Talladega

SWEET HOME, ALABAMA Sportscar racing in Alabama has some historical roots that take it back father in time than many might quickly recognize, reaching all the way back to a 1969 International Motor Sports Association race event just east of Birmingham. "It was our second race," recalled IMSA founder and current Grand-Am Commissioner John Bishop earlier this week from his home near Ocala, Fla. The "Alabama International Sedan" race was a part of IMSA's second-ever race weekend and took place on a track that operationally was barely into its second month, after hatching years earlier in a nearby Anniston, Ala., coffee shop. The track being highly controversial from its beginning, such had little to do with its hosting a bunch of "sporty cars" in what today is typically considered "NASCAR Country." "The press and people there treated us really well and we actually had more people in the stands than we did at our first race (months earlier) at Pocono," Bishop recalled. "After having the welcome mat all but pulled from beneath us at Pocono, we were the beneficiaries of some real southern hospitality. It was great." Perhaps even more obscure than the race in history's consciousness was the International Sedan race's winning driver, Gaston Andrey of Framingham, Mass. - even though that driver's career would eventually stretch into five different decades. Primarily a participant in Sports Car Club of America events, Andrey's Alfa Romero Giulia GTA was among the seven surviving cars of the 22 starting the Nov. 9, 1969, 80-mile contest over the oval and 9-turn infield portion of 4-mile road course that in 1989 was renamed Talladega Superspeedway. "Like Andrey, there were a lot of really good drivers, if not great drivers, in that race," Bishop said. While a look at that race's entrant list might not ring many big-time bells - except perhaps "Famous Amos" Johnson who later became synonymous with "Team Highball" - two particular names just downright jump out at the reader: Bill France Sr. (yep, aka "Big Bill") and Bill France Jr., (left) who raced their respective Ford Cortina Mk. 2 GTs to 17th and ninth-place finishes after qualifying 14th and 12th. According to newspaper accounts of the race, France Sr. had advanced smartly through the field and was running in the top five when he went off course, after which he didn't return. "A mid-Atlantic-area based tuner got a whole load of Ford Cortinas that had gotten smashed up on a cargo ship on the way over from England," Bishop said. "He got them at a good price and fixed some of them up. Bill Sr. and Bill raced a couple them as a lark. You know, there's a lot of racing found in that France-family gene pool." In all, IMSA held eight race weekends over a nine-year period at Talladega, competing in which were the likes of Bob Akin, Don and Bill Whittington, Bob Bondurant, John Paul, Hurley Haywood, Gianpiero Moretti, Mike Keyser, Hans Stuck, Sam Posey, Al Holbert, Johnny Rutherford and still others. The last IMSA-sanctioned Talladega race was won by Peter Gregg, who co-drove a 935/930 with some guy named Brad Frisselle (yep, father to Burt and Brian) in the 1978 6 Hours Of Talladega. "Ah, Talladega. That was the place where they once wouldn't allow women in the garages and pits!" Brad Frisselle once recalled, adding that a special infield chain-link fence compound, made especially for racer's wives and girlfriends, was once found in the track's infield.

The Miami Grand Prix circuit layout back in 1983.