The pioneers

flag. The hill above the track would be filled with wives, kids and neighbors with picnic baskets sitting on the hoods of their family cars taking in the spectacle. Everybody came home covered in dust.

As the early days of stock car racing in Alabama was forming, the fairgrounds at Birmingham had a 1-mile oval horse racing track built in 1906 that sometimes held an occasional motorcycle race or a car race of specially built open-wheel racecars.

During the same period as the old lronbowl Speedway, Birmingham Fairgrounds began running stock car races, as well. Then in 1958, NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing) brought sanctioned racing to Birmingham and other tracks in Alabama.

Stock car racing was being born from the crude beginnings of low-budget, homebuilt cars to a commercial industry that brought higher levels of engineering talent and corporate sponsor dollars emerging into the highly refined sport of stock car racing today. Racing was financially out of reach for the regular guy. The old days and ways were changing quickly.

There is still a group of traditionalists that have a love and devotion to the old days where it all began. Beginning days that produced such greats as Bobby and Donnie Allison, Red Farmer, still making racing appearances at 90 years old, and Neil Bonnet, who died racing stock cars in 1994 at 47 years old.

Although those became household names in the sport because of the entry into corporate racing,