With 22 days remaining until the 2013 Daytona 500, we recount some of the great cars and drivers sporting the number 22.
The first driver to win an officially sanctioned NASCAR race running the number 22 was Red Byron at Daytona on July 10, 1949. He won the two-hour, 166-mile race on the four-mile beach/road course by nearly two minutes over Tim Flock. Byron’s team included two more future hall-of-famers, car owner Raymond Parks and crew chief Red Vogt.
Fireball Roberts and Bobby Allison were two more drivers in NASCAR Grand National (today, Sprint Cup) to take the number 22 to the front. Darel Dieringer and Dick Brooks also raced the double deuce for a time, while Ricky Rudd started his career with the 22 driving for his dad, Al Rudd. Check them out in the slide show gallery below.
Does anyone know the year NASCAR stopped using cars built by the manufactures and modified for racing as opposed to the way they are built for the past several years in the racing shops?
It’s difficult to pick one specific point in time. It was more of a process. Some locate the tipping point in 1966 when NASCAR allowed first the Mercury and then the Ford teams to run the unibody Comet/Fairlane with a Galaxie front frame section spliced in.
Meanwhile, Smokey Yunick’s ’66 Chevelle used a 9-in Ford rear axle, while Junior Johnson’s ’66 Galaxie used Chevy pickup rear suspension. At that point they were on a slippery slope.
But even before that, teams would replace entire bodies — removing the body from, say, a 1961 chassis and installing a 1962 shell. It was quicker and easier than transferring all the parts individually, and the frames were already highly modified with roll cages and plate boxing throughout.
About 2002 a fresh Roush car was set up outside the track at Phoenix for marketing purposes, the 99 car. There was one part of the floor pan that was obviously from a factory pressed part. It was carefully stitch welded into the floorpan. The entire rest of the car was fabricated. So the answer to the question is definitely a moving target. I think the “Car of Tomorrow” of a few years ago was the final break from anything factory stock on the cars.
In response to the answers I have received so far I would think having a prefabricated car, like is used today, vs a modified factory built car racing against one another would have been against NASCAR rules and requirements weather it was in 1966 or later. In 1977 the Oldsmobile Colonade body was a very sucessful race car and I wonder if the cars were factory built or prefrabicated like they are today. I also think NASCAR would not have allowed factory built cars racing against prefrabricated race cars.
@Dutch1960: Yes, for years all teams regardless of manufacturer used a 1965-66 Ford Galaxie floorpan stamping. No particular reason — they had suitable contours and fabricators were utterly familiar with all their dimensions. When that supply was exhausted, they went to Fox-body Ford Mustang floorpans. Today they’re scratch-built.
@ Jim Marshall: a 1977 Olds NASCAR stocker would have had a completely fabricated frame under it using mainly Ford-based components. NASCAR issued a series of illustrated chassis bulletins for 1973 institutionalizing these practices. The cars simply evolved in this direction for safety and economic reasons.