The Roots of Racing; From Board Tracks to Bootleggers

The infamous number of moonshiners in the Georgia and the well known Lakewood Speedway outside of Atlanta formed the base for stock car racing in Georgia. Since it opened in 1906, Lakewood Speedway hosted open-wheel racing; eventually the track soon became a popular venue for local stock cars as well.

Lakewood Speedway hosted one of the first organized stock car races in the United States. Bill France’s pre-NASCAR organization, the National Championship Stock Car Circuit, held the first stock car race here in 1938. The gifted racer and notorious moonshine runner Lloyd Seay won this first race. Lakewood Speedway also hosted the final stock car race before World War II, on November 2, 1941. A national ban on automobile racing was instated for the duration of World War II, as the resources of both man and machine were needed elsewhere. The last pre-war stock car race was held as a memorial event to honor Lloyd Seay. After winning a race at the speedway a month earlier, Seay’s cousin shot and killed him following an argument over moonshine revenues.

NASCAR hosted stock car races here from 1951 until the 1959 but the Lakewood Speedway no longer exists; the track is visible at the end of the popular movie Smokey and the Bandit but was abandoned and partially demolished in 1989. Today, the only NASCAR Cup racing in Georgia is at the modernized Atlanta Motor Speedway, a one and a half mile speedway built in 1960.

Illegal liquor did not have a role in the personal history of every early stock car driver, but to dismiss the legacy of moonshine is to dismiss an extraordinary part of stock car racing history. Some of NASCAR’s earliest heroes were involved in running moonshine, "learning driving skills and honing instincts that would transfer perfectly to racing." For some, the transition from the dangerous curves of the roads to the dirt turns of a race track came easily. "We didn’t have no tickets, no safety equipment, no fences, no nothing," recounts Tim Flock, a Georgia moonshiner and two time NASCAR Grand National Champion, "just a bunch of bootleggers who’d been arguing all week about who had the fastest car would get together and prove it."  (Golenbeck; American Zoom, p217)

It is a continuing argument whether the relationship between the moonshine culture of the South and the early development of NASCAR is an exaggeration of a small facet or whether it was indeed a major influence on the history of stock car racing.

I for one, think that it is a very interesting part of our racing heritage. Does anyone have any good moonshine stories? Anyone ever been to the Shine to Wine Festival in North Wilkesboro or to the Georgia Moonshine Festival? My great grandpop had a still on his farm in Connecticut, but that's a far cry from Southern racing traditions. Anyone have a bootlegger turned race car driver in their family tree?