Friday, November 8, 2013

Youngster still gets around (a Winston Cup Preview story)

Note: A story from the Winston Cup Preview in the early 20th century. It was written for the Winston-Salem Journal.
YOUNGSTER STILL GETS AROUND
By Tom Gillispie
Special to the Journal
Peter Franson gets around, walker or no walker.
While thousands of his fellow fans were trying to get autographs yesterday at the Winston Cup Preview at Joel Coliseum, Peter and his father, Jon, of Mebane were checking out the cars in the Coliseum Annex.
Peter, 8, would leave his walker outside and climb inside the one car with a door, the No. 7 show car for the Jimmy Spencer team. With a friendly photographer in tow, he’d slide in and out of the seats, grinning ear to ear. Cameras would snap, and he’d check out another car, especially the No. 97 of Roush Racing and Kurt Busch.
Peter is a veteran of the racing world. Sam Wilson,  a friend of Jon Franson, invited Peter to be the poster boy for Fairlane Acres Speedway, a go-kart track in Dover, Del. Then a friend of Wilson’s, Roush show-car driver Jeff Isom, drove the Roush Racing show-car of Mark Martin to Mebane.
Peter, who was born with spina bifida, an open spinal column, had just undergone hip surgery.
During the visit, a Roush fan was born.
“He parked the Mark Martin car on the road where we live in Mebane, and Peter was sitting on the porch wearing full leg casts,” said Franson, who carries mail for the postal service in Chapel Hill. “The No. 6 car drove up, and he got to sit in it, and now he roots for all of the Roush cars.”
In the Annex, the Busch car was sitting beside another Roush Racing entry, Matt Kenseth’s No. 17, and the No. 6 Martin car was in the next row. But Peter was concentrating on the red-and-silver Busch Ford and the blue-and-white Spencer Dodge.
Spencer doesn’t drive for Roush, but the easy opening door made the car mighty appealing. Again and again, he gleefully got in, inviting onlookers to join him.
Peter’s involvement with racing goes even further. He sang the national anthem at his church, and the song was recorded. Since Peter was the poster boy for Fairlane Acres last year, Wilson played Peter’s rendition each week. Jon Franson said it was a good version.
“He has perfect pitch,” the father said proudly.
Through Wilson, the Fransons also got to know the Petty family, and that led to the family’s support of Kyle Petty’s Victory Junction Gang. The VJG camp, which is scheduled to open next year in Randleman, is for children with special problems, and Franson said he hopes to take Peter there next year.
But that’s not all. Franson said that Peter will be a poster boy for the Victory Junction Gang, and his VJG advertisement with Winston Cup star Bobby Labonte will appear on television early in the 2003 season.
And watch out for Busch and Spencer this year, because Peter may have the magic touch. A few weeks after he sat in the Mark Martin show car, Martin won at Charlotte. Then when he sat in Busch’s Cup car last year, Busch won at Bristol.
“What’s your favorite number?” Peter was asked.
He replied shyly, “97.” He grinned broadly.
Franson said that the neurosurgery and therapy have helped his son, and Peter had no problems getting around and being sociable with the Preview crowd.
“He’s spent most of his life in hospitals, and most of his friends are doctors, nurses and physical therapists.”
The Fransons don’t know how much their son will improve. “All the surgery that can be done has been done,” Franson said.
But Peter doesn’t let it slow him down much when it comes to racing. The family plans to go to time trials at Martinsville, Rockingham and maybe Darlington.
If there’s a race car sitting idle somewhere, the  young man from Mebane may jump in it.

And if it’s the 97, so much the better.
Contact me at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.

More entries from TARJ
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

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Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Gant put the hammer down



