Hickory track brings back memories
By Tom Gillispie
Race fans have their favorite memories of Hickory Motor Speedway. So do drivers.
Often, their best memories are of family.
Two-time track champion Tommy Houston (1975-76) says he enjoyed watching or racing against the greats at Hickory, but his favorite memory?
“My fondest memories are from watching my sons race and my brothers race (at Hickory),” Houston said.
One of Houston’s sons, Marty, was the 1997 Late Model champion at Hickory, but that’s not his favorite Hickory memory. Marty, now the truck chief for Truck Series driver Ty Dillon, says that “I think it's when Dad won a Busch race (at Hickory). It was the day after my grandfather died, his dad, Clyde Houston.
“He came back to Hickory, and it was one of those races where he should never have been in it (for the win). There was a lot of heat that day, and the asphalt was slick, and he got spun out. Somehow he made up two laps. It was one of those days when something special happens; it’s neat when stuff like that happens.”
That dramatic win in the Mountain Dew 400 came on Saturday, April 18, 1992 and was one of Houston’s eight Busch wins at Hickory.
Robert Pressley, like the Houstons, is another former track great who thinks first of family.
“I won 25 or 30 races there, and they were all memorable,” said Pressley, a former standout in the NASCAR Busch (now Nationwide) Series and now the promoter at Kingsport (Tenn.) Speedway. “My proudest moment, though, was when (son) Coleman won the (Bobby) Isaac race (in 2009) at age 18. That was my fondest memory.”
Dennis Setzer, the track champion at Hickory in 1983 and ’93, says it’s hard to pick out one great memory of HMS. There are so many.
“We had a lot of good times at Hickory,” Setzer said. “I was so close to the people I drove with. I drove with my brother in law, Jerry Fox, for one.
“My fondest memory is of the friends I made and enjoyed racing with.”
He remembers people like Jerry Punch, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree at Hickory.
“I remember Jerry racing a bit at Hickory,” Setzer said. “In fact, he started racing for my dad, Jerry Setzer. Jerry’s (Punch’s) mother and my mother worked together in a furniture factory in Conover.
“Dale was just ahead of me; we went to high school, Newton-Conover, together. Andy graduated, I think, in ’77. Dale was ’75 or ’76. I was ’78.”
Jarrett, who joined Jack Ingram as a 2014 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee, says that Punch was involved in his favorite Hickory memory. And it didn’t happen on track. Jarrett was driving a pickup, and Punch and Andy Petree, Jarrett’s crew chief, were holding a race engine on the back of the truck.
Jarrett says his favorite on-track memory at Hickory might be from his first win.
“I came sliding across the start-finish line,” he said. “Coming out of (turn) four, this guy got into me, got me sideways. It was my first win at Hickory. It was a short-track car that Dale Earnhardt had loaned me. Didn’t charge me a penny.”
Punch didn’t have the on-track success at Hickory that Jarrett, Setzer, Pressley and the others had, although he did race a bit there. Punch was an HMS track announcer for awhile, and since 1984 he has covered auto racing and other events for ESPN.
Punch says his favorite memory of HMS is the day he got to be grand marshal. He isn’t even sure what kind of race it was, adding, “It was the Sundrop 200 or 300. My family was there, and we got to ride (around the track) in a limousine.”
Ingram, a two-time track champion and a recent inductee into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, says his opponents were probably his favorite memory of Hickory.
“There wasn't many bad memories for me there,” Ingram has said. “Ned Jarrett had recently started promoting the track when I first went there. Then after '71, I never ran any more regularly, although I’d come back for the big races.
“It was a hotbed for big-name drivers, a lot of (future) hall-of-fame drivers. It seemed that Hickory was the place to be to make a name for yourself, and it helped me along.”
Ingram, who earned the nickname “Iron Man” Jack Ingram from running a bunch of races during the long 1973 Labor Day weekend, started racing at the Hickory dirt track in 1967.
“Ned paved the track halfway through the season,” Ingram said. “I had a chance to run every race in '68 and won the track championship. It was an unbelievable racetrack.”
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