Bud Lundsford

Georgia Racing Hall of Famer Bud Lundsford was a threat on any race track, but he was especially potent at the Peach Bowl.

During the late fifties, out of Gainesville, Georgia, rode a quiet man who was a professional racer.

In the mid-fifties, Bud Lundsford ran his first race at the Gainesville Speedway, which is now at the bottom of Lake Lanier.  He was hooked.  He would never see “honest employment’ again.

With his ability and brains, there was no reason to work nine to five.  Charlie Mincey said that Lundsford was the second hardest man he ever raced against in three decades of competition.

“Bud would beat you with his brains,” Charlie said.

Lundsford was the first in Georgia with an in-out box transmission as used in Sprint Cars.  Also, this same car used a magneto and fuel injection.  This was his 1959 creation and it beat J.C. Bugg’s car so many times, Mr. Bugg finally bought it.

This was only Lundsford’s first masterpiece.  In 1960, he came to the Peach Bowl with a fuel-injected, magneto fired Chevrolet engine in a shortened and narrowed “B” Model Ford sedan that won wherever it went.  He took the championship with ease at the Sunday night modified races.  He should have; he won 75 percent of the feature races that year.  He won over a dozen more at the Athens Speedway up the road in Athens, Georgia.

In 1961, Lundsford came back to win the championship at the Peach Bowl with the same car.  That year, he hardly won, but he finished so consistently up front that the point championship was his. No other driver dominated the races as Lundsford did the year before.  Johnny Suddeth, Freddy Fryar and Charlie Mincey were three of the winners in 1961.  Bill Hemby of Atlanta and Herb “Tootle” Estes of Knoxville, Tennessee were some of the new winners at the Peach Bowl that year in the Modified class.

Lundsford had little trouble out-classing the field in 1960.  He won the most races, the longest race (150 laps) and the championship.  In 1961, Charlie Mincey and Johnny Suddeth won the long distance races, but Bud won the year-long war and the Pepsi Championship trophy.  The other drivers and car builders had caught up with him in only one year, but not enough to win the championship.