“By the late 1960s… pressure from local church groups, who didn’t like racing on Sundays, led Bill France to look elsewhere as he sought to build a larger, faster track. Unable to persuade local authorities to expand the Hillsborough site, he turned instead to a small town in Alabama and built the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.
“Richard Petty won the final race at Occoneechee-Orange Speedway on Sept. 15, 1968; the next year, its slot in Nascar’s schedule would go to Talladega.”
— From “A Relic From Racing’s Early Years, Repurposed” by Robert Peele in the New York Times (July 7, 2012)
And this follows Peele’s Altamahaw-datelined “The Wary Detente that Saved a Track from Extinction” (July 6).
Impressive coverage, especially for a paper that insists on spelling NASCAR “Nascar.”