Published: March 27, 2007 12:28 am      

Scott's legend lives on in NASCAR

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Chevrolet’s Impala has come full circle.

Kurt Busch won the NASCAR Nextel Cup Food City 500 Sunday and he pocketed a respectable $179,400 with an impressive check presented moments after the race along with a dazzling trophy.

Forty-four years earlier, Wendell Scott also won a NASCAR points race. It took two days for him — instead of Buck Baker — to be declared the winner, however, and Scott never got the real trophy. He was given a few hundred dollars for his triumph.

With 600 victories in NASCAR racing at the Grand National, Winston Cup, and Nextel Cup levels, Chevy holds more checkered flags than any other brand. Two of the most significant are the most recent and another earned on a one-mile dirt track in Jacksonville, Florida.

Both won in a Chevy Impala – not only generations apart but perhaps in different worlds. Busch, 21, is already wealthy, with more than $11 million earned in 83 starts. Scott was 28 before he ever entered a race and finished his career with winnings of slightly more than $226,000. He competed in 495 events.

Scott was born in 1921 in Danville, Virginia, just across the line from North Carolina. As an African-American who learned automotive skills as an Army mechanic during World War II he found limited means to use that talent.

First, he began as a taxi driver. He and his wife, Mary, needed every cent to raise their growing family including children Wendell Jr., Frank, Ann, Deborah, Kay, Sybil, and Michael.

All had a chance to attend college and Frank became a highly-respected coach at Laurel Park High School, where his teams have won more than 500 games.

Wendell Scott had a talent not only for fixing cars but also driving them. To supplement his income he often worked nights as a moonshine runner. He developed quite a reputation as a fast driver. Thirteen speeding tickets, however, cost him his chauffeur’s license.

In the summer of 1949, Scott got a career-changing choice. A promoter was looking for a likely African-American racer to compete at the Danville Fairgrounds. He asked the local police for a recommendation and Wendell Scott was named as the man too fast to catch.

He borrowed a car, finished third, won $50 and began his racing career. Scott always had limited funding and often used sons or neighbors for pit crew members.

He usually either drove his own car to the tracks or hauled it himself. His wife cooked the food for family and friends, saving money, and keeping in mind how difficult it was at the time for blacks to find restaurants to eat in the region.

Scott dominated local racing and won some 128 races before making another “big” jump. He moved to Grand National (now Nextel Cup) competition in 1961 and won his first points race two years later in Jacksonville, Florida on December 1, 1963.

During that time, NASCAR used a split schedule so the ’63 win was included as part of the 1964 season.

Scott was able to finish consistently in the top 10 in points, racing against stars such as Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, “Fireball” Roberts, and Fred Lorenzen, among others. His best season was in ’66 when he finished sixth in points although his best earning year was ’69, when he won $47,451.

A serious crash at Talladega in ’73 virtually ended his competitive career and he worked for many years at his Danville garage. Scott passed away from spinal cancer in 1990.

He usually drove a Ford but on one historic day in 1963 he piloted his Chevrolet Impala to victory — if not to victory lane.

Busch earned his triumph in a machine labeled the “Car of Tomorrow”. Scott blazed a trail into history in yesterday’s Impala.

The legend will live as long as stock car racing.