The Short, Intense Racing Career Of Lanier Englett


Darlington 1950

A common occurance in the early days of racing was running out of Coca-Colas.

“We went to that first race at Darlington in 1950. It was hell. We left after I got off of work at the Sweetwater Inn in Austell and got up there about two AM and everybody was sleeping in people’s yards or wherever they could find. “NASCAR had the only motel filled up. We drove some miles to another one. They were full. But the lady said we could use a room that was booked at 8 AM that morning, so we had to be out by 7 AM. We took it. We had to have a place to get just a few hours of decent rest.

“Next day we went in the pits. They had a Coca Cola stand about as big as this room (Mosteller’s den). Wasn’t long before they had sold out and then sold the water and ice that was left over.

“That Plymouth that Johnny Mantz won the race with had a racing slick like nobody else had ever seen before on the right rear. The rest were ten ply truck carcass tires. He just went around the bottom and didn’t have to change them. Most everybody else ran out of all their tires.

Spectator safety wasn't a priority during the early days of racing, as seen here in 1948 at New Atlanta Speedway in Morrow, Georgia. This is the same venue where Lanier flipped his car in qualifying and lost his shoes on the track.

“The next year Billy Teague had a car for Jack Etheridge and Billy. It was a modified race and I remember Jack throwing that car in the turn like it was dirt. But it wasn’t and it didn’t work. A paved and banked car track was a new deal for about all those cats that grew up driving on those old dusty fairground horse tracks.”

New Atlanta Speedway Wreck – Lanier Loses His Shoes

“I was at Atlanta Speedway in Morrow, Georgia around 1951 and a fellow from Jacksonville, Fl. needed a driver. Well, that would be me. So I was qualifying, and on the first turn the spindle broke and the car flipped end over end. All I remember is waking up and my shoes had been knocked off. A man waiting the hangman’s noose is stripped of his shoes so that they do not rocket off his feet when his body jerks at the end of the rope. That is how I felt. I think. So while I’m trying to come to my senses and find my shoes, the owner comes over there cussing me for wrecking his car, which I admit was a pretty good running car. I found the spindle and showed him it was broke. So I guess I should have been cussing him.

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