1971 Islip 250
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 30 of 48 in the 1971 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season | |||
An aerial view of the now-defunct Islip Speedway
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| Date | July 15, 1971 | ||
| Official name | Islip 250 | ||
| Location | Islip Speedway, Islip, New York | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 0.200 mi (0.322 km) |
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| Distance | 250 laps, 50.0 mi (80.0 km) | ||
| Weather | Warm with temperatures reaching up to 80.1 °F (26.7 °C); wind speeds up to 19 miles per hour (31 km/h) | ||
| Average speed | 49.925 miles per hour (80.346 km/h) | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Petty Enterprises | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Richard Petty | Petty Enterprises | |
| Laps | 230 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 43 | Richard Petty | Petty Enterprises | |
The 1971 Islip 250 was a NASCAR Winston Cup Series (now Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) race that occurred on July 15, 1971, at Islip Speedway in the American community of Islip, New York.
Two black racers were involved in this race (Wendell Scott and George Wiltshire).
Islip Speedway was a .2-mile (320-meter) oval race track in Islip, New York which was open from 1947 until 1984. It is the smallest track ever to host NASCAR's Grand National Series (now the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series), from 1964 to 1971. The first demolition derby took place at Islip Speedway in 1958. The idea was patented by Larry Mendelson, who worked at Islip Speedway.
Two hundred and fifty green flag laps were done on a paved oval track spanning .200 miles (0.322 km). However, the race was shortened by twenty laps to 230 laps due to an error with the scoring system. At the time, Islip Speedway had a scoring system that looked like a Rolodex card system that would flip down cards with minutes (with numbers from 00 to 99) and seconds (with numbers from 00 to 59) on them. This would give the time elapsed in the race with some manual output; similar to the scoring system used at the very first Daytona 500 because electronic scoring would be decades away from being reality. The first column would count the number of minutes elapsed with the second column would count the number of second elapsed. It would be rare to see a race last for more than ninety-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds (approximately 1.6 hours) until NASCAR started lengthening their races in the 1970s.
The race car drivers still had to commute to the races using the same stock cars that competed in a typical weekend's race through a policy of homologation (and under their own power). This policy was in effect until roughly 1975. By 1980, NASCAR had completely stopped tracking the year model of all the vehicles and most teams did not take stock cars to the track under their own power anymore.
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