By Andrew WestDOVER — Some notes and quotes between headlines and deadlines ...
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It was on this date in 1969 that NASCAR arrived in Dover.
The people involved had to hustle ahead of the first race, the Mason-Dixon 300.
Drivers and race teams ran the Firecracker 400 on the Fourth of July, two days earlier, so there was a mad dash from Daytona to Dover.
Meanwhile, in Delaware, track builder Melvin Joseph of Georgetown was wringing his hands about whether Dover Downs International Speedway would be ready for its debut.
“I can’t say we weren’t concerned,” Mr. Joseph told Delaware racing writer Gene Bryson years later. “We barely got it done for the July race.
“It was fresh blacktop, and it hadn’t cured. I had always heard that lime would cure it, so we got a bunch of lime and covered that track two days before the first race. We washed it off that race morning, and it held up for 18 years.”
Legend Richard Petty won that first Dover race in front of 22,000 fans. In a 1992 interview with this editor, he recalled the challenges.
“We spent all day getting there the next day after Daytona and showed up for 300 miles,” he said. “Nobody had ever seen the track, let alone have any racing experience on it.”
Delaware’s humidity, Mr. Petty said, was brutal.
It was a rough Dover day on the track for many, especially pole sitter Larry Pearson, who slammed into the boilerplate wall of Turn 4.
“The two things I’ll always remember about Dover is it had about the hardest walls in the world, and it was about the hottest place in the world,” Mr. Pearson said.
Like the current weather trend, it was a 90-degree day.
This year’s Dover race will be the first run in July since 1969.
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The abbreviated history of the track is that Dover lawyer, judge and politician Dave Buckson came up with the idea for Dover Downs — a horse-racing and auto-racing venue. Mr. Joseph built it, and John Rollins of Wilmington financed it. All three are now deceased.
Leroy Betts of Felton was the construction superintendent who oversaw the perfection of the high-banked mile oval — built on what had been farmland.
In 1995, the track’s asphalt surface was replaced with concrete.
The name changed a few times through the years. It now goes by “Dover Motor Speedway” after Speedway Motorsports acquired it in 2021.
Dover hosted two NASCAR races each year from 1971 through 2020. Speedway Motorsports, though, opted to move one of the races to Nashville.
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Lately, this editor has been frequently double-checking the calendar.
The extreme heat in the last days of June made it feel like we were already in mid- to late July.
It seems extra weird that NASCAR weekend in Dover coincides with the Delaware State Fair’s opening weekend this year.
The Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 is scheduled for July 20.
The fair runs July 17-26.
Since 1971, Dover’s spring race had been in late May or early June.
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Content provider Stacker shared an interesting statistic about Delaware recently.
The all-time highest temperature recorded in the state was 110 degrees on July 21, 1930, in Millsboro.
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So much for the promise of early conclusions of the legislative session. The Senate clocked out at 1:14 a.m. July 1, and the House of Representatives at 1:22 a.m.
Two years ago, lawmakers approved a constitutional amendment to end the session at 5 p.m. instead of midnight, in hopes of reining in the chaos of pushing bills through on the final night. Additionally, it was meant to address the concerns of lawmakers who were making long commutes home in the wee hours of the morning.
At 5 p.m. this June 30, the two chambers went into “special session” to continue debating and voting on bills.
Kudos to Daily State News reporter Joseph Edelen for following the session so closely this year. He was among the last to leave the statehouse that morning.
His stories are available at baytobaynews.com/general-assembly.
