Sun and clouds mixed. A stray afternoon thunderstorm is possible. High around 95F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..
A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 72F. Winds light and variable.
There are very few long-lasting secrets within the NASCAR community. Drivers and crewmen move around frequently — shop to shop, office to office — so everyone eventually knows everyone else’s business. It almost never happens that teams and individuals keep things quiet for long.
But there’s one long-lasting secret that might outlive us all: Where is the original trophy for Wendell Scott’s historic Cup Series victory at Jacksonville Speedway Park? It vanished more than 59 years ago and nobody seems any closer to finding it today than when it went missing.
NASCAR’s first full-time Black driver got his only major victory in early December of 1963 on the rutty, dusty, poorly lit, half-mile track in northeast Florida. The Virginian started 15th for the 200-lap, 100-miler and stayed competitive enough to be scored second when Richard Petty dropped out with engine failure at lap 175. Scott inherited the point, led the final 25 laps without dispute and was looking for the checkered flag over what would have been an historic victory.
Instead, he was scored third behind popular white drivers (both long deceased) Buck Baker and Jack Smith. Absolutely certain he’d finally won in his 114th career start, Scott requested a scoring review. (It was not an unusual request; scoring disputes were fairly common back then). After a review that went deep into the night, officials found that Scott and his No. 34 Chevrolet had run 202 laps rather than the scheduled 200. Without any ceremony and barely an apology, he became a Cup Series winner for the first time.
NASCAR blamed the confusion on human error … which might have been a valid excuse in most cases. But Scott and his all-Black family team had been racing in the South long enough and had endured enough racism to feel there was more to this than simple human error. Accustomed to harsh treatment from some officials and many competitors, he noticed that nobody in charge that night wanted him in Victory Lane with the young, attractive, white trophy girl as she delivered the trophy and accepted the traditional photo-op kisses. Scott suspected the “confusion” was just a delaying tactic while Baker did Victory Lane and the fans went home happy.
Hardly anyone was still around when officials quietly set things straight. Scott got his winner’s check, but there was no sign of the trophy. It’s been suggested that Baker, unaware of the dispute, took it when he left. Once he learned of the scoring review, he publicly acknowledged Scott as the winner. Even so, to this day, the Hall of Famer’s family says it doesn’t have the trophy. Nobody at the speedway (which closed in 1973) ever claimed knowledge of it.
Years later, around the 50th anniversary of Scott’s victory, his family got replica trophies from two racing fan clubs near Jacksonville. In his later years, well before being posthumously inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2014, Scott said the trophy would have meant as much as the check. In 2020, as the story of his late father’s bittersweet victory reemerged yet again, son Franklin Scott asked NASCAR for an “official replica” trophy.
“NASCAR didn’t have anything to do with the two trophies the fan clubs gave us,” said Scott, a 1970 BA graduate of North Carolina Central University and a 1974 M.Ed. graduate of the University of Virginia. “We’d like NASCAR to have a ceremony for maybe 10 minutes and give us a trophy of their own. There’s your easy fix right there. That would make it right. And let me tell you: with everything going on right now (concerning George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement and Bubba Wallace’s emergence as a polarizing driver), that little ceremony would help them as much as it would help us.”
So it was that last August, shortly before the 400-miler at Daytona Beach, NASCAR executives gave Scott’s family another replica of the missing Jacksonville trophy. Using photos of trophies often distributed during that era, the new, fine, shiny piece is thought to closely resemble the original that disappeared from Victory Lane that night in Jacksonville.
The pre-race presentation fulfilled one of Wendell Scott’s predictions (he died of spinal cancer in 1990).
“I may not be with you at the time,” he once told his family, “but someday I’ll get that trophy. Just because I might lose the race doesn’t mean I’m defeated.”
Rocky Mount native Al “Buddy” Pearce has spent 53 years covering motorsports, from go-karts to Formula One and everything in between. He worked briefly as a young Evening Telegram intern before becoming a full-time racing writer in 1969. He’s the stock car editor forwww.autoweek.com and is finishing 50 First Victories, his 13th NASCAR book. He’ll be here on Saturdays with insight, history, opinions, news, questions, and critiques about motorsports. He’s in Newport News, Virginia, at omanoran123@gmail.com.
www.RockyMountTelegram.com 1151 Falls Road Suite 2008 Rocky Mount, NC 27804 Main Phone: 252-446-5161 Customer Care Phone: 252-329-9505
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Invalid password or account does not exist
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the e-mail address listed on your account.
Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
A receipt was sent to your email.