1950 Southern 500
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 13 of 19 in the 1950 NASCAR Grand National Series season | |||
Layout of Darlington Raceway
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| Date | September 4, 1950 | ||
| Official name | Southern Five-Hundred | ||
| Location | Darlington Raceway, Darlington, South Carolina | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 1.25 mi (2.01 km) |
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| Distance | 400 laps, 500 mi (800 km) | ||
| Weather | Hot with temperatures reaching up to 90 °F (32 °C); wind speeds up to 8.9 miles per hour (14.3 km/h) | ||
| Average speed | 75.25 miles per hour (121.10 km/h) | ||
| Attendance | 25,000 | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | John Eanes | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Johnny Mantz | Hubert Westmoreland | |
| Laps | 351 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 98 | Johnny Mantz | Hubert Westmoreland | |
The 1950 Southern Five-Hundred was considered to be the inaugural Southern Five-Hundred (shortened in 1951 to Southern 500) of the NASCAR Grand National event that took place September 4, 1950, at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina. It was responsible for turning the Southern 500 into the biggest racing event prior to the 1959 Daytona 500. While this edition of the Southern 500 would be hosted in association with the Central States Racing Association, all of the other Southern 500 races would be hosted exclusively by NASCAR.
Only manual transmission vehicles were allowed to participate in this race; a policy that NASCAR has retained to the present day.
Darlington Raceway, nicknamed by many NASCAR fans and drivers as "The Lady in Black" or "The Track Too Tough to Tame" and advertised as a "NASCAR Tradition", is a race track built for NASCAR racing located near Darlington, South Carolina. It is of a unique, somewhat egg-shaped design, an oval with the ends of very different configurations, a condition which supposedly arose from the proximity of one end of the track to a minnow pond the owner refused to relocate. This situation makes it very challenging for the crews to set up their cars' handling in a way that will be effective at both ends.
The track, at the time, was a four-turn 1.25 miles (2.01 km) oval. The track's first two turns are banked at twenty-five degrees, while the final two turns are banked two degrees lower at twenty-three degrees. The front stretch (the location of the finish line) and the back stretch is banked at six degrees.
This racing event helped to modernize stock car racing from its roots as a recreational pastime for moonshiners to an organized sport done on asphalt race tracks superior to the American highway system. Gasoline cost 18 cents a gallon (equivalent to 4.5 cents per litre) to drive an unmodified vehicle to the race; but was free of charge during the race. The same gasoline that was sold in American service stations were used in NASCAR during this era. Cars were driven directly to the track as opposed to being towed from more than 2,500 miles or 4,000 kilometres away. While hotels and modern infrastructure were scarce in the Southern United States during the 1950s, people who attended this early NASCAR event started to create makeshift camping areas around the race track to soak up the full NASCAR experience.
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