| "He was one of the
best,''
. . .
recalled Cotton
Owens, a former NASCAR driver and team owner. He truly was.
Teague not only twice drove well enough to qualify for the
famed Indianapolis 500, where he finished seventh in 1957
and 18th in 1953, he had the distinct versatility to also
race stock cars. And Teague did that very well.
Although
Teague competed in only 23 NASCAR Grand National races from
1949-52 -- Teague actually finished runner-up to Robert
``Red'' Byron in the first race sanctioned by NASCAR, which
was a modified event held on the beach-road course Feb. 15,
1948 at Daytona Beach, Fla. -- he was a frequent visitor to
victory lane. He won seven races, five in the 1951 season
alone in only 15 starts.
Teague,
however, in an apparent dispute with NASCAR founder Bill
France Sr., left the series in 1953 and began
racing stock cars in the American Automobile Association and
U.S. Auto Club circuits.
But
before Teague waved bye-bye, he became one of its earliest
top drivers, capturing NASCAR's first ever race west of the
Mississippi River on April 8, 1951, the prestigious event at
defunct Carrell Speedway, a half-mile dirt track located in
Gardena, Calif.
 Two
weeks later, Teague won only the west's second NASCAR race,
this time on a 1-mile dirt track located near 19th Avenue
and McDowell Road in Phoenix, the first of five NASCAR races
to be held in Phoenix (four) and Tucson (one) between
1951-60. The stock-car circuit didn't return until 1988,
when the first of 10 such races to date have been held at
Phoenix International Raceway.
But it
all began at the Arizona State Fairgrounds, which was
Arizona's first NASCAR Grand National (now called NASCAR
Winston Cup) venture and also was the site of NASCAR's sixth
race of the '51 season and 33rd in the history of the
sanctioning body.
Teague
made the grueling trip from his home in Daytona Beach, Fla.,
and according to one account of the 150-mile race, took the
lead in a 1951 Fabulous Hudson Hornet on Lap 81 from Fonty
Flock and led the remainder of the 150-lap race.
Thirty
drivers started the race and only 17 finished, according to
``The'' ``Arizona Republic'' recap of the race in the
following morning's newspaper.
When it
was over, 2 hours, 21 minutes and 16 seconds later, a crowd
of 12,000 watched Teague cross the finish line almost a
quarter-mile ahead of runner-up Erick Erickson of Hawthorne,
Calif. Teague pocketed $1,100.
 The
Flock brothers, Tim of Atlanta and Fonty of Hopeville, Ga.,
finished third and fourth, followed by Dick Meyer of
Porterville, Calif., and Danny Weinberg of Bell, Calif.
What
Teague accomplished that memorable April day 47 years ago,
however, will never be disputed.
``One
thing about Marshall was he looked like the most unlikely
race car driver you'd ever seen,'' said friend Hershel
McGriff of Green Valley. McGriff, who at age 71 still
competes in NASCAR Winston West races, first met Teague in
1950 at a Mexican road race.
``He
had a little pot belly, skinny legs and skinny arms,''
McGriff said. ``He looked like the guy watching from the
grandstands. I remember we had a boat together in Florida
and I tried to teach him how to water ski.
 ``But
there was only a 10 horsepower motor on it and I couldn't
get the boat to go fast enough and Marshall would end up
sinking in the water.
``He
was a good racer, though. And a real family man. He was very
technical with the car. He could build things from scratch.
I remember he wanted to build me a modified to run on the
sand at Daytona because he thought my driving style would
fit it. ``But we never got around to it.''
Teague,
however, did get around to making a cross-country trip to
Phoenix in 1951, making certain when he left, he was not
forgotten.
Smokey
and Teague
The guy who survived all those air
missions over Eastern Europe and the Pacific was quickly
caught up in this other form of survival soon after he
opened his Best Damn Garage In Town and began a second
life that still defies description. You might say that
Smokey Yunick’s racing career began the instant
after a kindred soul by the name of Marshall Teague
walked into his garage. Teague, a well-known
stock car driver and car owner, happened to be a Daytona
Beach resident, too. He took Smokey’s slogan seriously
and invited him to join his team even though Yunick told
him he knew nothing about stock car racing. However, the
eclectic garage owner knew where to gain an insight. He
began studying the chemistry and physics books that he
had collected during the war to find out how Mother
Nature worked. The information he gleaned from his
collection helped him discover the easiest way to make a
car go through the air or how long a racing engine would
run before it, in his words, “blowed.”
But the book that Yunick studied most was the one
containing NASCAR’s new rules. In a piece entitled
“Inside Smokey’s Bag of Tricks,” C.J. Baker quoted Smoke
thusly: “You have to understand that when I got into
this thing back in ’47, they didn’t have near as many
rules as they do now. You could run whatever you thought
you could get away under what NASCAR would call ‘being
within the spirit of competition.’” This happened during
what Smokey would later call his drinking days. Baker
remembers Smokey telling him that people would come by
the race shop for a few drinks, and the next thing he
knew his competition was sniveling to France. “If you
did something they (NASCAR) didn’t like, which was
pretty much up to Bill France, they would fine you or
throw you out of the race as ‘being outside the spirit
of competition,’ even though there was no specific rule
against the supposed infraction.”
 Teague’s
cars of choice were the new step-down Hudson
Hornets—based on inverted-bathtub styling powered by an
inline flathead six. The Hornet’s low center of gravity
and dual carburetion and other special 7-X “export”
items made it fast for its era. And with Smokey at the
wrench, the combo rendered Teague hard to beat.
Yunick was either a crafty, devious, underhanded,
rule-bending, no-good, cheating SOB (one view), or a
master of ability, hard work, careful preparation,
common sense, and the scientific approach (the other).
Smokey’s M.O. was simple: If the rulebook didn’t
specifically outlaw this or that, then it was OK to do
this or that. No porting or polishing was allowed, so he
would paint the ports with hard lacquer and sand them to
a mirror finish. Or he would pump an abrasive slurry
through the intake manifold runners to remove the lumps
and bumps. NASCAR said no boring or stroking, but there
was no rule against offset cranks. There was a rule
against using lightweight flywheels, but there wasn’t a
rule that prohibited removing the ring gear, laterally
drilling lightening holes in the flywheel, then
reinstalling the ring gear. “All those other guys were
cheatin’ ten times worse than us,” remembered Yunick,
“so it was just self-defense.”
|
speed record attempt at the new Daytona International Speedway Feb. 10, 1959, Marshall Teague sets an unofficial closed course speed record of 171.821 mph. Trying to go faster still
