Later nicknamed “The Iron Man,” Ingram had
run 86 races throughout the southeast – sometimes three and four times a week
in as many different states – when he won the 1972 NASCAR Late Model Sportsman
national title.
“When they made it to where you only had to
go to 30 race tracks, it was like a vacation for us,” said Ingram of the then
NASCAR Busch Series, now the NASCAR Nationwide Series. “I really liked the idea
… it worked out well for me.”
Yes it did.
Ingram captured the inaugural 1982
championship over cross-town rival Sam Ard with seven victories and 23 top-five
and 24 top-10 finishes. He finished second to Ard in 1983-84 and fashioned a
second title in 1985 with five wins. A two-race suspension kept Ingram from
collecting a third championship the following season in which he finished third.
Over nine seasons as a full-time competitor,
Ingram finished outside the top five in points just twice. He ultimately
competed in 275 races winning 31, the latter figure a record until broken by
Mark Martin in 1997. Ingram remains fifth in all-time NASCAR Nationwide Series
victories.
Ingram won at least one race in six
consecutive seasons along with five career poles. All but two of those
victories came on short tracks leading to Ingram calling himself, only
half-jokingly, “the best short-track racer ever.”
Ironically, Ingram’s best racing memory was
his victory in the 1975 Daytona Permatex 300, a race broadcast by ABC’s “Wide
World of Sports.” Because the event was televised – a rarity in those years,
especially for a late model sportsman event – Ingram received congratulatory
letters from throughout the U.S. and even from fans in foreign countries.
Ingram’s car had two crew chiefs, NASCAR Hall
of Famer Junior Johnson and Banjo Matthews. “We got a big crack in the top of
the windshield, a big hole,” said Ingram. “They were going to black flag me.
Junior said he would fix it and they believed Junior. Now, he didn’t fix it but
he taped it up and they let me finish the race and we won and that was the best
time of my whole racing career.”
That NASCAR Nationwide Series total doesn’t
include the dozens of NASCAR points-paying late model sportsman features Ingram
won during the 1960s and 1970s driving his No. 11 J.W. Hunt-sponsored
Chevrolets on weekly tracks – many of them long-shuttered. It was not uncommon
for a driver and a single crew chief / mechanic to race in Virginia on a Friday
night, tow to Tennessee for a Saturday show and finish the weekend in North
Carolina.
Ingram won 15 races and finished among the
top five in 67 starts during his 1972 championship season. A year later, he won
a second title by concentrating on national championship-designated events,
winning 11 of 18 starts. His third crown was a runaway as Ingram held a
2,000-point edge over the late Butch Lindley at season’s end.
“One weekend, we ran Langley, Richmond,
Manassas (Va.) and Kingsport (Tenn.) in the same car; maybe on the same set of
tires,” said fellow competitor Jimmy Hensley of a typical weekend in NASCAR’s
late model sportsman years. “Jack raced for a living. I’d work all day and race
all night.
“He was tough to beat. He had good ability
and was very competitive. He finished most of the races and rarely had
breakdowns.”
Ingram also competed in 19 NASCAR Sprint Cup
Series events between 1965 and 1981 with a best finish of second to Richard
Petty on Sept. 8, 1967, at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway.
“Jack’s record was phenomenal because he was
the driver, crew chief, car owner and chief bottle washer on his team for most
of his career,” said Jim Hunter, NASCAR’s late vice president of communications
on Ingram’s 2007 induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. “He
was a no-nonsense, get-in-your-face, hard-nosed, fender-scraping racer who took
no prisoners on the track.
“He raced other drivers however they raced
him. Sort of ‘You wanna beat and bang? I’ll beat and bang with you. You want to
race hard but clean? I’ll do that, too.’ (But) in spite of his hard-nosed
temperament, Jack was and still is very popular among his peers.”
“He was very dedicated to the sport …
dedicated his life to it and even after he quit driving he continued to help
others along the way,” said NASCAR Hall of Famer Ned Jarrett in a 2013
interview with NASCAR.com’s Kenny Bruce.
Ingram was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest
Drivers in 1998.
This
year’s NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction ceremonies will take place at 7 p.m. ET
Wednesday, Jan. 29 in the Crown Ball Room at the Charlotte Convention Center,
which is directly connected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Tickets for the
ceremonies start at $45 (available at
www.nascarhall.com/inductees/induction-ceremony) and the NASCAR Hall of Fame
box office.
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