NASCAR’s return to town may still be a few months away but Richmond International Raceway is revving up the celebration early. This year, RIR enters its 60th anniversary of NASCAR racing and the track wants to make it a season to remember.

  “Sixty years of NASCAR at RIR is a bid deal,” said track president Dennis Bickmeier. It’s a milestone year.”

  The anniversary gives RIR a chance to commemorate the past while looking towards the future. “I think it gives us some opportunities on a lot of fronts,” Bickmeier said. “One is to really engage fans and interact with them, with their thoughts and memories of RIR; the drivers, past performers here, past competitors here.”

  In many ways Bickmeier, in his first full season at RIR, is looking upon the celebration from the perspective of the fans. “I look at it from my perspective of being new to this market, new to this raceway and I’m going to get an education,” he said. “Hearing all the stories about the history of the place.

  “The flipside of it is we’ve got a lot of fans that have been coming here for a long time,” Bickmeier said. “For them, they get to share that knowledge. I think you put the two of those together, it’s going to be cool.”

  When it comes to knowing the past at RIR, local race historian Joe Kelly was there at the very beginning and recalls the first race well. 

  “It’s kind of amazing to me really,” Kelly said. “When it started, we thought it was the biggest thing in the world.”

  Richmond was the sixth of a 37 race NASCAR Grand Nationals slate; 33 of which took place on dirt tracks.

  It rained the morning of April 19, 1953, when the first NASCAR race was scheduled to run at what was then called the Atlantic Rural Exposition Fairgrounds. The Sunday morning sprinkle only worsened the damage done to the ½ mile dirt track by rains on Friday and Saturday. With a hopeful city planning for the event, organizers did their best to improve track conditions.

  “I mean it was a real mess,” Kelly said. “They took cars out on the track from guys in the grandstand to try to work the track in. Flipped a guy in a ‘40 Ford, a beautiful car, well at the end of the day he was crying.”

  Time trials that day were also memorable for all the wrong reasons. The surface that normally allowed speeds of up to 75 mph could only produce 48 mph runs during trials. The pole was won with a time of 48.465 mph.

  Two of NASCAR’s most prominent racers, defending national champion Tim Flock and Fonty Flock who had won at Darlington the previous year were scheduled to run the event but they decided the track was too rough. Yet, after time trials were completed they changed their mind and NASCAR rep Pat Purcell offered them a deal. The pair could race but they would have to start at the back of the pack.
  “They said ‘No way’,” Kelly explained. “They said, ‘No we want to run time trials the track’s nice now’.”

  When Purcell refused, the pair said they would not race in Richmond so he had them, along with their cars escorted from the track by Henrico policemen.

  “They didn’t want the people in the stands looking down and seeing the National Champion and the Southern 500 winner not racing,” Kelly said. “They’d figure something was wrong with the track. They said, ‘Yeah, there was, it was junk’.”

  With a total purse of $3,625, 27 cars took to the track for a race that was truly a battle to the finish. Lee Petty, in his 1953 Dodge, fought it out with Dick Rathman, in a 1953 Hudson Hornet, at an average speed of 45.535 mph.

  “They battled each other,” Kelly said. “At the end of the day, the Dodge looked like a crushed beetle and the Hudson looked like a turtle that had lost everything but its chance.” 

  It was Petty that emerged victorious to claim the $1,000 first place prize money and started history in Richmond.

  “It established the name Petty in this particular area,” Kelly said. “Richard came along after his dad. A lot of people don’t know that his dad won here four times. Then Richard won another 13. This track established what the epitome was for racing.”

  Sixty years has not clouded the memory for Kelly or his fondness for the track. “Looking back on this place, it was automatic. It was the big track to us,” he said. “Had a little track across town. It as a ¼ mile but this was the big track. And as far as 60 years. Another 60 years I think it will be bigger.”