How Hillsborough missed becoming Talladega

“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.”