Official name Texas 500 | ||
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Date December 7, 1969 (1969-December-07) Location Texas World Speedway, College Station, Texas Course Permanent racing facility
2.000 mi (3.218 km) Distance 250 laps, 500 mi (804 km) Weather Cold with temperatures reaching up to 55.9 °F (13.3 °C); wind speeds up to 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) | ||
The 1969 Texas 500 was a NASCAR Grand National Series (now Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) event that was held on December 7, 1969, at Texas World Speedway in College Station, Texas.
Contents
Souvenir racing programs were sold at the event for the then-inexpensive cost of $1 USD per copy ($6.53 when adjusted for inflation).
The extra four degrees of banking made the cars 16 miles per hour or 26 kilometres per hour faster than their speeds while racing at Michigan International Speedway.
Summary
Bobby Isaac would win this race in his 1969 Dodge Charger; gaining $15,640 in prize winnings ($102,142.54 when inflation is taken into effect). Buddy Baker earned the pole position with a speed of 176.284 miles per hour (283.702 km/h) while the average speed of the race was 144.277 miles per hour (232.191 km/h). More than 23,000 race fans would see Donnie Allison lose the race by more than two laps. Don Biederman was the only foreign-born driver (he was born in Port Credit, Ontario) and raced under the employ of Bill Champion for this race in a 1968 Ford Torino. Roy Tyner would finish in last place after picking up an engine problem on lap 2 with his 1969 Pontiac vehicle.
Other notable drivers to develop problems in the race were: Elmo Langley, Cale Yarborough, Ed Negre, and Bill Seifert. Wendell Scott (the first African American driver in NASCAR history to win a race), Buddy Baker (who was the highest finishing driver to DNF from the race in 8th place), and Benny Parsons were three other notable drivers of this decade who participated in the race. Yarborough would acquire a serious injury after clobbering his vehicle into one of the walls.
NASCAR on ABC would begin televising a select number of races during the 1970 NASCAR Grand National Series season. The televised broadcasting of NASCAR races eventually brought this once-regional motorsport into the national spotlight and eventually gained a major sponsor through Big Tobacco manufacturer R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for the 1971 season. This alliance between tobacco and stock car racing would last until the 2004 NASCAR Cup Series season. The transition to purposely-built racers began in the early 1960s and occurred gradually over that decade. Changes made to the sport by the late 1960s brought an end to the "strictly stock" vehicles of the 1950s; most of the cars were trailered to events or hauled in by trucks.
Biederman would make his grand exit from the NASCAR Cup Series after this race while Joe Hines would make his introduction into top-level stock car racing here. David Pearson would eventually merge as the eventual champion for the year. Pearson would later be recognized for winning his races more consistently than Richard Petty (who finished 21st in this race and would stop racing in Ford vehicles after this race) but would have an abbreviated racing career compared to him.
Finishing order
† signifies that the driver is known to be deceased
* Driver failed to finish race