Winston Cup Museum Full Tour: His Father Brought Winston To NASCAR! (Unseen Vintage Pictures)

It's a miracle that he just that he survived the accident. He hear all the stories about what it was like to work for Junior. What was it like to live with Junior? Well, you know, um we're here at the Winston Cup Museum with Culver Seagraves, who is the man to lead us through this place. Why don't you give a little bit of background as to who your dad was and why people may remember him? My dad was Ralph Craves. He's the gentleman that got NASCAR and Winston married back in 1971. The sponsorship with R.J. Reynolds basically came about. Federal government in 1969 had um banned television advertising for the and radio advertising for the cigarette companies. And so they had $70 million to spend. They brought in their five top division managers from around the country. And one of those was my father. He was approached by Junior Johnson to sponsor his race team. Junior, you know, came in and told him that he needed $150,000 a year to sponsor his team. And my dad said, "Well, I got 70 million. What else have you got?" Junior told him, he said, "Well, you need to talk to Bill France, senior." Dad and Bill France, Senior, they uh they cut a deal and um basically R.J. Reynolds sponsored the point fund which became the Winston Cup. That's a fascinating backstory that a lot of people probably don't know about. Now they do. This is the first thing you have in here. You can see it from the road. What is this car? Well, that is a 1969 Dodge Daytona built by Petty Enterprises for Dave Marcus. Uh when Dave um when NASCAR outlawed that car, Dave sold it to Goodies. It became the Goodies uh um show car. They painted it petty blue because Richard was their spokesperson and they used it until they got out of racing. [clears throat] Then Will bought it. Winston had to get out of uh racing in 2003. Uh Will and JKS um painted the car up and in the Winston colors and they took it to Homestead for the last race and Richard Petty the King uh drove it uh they called it the final lap. Uh he drove it and then Jack Roush drove Matt Kenz's car around the track for one lap uh after afterwards. So, you had your first Winston Cup champion and your last Winston Cup champion. So, is that an authentic Petty Enterprises Hemi? Uh, no. It's not a Petty Enterprises Hemi, but the car is a Petty Enterprises car. We have not been in here yet, so we have no idea what we're expecting. You got my favorite paint scheme back there. Which one's that? The uh the spiky Kevin Harvick car. Oh, okay. Yeah. The mural goes all the way around the building and it starts in 1971 and ends in 2003 and it's got the highlighted pictures uh that tell the story of Winston's involvement with the 33-year history. I was at this race. I remember that when they ran those cars. Uh-huh. I was uh seven, I think. Oh, really? Yeah. That's the only part of that I remember that Richard Hilders driving's car and playing with trucks in the mud cuz it rained that weekend. Toy trucks in the mud. Yep. Funny the things you remember when you're little. That car right there uh Bobby Allison driving for Junior Johnson in 1972. Um I was uh working in Junior's pit crew. I was 15 years old. Still have the Coca-Cola pants and I can still wear them. Are you in this picture? Uh, no, I'm not in that picture, but that's uh Francis Allen, who was uh our parts guy. Herb Nab, who's our crew chief, Turkey Mitten, and that's Fred Johnson, Junior Johnson's uh brother doing the jacking. I've never heard of Junior Johnson's brother before. Yeah, Fred. They actually said Fred was a better driver than Junior, and even Junior said. So, why didn't he drive? Uh, I don't know. Uh, but Junior always said Fred was a better driver than him. Huh. Are a lot of these pictures pulled from like the the Winston? All these pictures were uh from the Winston archives. R.J. Reynolds had a photographer. His name was Doure Mobly. Um he was a professional photographer. He went to all the races and uh did all the photographs for R.J. Reynolds. These are pictures I don't recall ever seeing before and they're really high quality. What's this car? Uh that's one of the Winston show cars. um Hollywood uh was a gentleman named Mark Rogers that worked uh at RJ Reynolds Sports Marketing and uh he died of cancer and uh he was just one of uh one of everybody's favorite people and so um Will uh put this car in the museum as a tribute to him. What's the backstory on this Wendle Scott car? Well, probably the best race car Wendle Scott ever had. racing in the uh 1973 D Winston 500. He was in a crash I think on lap 13 and uh he was in the hospital. In fact, it's a miracle that he that he survived the accident. But uh he had his life savings in this race car and it basically ruined him financially and uh and basically ended his racing career. Um, the car was uh sold by the Scott family to a gentleman down in Georgia. He contacted Will and uh Will went down, bought it and Wendle's ramp truck. We're in the