmy Pardue. Pardue was born in North Wilkesboro in 1930. Pardue showed promise. He had 3 top ten finishes to date at the track with a 7th place finish being his best showing. He finished 6th in points in 1963 and was on his way to a better season in 1964. Sadly, he lost his life in September of ’64 during a tire test at Charlotte—one week before the fall race at North Wilkesboro. Despite his death, he still finished 5th in the point standings that year. It’s easy to speculate, but had he finished the season at the same pace he had been running all along, it is possible that he would have finished 2nd in points that year to Richard Petty.
Jimmy Pardue