Humpy Wheeler

Earnhardt ends up in the grass and back out in front of Bill and ends up holding them off to win.

The Winston or the All-Star Race, when Humpy Wheeler was in charge of Charlotte Motor Speedway, that was the single best ticket every year because you got the open race before where guys were racing to get into the All-Star Race.

and then you had the all-star race but you always had like a car eating dinosaurs and jimmy the flying greek jumping motorcycles in a bus and stuff like that but it really was the best ticket that you could get because you could go there you'd be out there for three hours and you would have a good time there would always be something going on on the track Charlotte still is one of the best racetracks.

They've ruined Atlanta.

Chris is kind of, I don't know, you think of the stuff that maybe...

This is a big comparison here, but how Humpy Wheeler thought on outside of the box promotions to bring fans in.

That's kinda what Chris does at, at St. Louis there and at, at Gateway, and it's...

He's a good dude and does really neat things to bring fans in, and they've seen huge crowds with their IndyCar race, their Cup race.

Real pleasure to work with.

But I got to go MC an event in the media center today honoring Humpy Wheeler.

They gave him the Smokey Yunick Award.

Humpy was a big admirer of Smokey Yunick, and they've been giving that award away here for 25 years.

Yeah

... won it a few years ago.

And today they gave it to Humpy Wheeler.

There to accept the award were two of his daugh- his two daughters, Tracy and Patty, and then also getting up to talk was the Speedway General Manager, Jessica Fichenser, and Marcus Smith.

But, you know, it's I still feel like I have to pinch myself sometimes.

But it's very humbling to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Humpy Wheeler, Marcus Smith and Gray Walter is pretty special and really, really big shoes to fill.

So but, you know, it's.

It's easy here because of the team that's here.

Marcus is going to be with us, as he always is, coming up at the beginning of next hour and looking forward to talking to him.

When you look across this weekend, we mentioned the races.

I always like to ask people in your position, I ask Scott the same question, okay, outside of the obvious, the races, the next three days, what's the thing this weekend? Because, you know, in the tradition of Humpy Wheeler and Marcus, you know, there's always something big outside of just the race itself.

What's something else that you'd like to tell people about that they may not know coming into race weekend?

The Pocono record supported his idea, knowing that I would be able to obtain information helping our coverage of the events of Pocono International Raceway.

The media tour took many of the NASCAR shops in getting a look behind the scenes at Charlotte Motor Speedway, including a tour of the road course with track promoter Humpy Wheeler.

The tour also rekindled my interest in working in racing.

Next event, Daytona 500.

Again, no.

The weekend guest would be Bill France, Jr., So my next assignment for Konamaki was the October National 500 to Charlotte, which was Richard Petty's controversial 198th career victory.

I had one brief discussion with Humpy Wheeler about possible employment on his PR staff.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, it was cut off and I never resumed talks with Humpy.