Georgia Racing Hall of Famer Jack Smith with his trophy from the 1951 NSCRA season in 1999. Photo courtesy Eddie Samples

By Eddie Samples
Posted in Feature Stories 9/25/09

I started looking at NASCAR’s list of their top 50 drivers of all time, but I never saw the name of Jack Smith.

The list was chock full of good racers but very absent of one of its best.

Anyway, I called Jack at his transmission shop in Spartanburg, South Carolina and asked to stop by to see him.

I wanted to know exactly what it was I was missing that NASCAR apparently wasn’t.

Jack showed me into his office and I looked at about 30 pictures he had framed around the walls, and then went into another room full of trophies.  I saw one huge one that read ‘1951 NSCRA Champion’.  That was the last season of the National Stock Car Racing Association’s history right there in front of me.

It was also one of the reasons NASCAR is called NASCAR.

“They wanted to be called the NSCRA because that’s one of the organizations Bill France promoted under but it had already been incorporated in Georgia in early 1947,” Jack told me.