process of getting the ramp truck running. We're going to leave it patina and everything like it is, but we want to get it running so we can take it around and show it. But we tal talked about maybe redoing this car, but then we decided it was a better uh display leaving it like it was. Oh yeah. Where did it sit outside for so long to up in Danville at uh Wendell's shop? Oh, so this was just like in the woods or something behind his [clears throat] place. And that Wow. It's a home and Moody I don't know if I don't know if it's a whole Moody car, but it's got a Holman Moody switch plate on it. Odds are it was I mean this is the right era for it to be a homemoody car, isn't it? I think it was some of the uh funny money that RJ Reynolds uh threw out to the fans. And then this car, this last car that Kyle Petty won a race in, uh Kyle was here for a book signing and uh I asked him to autograph the car. Whenever we get drivers in here, we get them to autograph their pictures on the mural and autograph their cars. And uh he told me, he said, "Funny story, it's the last car I ever won in." Prior to that, did he not know where that car went? It probably didn't have a clue. Is this the car that he won all those races at Rockingham with that? That I don't know. I just know it was the last car that he won uh won a race in. Number 10. How about this one? That's a Bill Elliot car. It looks like it was raced. Yeah, it was definitely raced. Like it was raced and then partially cleaned up. Like they were they rubbed the rubber just off the numbers. That's pretty funny. It looks like it was part of the graphic. Are all these cars owned by the museum or something? Everything that's in here is owned by the museum. We have had some that are online, but these are all property of the museum. And what's really kind of cool, you can look at this show car here. This is basically this car was more of a stock car when you look at it. It's got the glass windshield. Um, you know, and then we're these are all Lexan. The primitive how primitive it was on the uh interior and stuff compared to the to the new cars. The holding booty switch. Yeah. What was the origin of this show car? cuz I know that some of the Winston show cars came from other teams. Most of the Winston show cars. I think the Fords came from uh came from the Wood Brothers. Petty Enterprises buil did the Chryslers and Junior Johnson did the Chevrolets. That makes sense. The ones I have seen were Chevys and they were Junior Johnson cars. Yeah. I think it's neat. You can see the factory bumper covers how they just kind of made a panel to cover up the tail lights and riveted on there. And you know from 10 ft you can't tell, but up here you can shell. And then I got Bobby to autograph his car when he was here. Is there any significance to this car? No, not that I know of. It's just one of the cars that he raced. Huh. Now, the Earnhard car, uh, we took it to, uh, Goodwood in 2019. It's still got the Goodwood sticker on the, uh, on the windshield. How was this car acquired? Um, bought it from Richard Childers. And, uh, that is a two Nhard seat. And uh Kurt Shelberdine um uh was telling me that uh they had a certain number of seats that uh Dale really liked. The Smok and Joe's car is the last car that Junior Johnson built in Engle Hollow. We had a um an agreement with Junior when we first started uh Smok and Joe's in with Travis Carter uh to build our race cars and our engines. And uh that was Super Speedway car. the no bull car. Uh that car was u when the government decided that Smok and Joe's no longer could be on a car. We switched to Winston. I was Jimmy Spencer's team manager working for Travis Carter. Um, that particular paint scheme was never used but one time and that was car ran at the last race of the 1997 season at Atlanta and Will Spencer that owns the museum came up to me and said that if Jimmy doesn't wad this car up during the race, I want to buy it. And when the race was over, he bought that car from us. And that's basically the way it sit uh when it uh when it came off the racetrack after the Atlanta race. I just noticed the the bead rolled Thunderbird logo in the package tray back here is a really cool detail. This little extra effort makes these things what they are. What was this cutaway car from? The cutaway car was from ES was used by ESPN uh when they during the races they'd have a crew chief like Tim Brewer, Jeff Hamlin or whatever and they would explain uh what was going on during the race to give the fans kind of a bird's eye view for what made the race cars kind of tick. Think engine will start in any gear. Whoever made these labels was very confident. Yeah, I think it'll start. I don't know though. This one thing looks like it's seen some race use. What's the significance of all the motorcycles? Uh, the motorcycles were owned by Zach Reynolds, who was the grandson of RJ Reynolds. RJ Reynolds to back the company. Uh, Zach was a motorcycle enthusiast and a um racing enthusiast. He built the race bikes and