1965 Virginia 500

1965 Virginia 500
Race details[1][2][3]
Race 12 of 55 in the 1965 NASCAR Grand National Series season

A map showing the layout of Martinsville Speedway
Date April 25, 1965 (1965-April-25)
Official name Virginia 500
Location Martinsville Speedway, Martinsville, Virginia
Course Permanent racing facility
0.525 mi (0.844 km)
Distance 500 laps, 262.5 mi (442.4 km)
Weather Cold with temperatures reaching up to 57 °F (14 °C); wind speeds up to 8.9 miles per hour (14.3 km/h)
Average speed 66.735 miles per hour (107.400 km/h)
Attendance 10,000
Pole position
Driver
Junior Johnson & Associates
Most laps led
Driver Fred Lorenzen Holman-Moody
Laps 338
Winner
No. 28 Fred Lorenzen Holman-Moody
Television in the United States
Network untelevised
Announcers none

The 1965 Virginia 500 was a NASCAR Grand National Series (now Sprint Cup Series) event that was held on April 25, 1965, at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Virginia.

Fred Lorenzen, the winning driver of this racing event, would become the only driver to successfully complete four Martinsville events in the row with a first-place finish.

Background

Martinsville Speedway is one of five short tracks to hold NASCAR races.[4] The standard track at Martinsville Speedway is a four-turn short track oval that is 0.526 miles (0.847 km) long.[5] The track's turns are banked at eleven degrees, while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at zero degrees. The back stretch also has a zero degree banking.[5]

Summary

The racing event (in what is now known as the Sprint Cup Series) took approximately three hours and forty-four minutes to completely finish.[2][3] Five cautions were handed out by NASCAR officials for forty-nine laps.[2][3] Fred Lorenzen beat Marvin Panch by two car lengths in front of ten thousand people.[2][3] Curtis Crider retired from NASCAR after competing in this race. Most of the contenders in the race were driving Ford vehicles with the model years ranging from 1963 through 1965.[2][3] Terry Murchinson had a clutch problem with his unsponsored 1964 Ford Galaxie after only two laps of racing and became the last-place finisher of the day.[2][3]

Total winnings of the race were $20,725 ($155,886.14 when adjusted for inflation). Each driver took home winnings between $4,350 ($32,719.17 when adjusted for inflation) and $250 ($1,880.41 when adjusted for inflation) on an individual basis.[6] The transition to purposely-built racers began in the early 1960s and occurred gradually over that decade. Changes made to the sport by the late 1960s brought an end to the "strictly stock" vehicles of the 1950s; most of the cars were trailered to events or hauled in by trucks.

Ford ended up dominating NASCAR in 1965. This came about because Dodge discouraged their vehicles from participating in the league due to the Hemi engine being banned from competition. Petty Enterprises ended up going into drag racing until Dodge solved its issues with the people who ran NASCAR at that time.[7] All but one of the top ten finishers drove a Ford vehicle; the sixth-place finisher drove a Dodge (which no longer races in the NASCAR Cup Series as of 2013).[8]

Finishing order

  1. Fred Lorenzen (No. 28)
  2. Marvin Panch (No. 21)
  3. Dick Hutcherson† (No. 29)
  4. Tiny Lund† (No. 10)
  5. Buddy Arrington (No. 67)
  6. Elmo Langley† (No. 64)
  7. Paul Lewis (No. 27)
  8. Doug Cooper* (No. 60)
  9. Buren Skeen† (No. 23)
  10. Ned Jarrett (No. 11)
  11. Bob Derrington (No. 68)
  12. G.C. Spencer*† (No. 49)
  13. Henley Gray (No. 97)
  14. Clyde Lynn† (No. 20)
  15. Darel Dieringer*† (No. 37)
  16. Wendell Scott† (No. 34)
  17. Curtis Crider* (No. 53)
  18. Cale Yarborough (No. 31)
  19. Roy Tyner*† (No. 9)
  20. Larry Frank*† (No. 76)
  21. Donald Tucker (No. 74)
  22. Junior Johnson* (No. 26)
  23. Tom Pistone* (No. 59)
  24. Bud Harless*† (No. 40)
  25. Sonny Hutchins*† (No. 90)
  26. Bobby Johns* (No. 7)
  27. Gene Hobby* (No. 99)
  28. Buck Baker*† (No. 87)
  29. Larry Manning* (No. 8)
  30. Neil Castles* (No. 86)
  31. Junior Spencer* (No. 17)
  32. G.T. Nolen* (No. 80)
  33. Bill Morton* (No. 56)
  34. E.J. Trivette* (No. 52)
  35. Buddy Baker*† (No. 88)
  36. Terry Murchison* (No. 0)

† signifies that the driver is known to be deceased
* denotes that the driver did not finish the race

Timeline

References

  1. ↑ "1965 Virginia 500 weather information". The Old Farmers' Almanac. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "1965 Virginia 500 information". Racing Reference. Retrieved 2010-10-01.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "1965 Virginia 500 information (reference #3)". Ultimate Racing History. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
  4. ↑ "NASCAR Race Tracks". NASCAR. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  5. 1 2 "NASCAR Tracks—The Martinsville Speedway". Martinsville Speedway. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  6. ↑ "1965 Virginia 500 prize winnings information". Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet. Retrieved 2012-12-02.
  7. ↑ "Enduring Performance: 1965 Virginia 500". NASCAR.com. Retrieved 2012-12-02.
  8. ↑ "Ford Dominance at the 1965 Virginia 500". Driver Averages. Retrieved 2012-12-02.
Preceded by
1965 Gwyn Staley 400		 NASCAR Grand National Series season
1965 		Succeeded by
1965 Columbia 200
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/28/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.