This is the fourth and final installment in a series of profiles on the five members of the Class of 2015 of the NASCAR Hall Of Fame. The five will be inducted in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday night, in a ceremony to be broadcast live at 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network, Motor Racing Network Radio and SiriusXM Satellite Radio.
Over
the years, NASCAR premier series champions have come in all shapes and sizes –
tall, short, muscular and lean. The single constant? It’s impossible to
judge a book by its cover.
Based
upon first impressions, Rex White – at 5 feet 4 inches, weighing just 135
pounds and with his right leg withered by childhood polio – might have seemed
the unlikeliest championship contender of all.
White,
however, was tough as nails fearing neither competitor nor track conditions. He
won the 1960 premier series title and posted 28 victories over five seasons,
finishing among the top five in nearly half of his 233 starts.
“He
looked more like a jockey than a race car driver,” fellow competitor Buddy
Baker told the Gaston Gazette, “but he lived large once they started the
race. On short tracks, he was very aggressive. He didn’t mind going in the turn
with (NASCAR Hall of Famer and three-time premier series champion) Lee Petty
and saying, ‘I’m inside and if you come down we’re not going to agree on
stuff.’
“He
raced hard.”
NASCAR
Hall of Famer Bobby Allison, the 1983 premier series champion, said, “I admired
Rex as a race driver because he was a little guy. I started out small. Seeing
him winning encouraged me to chase my dream.”
What
might have been a handicap to many only served as motivation to White, born
Aug. 17, 1929 in Taylorsville, N.C.
“Most
of the lessons I have learned (from childhood illness) have stayed with me all
my life,” said White in his autobiography “Gold Thunder,” written with Dr. Anne
B. Jones. “The biggest one was how to conquer fear.”
White
learned to drive at age six, driving a neighbor’s truck in surrounding fields.
Two years later he was working on his family’s Ford Model T. “I was unaware the
car on which I labored represented hope to people around me (and) frustration
to those trying to stop illegal moonshine,” said White. “I saw automobiles as
transportation, not the symbol of an upcoming billion-dollar sport.”
White
dropped out of school, moving to the Washington D.C., area where he found
employment as a cook and, after marriage, a service station job. A poster
advertising stock car races took White to Lanham (Maryland) Speedway where he
caught on as an unpaid crew member for 1952 NASCAR Modified champion Frankie
Schneider.
A
year later, White returned to the track with a 1937 Ford purchased for $600
lettered “X.” He won his heat race, the semi-main and the feature. “I’d never
won a trophy at anything,” said White.
White
made his premier series debut in 1956 on Daytona’s beach/road course. In 1958,
he teamed with crew chief Louis Clements in an “off the books” program by GM’s
Chevrolet Division. They won twice in 1958 and five times the following year.
The 1959 season also saw the debut of White’s iconic No. 4 gold and white
Chevrolet.
The
1960 season was the first in which White ran a full schedule, going to the post
only after he and Clement built a car for a competitor, the sale of which
netted $2,000 for their own Chevrolet.
White
won six times finishing 35 of 40 races among the top 10. White’s ninth-place
finish at Birmingham, Alabama on Aug. 3 was his worst performance in the year’s
final 15 races. The championship was a runaway, White beating NASCAR Hall of
Famer Richard Petty by nearly 4,000 points.
“The
thing about Rex is he thinks,” said Clements in a 1960 interview with Sports
Illustrated. “When he’s out on the track, he’s planning and figuring out
which cars he has to race to stay ahead.”
Car
owner and engine builder Smokey Yunick, quoted in the same article, said, “Rex
is not a cautious driver but he know when to use caution.”
White
didn’t disagree. “I couldn’t run quite as fast as some of those other guys,” he
said. “So long as I was smart and kept running; if any of those other guys had
trouble, I had a chance.”
White
nearly defended his title in 1961 winning seven times but finished second to
NASCAR Hall of Famer Ned Jarrett. He added two more top-10 championship
finishes before retiring at the conclusion of the 1964 season. Between 1959 and
the 1963 seasons, White won more races than any other driver. He won 36 premier
series poles – at least one in eight consecutive seasons – and finished second
in NASCAR’s Short Track late model championship in 1959.
In
retirement, White has owned an automobile dealership and for 25 years a
trucking company, both in the Atlanta area where at age 85 he continues to
reside. Named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998, White holds
membership in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, National Motorsports
Press Association Hall of Fame and the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame.
Talk about a bad ass, the proverbial its not the size of the dog in the fight, rather the size of the fight in the dog.
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