1956 Southern 500
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 44 of 56 in the 1956 NASCAR Grand National Series season | |||
Layout of Darlington Raceway
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| Date | September 3, 1956 | ||
| Location | Darlington Raceway, Darlington, South Carolina | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 1.375 mi (2.221 km) |
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| Distance | 400 laps, 500 mi (800 km) | ||
| Weather | Hot with temperatures reaching up to 89.1 °F (31.7 °C); wind speed up to 13 miles per hour (21 km/h) | ||
| Average speed | 95.167 miles per hour (153.156 km/h) | ||
| Attendance | 70,000 | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Carl Kiekhaefer | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Curtis Turner | Charlie Schwam | |
| Laps | 225 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 99 | Curtis Turner | Charlie Schwam | |
| Television in the United States | |||
| Network | WJMX (local AM radio) | ||
| Announcers | Local radio announcers | ||
Coordinates: 34°17′50.5″N 79°54′18.4″W / 34.297361°N 79.905111°W
The 1956 Southern 500, the seventh running of the event, was a NASCAR Grand National Series (now Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) event that was held on September 3, 1956, at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina.
This race was considered to be the "Labor Day Classic" for 1956; complete with a pre-race beauty pageant with a judging panel led by Fonty Flock and a parade down the front stretch of the race track.
By the 1990s, NASCAR's top-level series became a media circus that only races at facilities that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
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 is a four-turn 1.366 miles (2.198 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. Darlington Raceway can seat up to 60,000 people.
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