Stories from Richmond’s early racing history III

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a collection of stories from local racing in Richmond, Virginia, during the decade following WWII. For previous installments klick here!)

(Part III – Noteworthy stories)

One of the oddest local racing stories took place at the end of the 1951 season at Royall. By this time the track was running stock cars, but on the first weekend in November, it brought back the midgets . . . . along with a special challenger. Here’s how the newspaper ad put it:

“See Fay Taylour, Great Britain’s Woman Racing Champion, compete against . . . Len Duncan, Charlie Miller, Steve McGrath, Walt Fair, Dutch Schaefer, Dick Dowd.”

A much bigger ad the next day gave more details and a picture of the “carefree Irish girl,” and a sports section story claimed she had broken records on four continents. At the bottom of the ad, though, was a small note:

“Fay will compete with the field in time trials and will cross swords with one of the regular drivers.” In other words, she would not be running in the main race, because sanctioning body ARDC had refused to allow it.

On Sunday, Nov. 4, Taylour did indeed run a 5-lap match race against respected racer Charlie Miller, and she won. The feature was run without her on a bitterly cold day in front of a crowd estimated at 1,500.

The coverage was a bit incomplete, though. For one thing, Fay Taylour was not only the sole woman in the field, but she also probably the oldest driver running a midget, at age 47.

More important than that, though, was the tragic story of Taylour in World War II, when she was held for more than three years for her fascist beliefs – it was said by detractors that she slept with a photo of Hitler at her bedside. She spent the last two years of the war in exile in neutral Ireland.

In 1951 that story probably would have kept her from being a motorsports attraction in Richmond or virtually anywhere else in the U.S. but her publicity didn’t touch on it. The promotion also glossed over the fact that she had been a motorcycle racing star in the 1920s, only to be banned from the sport by the men she was beating, then had the same thing happen with auto racing in the ‘30s. Would someone treated like that in the democratic world possibly look at other types of government?

When the “Irish Colleen” came to race in Richmond, nobody knew enough about that to make an informed decision.

Here’s another story worth retelling. I owe what I know here entirely to the late Bob Carey, founding editor of the former Circle Track & Highway Magazine, a competitor for a few years to Stock Car Racing Magazine, which had a much longer run. Carey lived in Northern Virginia, and Circletrack tended to cover nearby racing well, hence this story.

While Joe Weatherly was promoting Richmond Speedway, he also was racing there, and he was winning. Then, in the middle of the Royall-reopening chaos, the legendary Curtis Turner was passing through town on non-racing business and decided to visit Richmond Speedway and possibly play a trick on his old pal Weatherly.

Turner met up with one of the backmarker drivers and arranged to drive his car, which would start in front of the field due to the standard, fast-drivers-start-in-the-rear inversion. With Turner behind the wheel, the car didn’t quickly fade to the rear but instead lead all the way to the checkered flag. Weatherly came from the rear to finish second, and lest you think this happened against a weak field, the top five also included Eddie Crouse, Johnny Roberts, and Ray Hendrick.

Bob Carey’s story has the winning car’s regular driver coming to the pay window afterward to collect the victor’s purse from a likely scowling Weatherly, whose scowl doubtless got worse when he then heard the driver say, “How much do I owe you, Mr. Turner?”

Whether that incident had anything to do with Weatherly leaving the promoter’s job only days later is up to the individual imagination.

FRANK’S LOOSE LUG NUTS

It was a total coincidence that these articles have come out the same week as the wonderful news of Southside Speedway’s rebirth, but in honor of the latter, I’d like to add copies of the ads announcing both previous “grand openings,” the one from 1948 when Royall Speedway opened as a midget track, and the one from 1959, when the track returned from three years in the grave and was rechristened Southside Speedway. When the next grand opening comes, we should frame all three as a set.

(A NOTE ABOUT SOURCES: Most of the information for this series came from news coverage of racing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Richmond News Leader, gathered from microfilm files at the Library of Virginia or – for a brief period – the online database of those papers. The Bob Carey/Circletrack is mentioned with the Curtis Turner story, and a variety of other online sources were accessed for other facts, including much of the Fay Taylour story. I also used the National SpeedSport News archives at the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing. The photos are credited with their captions.)

Frank Buhrman