1965 Virginia 500
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 12 of 55 in the 1965 NASCAR Grand National Series season | |||
A map showing the layout of Martinsville Speedway
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| Date | April 25, 1965 | ||
| Official name | Virginia 500 | ||
| Location | Martinsville Speedway, Martinsville, Virginia | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 0.525 mi (0.844 km) |
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| Distance | 500 laps, 262.5 mi (442.4 km) | ||
| Weather | Cold with temperatures reaching up to 57 °F (14 °C); wind speeds up to 8.9 miles per hour (14.3 km/h) | ||
| Average speed | 66.735 miles per hour (107.400 km/h) | ||
| Attendance | 10,000 | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Junior Johnson & Associates | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Fred Lorenzen | Holman-Moody | |
| Laps | 338 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 28 | Fred Lorenzen | Holman-Moody | |
| Television in the United States | |||
| Network | untelevised | ||
| Announcers | none | ||
The 1965 Virginia 500 was a NASCAR Grand National Series (now Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) event that was held on April 25, 1965, at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Virginia.
Fred Lorenzen, the winning driver of this racing event, would become the only driver to successfully complete four Martinsville events in the row with a first-place finish.
Martinsville Speedway is one of five short tracks to hold NASCAR races. The standard track at Martinsville Speedway is a four-turn short track oval that is 0.526 miles (0.847 km) long. The track's turns are banked at eleven degrees, while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at zero degrees. The back stretch also has a zero degree banking.
The racing event (in what is now known as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) took approximately three hours and forty-four minutes to completely finish. Five cautions were handed out by NASCAR officials for forty-nine laps.Fred Lorenzen beat Marvin Panch by two car lengths in front of ten thousand people.Curtis Crider retired from NASCAR after competing in this race. Most of the contenders in the race were driving Ford vehicles with the model years ranging from 1963 through 1965. Terry Murchinson had a clutch problem with his unsponsored 1964 Ford Galaxie after only two laps of racing and became the last-place finisher of the day.
Total winnings of the race were $20,725 ($157,505.62 when adjusted for inflation). Each driver took home winnings between $4,350 ($33,059.08 when adjusted for inflation) and $250 ($1,899.95 when adjusted for inflation) on an individual basis. The transition to purpose-built racecars began in the early 1960s and occurred gradually over that decade. Changes made to the sport by the late 1960s brought an end to the "strictly stock" vehicles of the 1950s; most of the cars were trailered to events or hauled in by trucks.
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