raced them. Will Spencer that owns a museum grew up around Zack. Zach was killed in a plane crash. So when Will got successful, he started buying back the bikes and refurbishing them. So being RJ Reynolds, such a big part of Winston Salem and this, we uh we brought some of the bikes in here. A lot of people like seeing them and stuff and we're getting ready to move them down to our shop and welcome and uh put two or three more race cars in here and all that. Uh paraphernalia. There's all my dad's stuff. Was your dad uh into racing prior to any of these sponsorships or Yeah. Um my dad drove the pace car at Old Dominion Speedway in Manasses, Virginia when I was a youngster. He uh raced at Bowman Grey Stadium a couple of times before they moved to Washington DC. Uh Al Gore owned Old Dominion. uh um from 1952 till they shut it down in 2012. He's not related to the politician Allegore. Okay. I was going to say like who owned that? Not even close. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. That makes sense. In fact, the guard rail that's out in the uh in the front lobby came from part of it came from Old Dominion and it's painted in the Winston red colors. Huh. That R.J. Reynolds supplied. Marty Robin Shan and my dad's shoes. Marty had given my dad a pair of uh crocodile loafers. and uh they they did that for a little photo op. So, how old were you when this stuff was happening? And well, I started 1972. I was 15 and uh basically uh from the time I was 15 till I went to college, uh I'd spend my summers at Junior Johnson's uh working until it was time to come home and uh get ready to play high school football. and um worked on the race team uh on the pit crew and uh I was really good free help and uh Did you stay at Junior's? I stayed with Junior stay with Junior and Flossy. Oh, that must have been an experience. Oh, it was I mean they were like my adopted parents. In fact, Flossy um up until uh the day she died, uh I took her to uh all the dad was Dad and T- Wayne were on the Hall of Fame ballot and then they were removed and then dad was on the Landmark ballot. He won the Landmark award in 2021 and um so uh I would take Flossy to and my my dad's sister, she's 98. I would take those two ladies to the Hall of Fame voting day and to the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies every year and they had a had a really good time because Flossy had nine drivers in the Hall of Fame, her and Junior. Wow. Yeah. You got to witness a lot of stuff that people never see like living with you hear all the stories about what it was like to work for Junior. What was it like to live with Junior? Well, you know, um Junior's one of the one of the smartest men that I ever met. We were in uh [clears throat] Detroit visiting General Motors and uh they were testing some Cossworth engines and uh we were there. They were running them on the dyno and uh Junior cocked his head and he looked at the engineer and he said, "That motor's getting ready to blow up." And the engineer looked at him and said, "There's no way. All the gauges, it's running perfectly. Everything's great." and he hadn't gotten that out of his mouth before the motor hang grenaded all over the the room. And uh the guy looked at Junior and he said, "How in the world did you know that was going to happen?" And Junior just looked at him and said, "It didn't sound right to me." And he could tell Junior um could tell his race car from other race cars on the track by the sound. Cuz he had a unique set of headers that only he ran and nobody else did. And uh um that's one of the reasons he went from Chevrolet to Ford uh because he'd sent a set of heads up to Chevrolet. And I can't remember if they went to Hendricks or they went to Childress's and uh they weren't supposed to. And uh when Junior found out about it, he uh called Edel Ford and switched from Chevrolet to Ford. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. I know when you watch those old broadcasts, you can hear his cars out of the pack from any of them like, you know, they got the anger D sound. Jr. was uh he was an extremely innovative person and his philosophy was it's not cheating until you get caught. Um in 1972 um they confiscated our uh gas tank. Said we had a large gas tank and uh Junior told him it wasn't a large gas tank and they basically made him extremely mad. And so he got in the car while the inspector was holding the gas tank, cranked the car up, drove it out of the racetrack onto the trailer, and took it back to Wilsboro. Gas tank wasn't big, but there was fuel lines run through the roll bars. And uh so, you know, he said, "I told you there was nothing wrong with my gas tank." And uh but lot lot of neat things like that. And that's to me I think that that's where um with the rules and everything. I know everything has to change but they've kind of to me in today's racing they've kind of handicapped the crew chiefs and uh and and people they they don't have a lot of leeway to do things anymore like they did back in the day. Um