Pontiac won its first Daytona 500 in 1961 with legendary mechanic Smokey Yunick and veteran driver Marvin Panch. Here’s an excellent six-minute race summary.

There was a 58-car starting field for the Daytona 500 on February 26, 1961, and 19 of the entries were Pontiacs. That’s how serious Pontiac general manager Bunkie Knudsen was about winning NASCAR’s biggest race of the year, and the effort was quite a statement for a company that wasn’t even in racing (officially speaking, that is). The fastest of the Pontiacs was Smokey Yunick’s black and gold ’61 Catalina wheeled by Fireball Roberts. But when Roberts fell out, Smokey’s backup car, a ’60 Catalina driven by veteran Marvin Panch, stepped up and took the victory.

Fireball won the pole at 155.709 mph, nearly six mph faster than the previous year’s pole speed, and he handily won his 40-lap qualifying race, too. (Meanwhile, Panch finished second in the other qualifier in the year-old back-up car.)  On race day Roberts was the class of the field, leading 170 laps and easily handling Joe Weatherly, Junior Johnson, and Banjo Matthews. But as we see in this 6-minute race summary, his engine let go with only 13 laps remaining. That opened the door for Panch, driving the same car Roberts had driven the year before, to slip into the lead and take Pontiac’s first Daytona 500 victory. Check out all the great racing moments in the video below.

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