NASCAR Comes To Town
Bob Flock (7) leads in an early race at the Peach Bowl. Flock won the first stock car race held at the Peach Bowl in 1950. Photo courtesy GRHOF
By April of 1950, everyone found out who was watching, as Bill France Enterprises leased the track for Wednesday night Sportsman stock car races. They would be NASCAR sanctioned, of course, and run under the direction of Johnny Bruner. The price of admission was $2 for all the thrills, spills and excitement stock car racing gave.
Bob Flock, the middleman of the three Flock brothers, won the first stock car race held at the Peach Bowl on April 5, 1950. His older brother, Fonty, was second and Buddy Shuman of Charlotte was third. The second race was won by Jack Smith of Roswell, Georgia, which was then a sleepy country town, which has now become a bedroom for Atlanta.
Smith beat Fonty and Bob for the win. Others like Billy Carden, Roscoe Thompson, Jerry Wimbish and Harold Kite would win stock car races that first year in sportsman cars.
But the midgets returned also. Their Saturday night races started after the stocks and were held throughout the summer months. Pee Wee Long, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, won the first 1950 midget feature. Oscar Russell of Mount Carmel, Illinois, won the next week. Woody Campbell also won that year.
Former winner Tex Keene actually got married at the Peach Bowl in June of that year. The Knoxville racer married Ruby Burgess from Bremen, Georgia. The two had met at he speedway and used the racetrack for yet another show.
The mid-season championship stock car race held on July 29 went to Harold Fryar of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He would become a prominent figure in the middle years of the history of the Peach Bowl.
Racing continued until the middle of September when Bill France Enterprises and Roy Shoemaker paved the Peach Bowl. Jack Smith won the last race on dirt, and would win the first on pavement at the small quarter-mile. He also won the track championship that year. Roscoe Thompson won the NASCAR Georgia state points championship for the sportsman division.
Jack Jackson was always a driver to beat at the Peach Bowl. Photo courtesy GRHOF
The second full year of stock car races, 1951, saw Bob Flock open the season with a win. Meanwhile, the mighty midgets faded from regular Saturday night shows, as the asphalt was awfully unkind to the frail races. Ted Tedrow of Atlanta had won the opening midget race in mid-April.
When the midgets left, there were still two nights of racing at the Peach Bowl. Bill France Enterprises took over Saturday nights and gave Atlanta a Wednesday and a Saturday night sportsman program.
Roscoe Thompson repeated as the champion in the Sportsman ranks for the state and also won the Peach Bowl Speedway championship.
A new year, 1952, saw some changes at the speedway – only the winners remained the same. Jack Smith won the track championship, but NASCAR no longer sanctioned the Sportsman nor the Amateur division. Jack Jackson, then of Atlanta but now living in Conyers, Georgia, was crowned the Amateur champ. Jack Smith won his championship by winning most of the Wednesday night Sportsman races, while Jackson had consistent finishes in the companion feature in the Wednesday night and Friday night Amateur shows.
Bobby Johns of Miami, Florida, along with his dad, came to the Peach Bowl to show the Georgia boys how it was done down in South Florida. He won only once, but Georgia legend Charlie Mincey cited Johns as the one to show everybody how to wedge their cars for better cornering.
In 1952, the Peach Bowl had one of its two fatalities in the track’s 23-year history. Russell Floyd Powell of Smyrna had only been racing for a few weeks. The 25-year-old Amateur driver was killed when he climbed from his wrecked car on the front stretch and was run over.