just like uh you know they used to didn't have a post-race inspection. If you made it through pre-race you were golden. And uh you know that's when they would uh um hide uh lead shot in the uh in the roll cage or uh you know one of the things we did was we have a cool ice cooler full of lead and when first pit stop we change that cooler out and put a cooler with water in and uh and take that lead out and you'd probably have 50 75 lbs lighter than Yeah. So anything to get a competitive edge. Did you ever uh witness any funny stuff like that that never got caught other than like the the cooler again? Oh, there there were there were a lot of things that that were done. I mean, you know, and uh they would hide lead shot in the uh in the car in the in the roll cage. And so, um, they have a trap door and when the car was making its warm-up laps before the race started with the pace car, they'd pull, uh, the wire and it would open the trap door and the lead shot would fall out of the car and the all the tracks were banked and the lead shot would roll to the bottom of the track and, uh, you know, uh, your car would be maybe 100 pounds lighter or whatever. And uh you know uh we weren't the only ones that were doing it back then. It was it was kind of common I believe. President Carter with Bobby Donnie Allison and my mom and dad. The first Super Team DW and Neil Bonnet. My dad with Junior's Dog Red Dog. Uh Carcraft Magazine Allstar. My dad won that. Marty Robbins and Don Wyinners. Uh Wes Broth, my dad T. Wayne and Dan Henley, [clears throat] dad Marty, that's Tallaladega Super Speedway in the background. Larry Carrier that built Bristol Dragway and the Bristol Motor Speedway. my mom and dad in his tea bucket. That's a motor that came from Richard Childress's Bill Jr. and uh my dad and Paul Cameron from uh there's dad with um Charlie Pride at the Vantage Championship when they sponsored Vantage Golf. Bobby and dad. dad with Jeff Bird and Brian Tracy from NH. These pictures are awesome. Yeah. Dad and Tim Richmond, dad and Dale Emman. That was at uh believe that was Rockingham. Dad with the King and Governor Holless Houser when he was governor of North Carolina. Uh they used to R.J. Reynolds used to give the crew chief that sat on the pole a toolbox. Dad and Junior at a still. They named a road after my dad in Watkins Glenn. Uh that's Jerry Clara. That was at the Winston Racing Series banquet. That's Marty Robin's son, Ronnie Robbins. It's when my dad went into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. Dale Senior and Teresa with my mom and dad. That's when he won the 87 Championship. Uh Steve Neil who was a congressman, Roslin Carter, Flossy Johnson, my dad at the White House, Junior and Flossy, my mom and dad and Jerry and Maryanne Long, chairman of R.J. Reynolds, dad with Larry Carrier again. It's one of my favorite pictures of Pop. And between NASCAR and drag racing, when did you was your dad ever home or is he not very often? He uh he would be home uh Mondays and Tuesdays and sometimes Wednesdays and the rest of the time he was on the road. He I think he saw that dad with Henry Fonda. I think dad saw me play high school football maybe once or twice. Uh Mark Donahue. Another picture with Richmond when he won the Winston Western 500. Victory Lane at North Wilsboro with Junior Wally Parks the founder of uh NH Dad presenting him something. Dad with the King. How about that mustache? Jeff Boddine. So Robert Gar. Yep. Bill Elliot. Richard Childers. I mean, all those all these old pictures you see on the internet have been like butchered in quality so many times. This is like this looks like it was taken yesterday. Yeah. Doer was a great photographer. My mom and dad at the Waldorf with his camera like the size of a suitcase back then pretty much. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. And he had like four or five different cameras, lenses, and the whole nine yards. Donnie, Bobby, Bill Hobs with R.J. Reynolds, Neil Bonnet, my dad, my mom and dad at the first banquet at the Waldorf, [clears throat] AJ, Michael Haynes, the Winchester man, and my pop, Charlie Tucker, David Pearson. When you were younger at the track or something, who were the guys that you hoped you bumped into the garage and got to talk to? I was very blessed. I I really didn't realize how, you know, people would have probably given their eye teeth to get to do what I did. Um, back in 1974, I was playing high school football and broke my wrist and I had a cast and uh, my cast was autographed by AJ Foy, Richard Petty, Johnny Rutherford, um, Mark Donahghue, uh, David Pearson. I mean, you know, all the guys that, uh, were running Indie Car would come and run uh, races with us. There's dad with Richard Nixon. And um you know uh it I just hung out with them. I mean you know it was really uh really cool especially you know I was a 15-year-old punk kid and you know they treated me like I was somebody and uh that you know that was one of the neat things it everybody was so accessessible…