{"id":12754,"date":"2015-03-01T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=12754"},"modified":"2015-11-11T09:57:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T17:57:39","slug":"nascar-1979-busch-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/nascar-1979-busch-clash\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR\u2019s 1979 Busch Clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"151979BuschClashGroupPhoto\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When NASCAR secured CBS Television as a strategic broadcasting partner in 1979, the agreement included the inaugural Busch Clash which featured\u00a0the largest purse per mile event in the history of the sport. The winner of the race would take home $50,000 for 50 miles (or 20 laps) of racing.<\/p>\n

The clash was the brainchild of\u00a0Busch Beer brand manager, Monty Roberts, who pronounced Busch the\u00a0\u201cOfficial Beer of NASCAR\u201d in 1979 and sponsored car owner Junior Johnson and driver, Cale Yarborough. \u00a0Roberts wanted to showcase the competitive aspects of stock car racing, with the Busch brand front and center.<\/p>\n

The inaugural race pitted\u00a0nine cars (seven \u00a0Oldsmobiles, one Ford and one Mercury) against each other. At the time, the only way to enter was to win a pole position from the year before, which meant the drivers were the cream of the crop\u00a0including Cale Yarborough (8), David Pearson, (7) and\u00a0Lennie Pond who, coming off his best season ever, had scored five pole positions the previous year.<\/p>\n

Neil Bonnett (3), Benny Parsons (2), Darrell Waltrip (2), Bobby Allison (1), J.D. McDuffie (1) and Buddy Baker (1) rounded out the field.<\/p>\n

Yarborough had won the pole in the last three races (Rockingham, Atlanta, and Ontario) and was the one everyone had their eyes on going into the race weekend. The Busch Clash field was set on a blind draw with Benny Parsons starting first and \u00a0Buddy Baker\u00a0on his outside. Baker had just won the Daytona 500 pole the previous\u00a0Saturday with a speed of 196.049 mph.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can just see it now, with all nine cars coming to the finish line side-by side,\u201d said Yarborough. \u201cWith that kind of money on the line, just about anything is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daytona International Speedway had just been repaved and the superfast 2.5-mile superspeedway was set for a quick 20 laps.<\/p>\n

At the drop of the green, \u00a0Baker,\u00a0with\u00a0his W-I-N Racing Team of master wrenches Jake Elder and Herb Nab plus\u00a0top engine builder Waddell Wilson, had his\u00a0Oldsmobile set on domination. Leading\u00a0all but two of the 20 laps contested, he beat Waltrip to the checkered flag by a single\u00a0car length. Rounding out the finish were Yarborough, Parsons, Allison, Pearson, Pond and Bonnett – each running at the finish. McDuffie was the only one to not go the distance falling out early with an engine failure.<\/p>\n

The race took just over 15 minutes to complete and Baker averaged a rocket-like 194.384 mph in the caution-free event, banking a cool $50,000 to the Harry Ranier-owned team out of Charlotte, N.C.<\/p>\n

A smiling Baker came to the Daytona press box for the winner\u2019s post-race interview and told the gathered media that he wished all the races would pay this well. It was Baker\u2019s first win since the 1976 Talladega 500 and his\u00a0\u2018hard charger\u2019 reputation fit exactly into the format.<\/p>\n

The special non-points race with its tremendous purse brought additional awareness to the Daytona 500, \u00a0resulting in a sell-out crowd the next weekend for the now legendary 1979 Daytona 500, as NASCAR\u2019s first flag-to-flag coverage on CBS.<\/p>\n

There was nothing like the Busch Clash\u00a0in motorsports at the time and it was the start of the special races in NASCAR, leading to events like\u00a0the Sprint Unlimited at Daytona and the former \u2018The Winston\u2019 All-Star race in Charlotte starting in 1981.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The inaugural Busch Clash featured the largest purse per mile event in the history of stock car racing. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3447,17],"tags":[1337,2068,1775,1551,2064,2063,1999,687,1777,1720,2066,2067,2069,127,2065],"class_list":["post-12754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic","category-guest-column","tag-tbt","tag-1979-busch-clash","tag-benny-parsons","tag-bobby-allison","tag-buddy-baker","tag-busch-clash","tag-cale-yarborough","tag-classic-cars","tag-darrell-waltrip","tag-daytona","tag-j-d-mcduffie","tag-lennie-pond","tag-monty-roberts","tag-nascar","tag-neil-bonnett"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/151979BuschClashGroupPhoto-Featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-3jI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12754"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12918,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12754\/revisions\/12918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}