1972 Plymouth Road Runner Nascar-STREET LEGAL
1972 Petty Nascar tribute This Roadrunner has been rebuilt from top to bottom. It started out life as a 72 Plymouth satellite converted into what ...
Inside Sim Racing Episode 24 -SRT 1 Year Anniversary
Gaming Headset. Jessica also gets you up to date with the latest in Sim Racing ... sim racing iracing rfactor live for speed lfs Ferrari Blimey ...
The Return of the Bandit
It was built in 1980 as a Late Model Sportsman Pontiac for Phil Parsons, by Jay Hedgecock in North Carolina, who has since gone on to much success as a chassis maker. Parsons ran it at Martinsville a few times, and the late Dale Earnhardt even drove it once at Caraway Speedway in Asheboro. Bobby Labonte cut his teeth in the car at Hickory Motor Speedway, and also ran it at Rockingham. Even Benny Parsons had a turn at the wheel.
Tex Powell, of Tex Enterprises, converted it to an Oldsmobile Cutlass road racer in 1982, and entered it in three races of the IMSA Kelly Series that year—a season dominated by the great Gene Felton, who now has a thriving business restoring NASCAR Winston Cup cars for historic racing, and who was also a hero IMSA GTO driver for Tex. At Daytona, in the final race of the Kelly season, its driver Darrell Wheeler came off the front straight at about 180 mph (they didn’t have the backstraight chicane, back then), into the first infield turn too hot, couldn’t get the 3400-pound car slowed down with brakes that were always in over their head, crashed into the first infield turn guardrail, and broke his leg in six or eight places—because, he said, his leg was jammed hard on the brake pedal when he hit.
I came along with tire sponsorship from Goodyear, sheetmetal from Oldsmobile, and fuel from Union 76, and drove it for Tex Racing in six Kelly races in 1983. It carried the number 44, which was Terry Labonte’s number, because Tex’s partner Billy Hagan, a tough Louisiana oil man, was Labonte’s Winston Cup car owner. At our first race, Charlotte, the car was painted plain white, to be ready for a major sponsor. It was so bulky and square that I called it the Old Refrigerator. But I liked the way it boomed, and how the rear end broke loose under power.
Tex Enterprises was located in a former truck stop in Ether,...