Eternally youthful Gant put the hammer down

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When Mark Martin won a pole earlier this year at Dover, he was asked if he wanted to break the Cup record for oldest winner.
“One, I wouldn’t want to beat Harry Gant’s record,” Martin, 53, said in a FOX News story. “He’s the man, in my eyes. On the other side of that, records are records. That’s why we do what we do. I’m neutral on that. I certainly respect to the hilt Harry Gant and really liked him and enjoyed racing with him and liked talking to him off the racetrack.”
Gant, nicknamed Handsome Harry, holds most of NASCAR’s “oldest” records, including the oldest driver to collect his first career Cup victory (42 years, 105 days) and the oldest driver to win a Cup race (52 years, 219 days). He is the second oldest driver to win a Busch (Nationwide) race behind Dick Trickle.
When the Taylorsville native was winning 18 Cup races between 1979 and 1994, he came off as a quiet, humble man. His post-victory press conferences featured answers about tires, sway bars and carburetors.
Certainly, he didn’t talk himself up or attack fellow competitors when media folk came his way.
Harry Phil Gant, born Jan. 10, 1940, was really good at two things, racing and carpentering. When he wasn’t around the racetrack or a race shop, he was probably fixing a roof or building something.
On track, Gant got his start on Hickory Motor Speedway’s dirt track.
In the winter of 1963, he and friends built a Hobby car and took turns driving. In 1965, Gant took over full time and won the track division championship. When the track was paved in 1967, Gant excelled on asphalt, ran Late Model and got his first Sportsman division win.
Gant was Hickory’s track champion in 1969 and ’73, and there’s a Harry Gant Grandstand at the track.
Up into the early ’70s, Gant raced his red No. 77 Chevy against Sportsman standouts like Jack Ingram, Morgan Shepherd, Tommy Houston, Bosco Lowe, Bob Pressley, Red Farmer, Sam Ard, Ned Setzer, L.D. Ottinger, Butch Lindley and more.
Ingram always has said that Gant was the one driver he felt comfortable, and safe, racing with.
One year in the early ’70s, Gant was racing at Columbia on Thursday nights, Kingsport or Asheville on Friday nights and at Hickory on Saturday nights. He ran 92 races, won 14 and finished second to Red Farmer in Late Model Sportsman points. And he found time for his home-building business.
Here are some other Harry highlights:
>>> Gant won more than 300 races in NASCAR’s Late Model Sportsman division (now called the Nationwide Series), claimed national championships in 1972, ’73 and ’74 and finished second in ’69, ’76 and ’77.
>>> Gant was 39 when he tried NASCAR Cup racing full-time in 1979. He picked a bad year to run for rookie of the year, since Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte (who combined for nine Cup titles) were also rookies, and Earnhardt won top rookie.
>>> Gant finished second 10 times before getting his first Cup win at Martinsville on April 25, 1982.
>>> He won 18 times in Cup, 21 in Busch. In 1984, he had his best season in Cup points, finishing second to Labonte.
>>> And who finished second at Daytona in 1984 when Richard Petty got win No. 200? Yep, Harry Gant.
>>> Gant’s one big-time championship came in the International Race of Champions (IROC) series in 1985. He tied Darrell Waltrip in points but won by finishing higher than DW in the final race of the year. He beat Labonte in a photo-finish at Michigan International Speedway. It was Gant’s only race victory in four years and 15 races in the all-star series.
>>> Gant became known as Mr. September in 1991 when he won all four September Cup races (Darlington, Richmond, Dover and Martinsville) and two Busch races (Richmond and Dover) at age 51. (His crew chief was another Hickory-area lad, Andy Petree.)
>>> His last Cup victory came Aug. 16, 1992 at Michigan when he was 52. He left Cup in 1994, returned for a few truck races in 1996 and then retired for good.
>>> And in 2006, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. His presenter was Ned Jarrett, and one of his co-inductees was the late Dale Earnhardt, his rookie competition in 1979.
There were perks, of course. Movie folk Hal Needham (Smokey and the Bandit), Burt Reynolds and Paul Newman were originally involved in the Skoal Bandit team in 1981, and Gant often got to visit movie sites and make cameo appearances.
“I’d stay there three days, have a little stand-in part or something,” he said for a 2009 Sports Illustrated Q&A. “Being around it and seeing how it worked, being around people you never thought you'd be around your whole life, that was cool.”
Gant returned to Hickory for the 2011 Dwight Huffman Memorial race.
“It was great to have him back at the facility,” track promoter Kevin Piercy said. “He was an icon then, and he probably still is.”
One other thing, when Martin won that pole at age 53, that wasn’t the Cup record for oldest pole winner. In 1994, Gant won the Bristol pole at 54.
Tom Gillispie, the author of “Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr.”, writes about racing at Hickory Motor Speedway for HDR Sports. You can reach him at nc3022@yahoo.com or search Facebook for the HDR / The Inside Line page.

Contact: I can be reached at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.

More entries from TARJ
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

EDITOR@WORK blog entries 

Entries from The Dog Blog
More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie