When Kurt Busch won last weekend at Martinsville, he brought the number 41 its first victory in Sprint Cup competition since 1965. To put that in perspective, that victory was in the very first race at Rockingham, the beloved North Carolina track that has been off the Sprint Cup schedule since 2004. And who, possibly, could have won the American 500 on a cool Halloween day?
A driver by the name of Curtis Turner.
Kurt Busch’s nickname is the “Outlaw”, but in reality Turner was a true outlaw. He was barred forever from NASCAR in 1961 because he tried to start a drivers union. You might be saying “What? Why did he try to start a drivers union?” Let me elaborate.
Turner often made fortunes in the timber business and raced as a hobby. He was arguably the greatest character in NASCAR history, reputedly holding week long parties with his sidekick Joe Weatherly, calling every male “pops” and every female “baby doll” and rarely racing without being either hung over, drunk, or getting drunk. He supposedly loved to pour out the water from his driver bottle and sneak in some 7 and 7.
Dispute all of this Turner was a legend, winning 17 races in the Cup series and was the Kyle Busch of the short lived NASCAR Convertible Series.
Although he never won a championship in either series as he, like many drivers in those days, didn’t care for the championship, he won 38 races in 78 starts in the Convertible Series and was the very first NASCAR driver to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, who called him the “Babe Ruth of NASCAR.” He even won the biggest and most important stock car race of the year before Daytona International Speedway opened its doors, winning the Southern 500 in 1956.
In the early 1960’s, Turner, along with Bruton Smith, who has called Turner the greatest driver he’s ever seen, built Charlotte Motor Speedway, but lost a lot of money in building and hosting races. To put it simply because if I didn’t we’d be here all day, the Teamsters approached Turner about financing him a loan, with the only caveat being he needed to form a union of race drivers. Turner recruited two other ringleaders in helping him form a union, Tim Flock and Fireball Roberts. Only Turner among these three is not in the NASCAR Hall of Fame (Turner has been on every ballot so far however), and although this was in the twilight of Flock’s career all three were arguably NASCAR’s biggest stars. You could make an argument for Lee and Richard Petty but Lee had been in a horrible accident that year and rarely raced afterwards, while Richard wasn’t as huge as he was five years later and was still fairly new to the sport.
It all came to a head with NASCAR founder Big Bill France famously announcing that he’d plow up Daytona and plant corn in the infield before letting a union come into the sport, and banned all involved with it. Eventually Fireball Roberts and any other driver involved switched sides, with the exception of Turner and Flock. They stayed banned for life for four years until they were reinstated in 1965.
It isn’t like France had decided to be nice or anything, rather his hand was simply forced. Chrysler had pulled out that year. This is what I like to call the era of toddler automobile makers. They would throw a tantrum and quit NASCAR for a year for whatever reason and come crawling back because their competition won a lot of races and got lot of press from it, which left NASCAR without, for the only time in its history, the name Petty.
In 1964 NASCAR had also gotten a lot of bad press due to an uptick in fatalities, among them were the two most popular drivers on the circuit. Those two were two time defending champion Joe Weatherly, (the only other driver to pass away while defending the championship was Alan Kulwicki) and the superstar of NASCAR Fireball Roberts. It should be noted that after Weatherly’s death and after stepping up his game in the aftermath of Turner’s life-time ban, Turner changed. According to most accounts, he was never the same again.
The only two really big name drivers left at this point were NASCAR Hall of Famers Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett. However, Junior was a part time driver, and while many loved Ned he couldn’t carry NASCAR by itself. Therefore Big Bill didn’t have much choice but to reinstate Turner. Flock was reinstated as well but at the age of 41 and having not won in nine years, he choose to retire, which leads us to Rockingham.
Turner had been hired by the Wood Brothers to run a second car at “The Rock”. On race day morning, the legend goes that Leonard Wood, who took racing incredibly seriously and was no nonsense, found Turner sleeping on the hood of the 41 Ford after a night of hard partying. Turner woke up, bid Leonard a good morning, then went out and won the race.
Turner never won again, and he perished five years later in a mysterious plane crash. To this day nobody is quite certain what the cause was. His legacy is secure in NASCAR, where it is likely a Hall of Fame induction will come at some point in the near future. Charlotte, after the union failed and the Teamsters and Bruton Smith pulled out, was taken over by the public until Smith came back 13 years later and bought it, where it remains today as the model NASCAR track, a home track for everybody involved in the sport.
Kurt Busch is in no way, shape, or form the same kind of Outlaw Curtis Turner was. But it was nothing but poetic that his victory in the 41 came at Turner’s home track of Martinsville, (he was from nearby Roanoke), and he brings a level of excitement to the sport like Turner did. It’s always entertaining to watch him race whether he’s in first or 41st.
