Curtis Turner

Known as "The Blonde Blizzard of Virginia" Curtis' story is very familiar, born in Floyd on 12^th April 1924, in a remote area of the Bent Mountain, Virginia and his love of driving started at a very early age, long before he was old enough to have a driver licence. As with many of the mountain folk Curtis’ father, Morton, ran a productive still, making illicit moonshine to help provide for his family and it is rumoured that Curtis was the ‘delivery boy’, rumoured only because there is no proof as he was never caught by the local police or the Federal agents always using his phenomenal driving skills to out-run them. His amazing skills at driving were honed whilst exporting moonshine and there was a time when he was demonstrating these skills in a Cadillac by completing a 180 degree sliding turn between several bottles of liquor without knocking over a single bottle, this became know as the "Bootlegger Turn".

Curtis began his racing career in 1946 on a small track in the Mount Airy area in North Carolina, he lost the race, coming 18^th in an 18 car race but not deterred he went on to win his next race and this was the start of an incredible over 350 wins at various racetracks that ended upon his death on 4^th October 1970. Curtis was killed in a plane crash when his plane went into a mountainside near Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

At the time of writing he is the only NASCAR driver to win two Grand National races in a row. He led every lap from the pole position at Rochester, New York and Charlotte North Carolina in1952. He is the only driver to win twenty five major NASCAR races in one season whilst driving the same car, the #26, twenty two in the convertible division and three with a top welded on. This included the Southern 500. He is the only driver to win a major NASCAR race that was red-flagged because all of the other cars were rendered out of action. He won by default, this was at Asheville-Weaverville, North Carolina in 1956. He was the first driver to climb Pike’s Peak in under fifteen minutes in a 1962 Ralph Moody Ford. Again he was the first to win the American 500 at Rockingham, North Carolina and the first to qualify for a NASCAR Grand National race at a speed of more than 180 mph; this was the Daytona 500 in 1967.

Not only was he a very talented race car driver, he was also an excellent business man who became a self-made millionaire dealing in buying and selling timberlands. He made and lost many fortunes during his short life and in 1960 he had the idea to build his own Speedway track at Charlotte. With barely enough money to buy the property he bought it anyway but was to be edged out by other investors shortly after the track opened, losing everything. Earlier he has been banned by NASCAR for trying to organise the drivers into a union but he was later allowed to return to the NASCAR racing. He came out of retirement only to race when the money was right and had planned to race in the National 500 at Charlotte in 1970 but unfortunately he was killed.

His awards are:- named as one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998, inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1992 and inducted in to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2006.

Curtis was a colourful personality, combining "hard living, hard driving and hard partying". He never won a championship ( he never ran a full season) but he never lost a party, sometimes going directly from a party to race and returning to the party when the race was over!

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Curtis Turner : Wikipedia
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