The inaugural Schaefer 500, the debut race at Pocono's 2.5-mile triangle, July 3, 1971
Pocono International Raceway is, by both design and circumstance, the most unusual major racing facility in the country. It is virtually a 1,025-acre gravestone to the frenzied superspeedway-building craze of the 1960s.........
So wrote Richard Benyo in SUPERSPEEDWAY: The Story Of NASCAR Grand National Racing in 1977. 2018 marks the 50th season of racing at Pocono International Raceway and the speedway's history has been curiously overlooked in racing history. It began with the rapid development of the Pocono Mountains region in the 1950s with the expansion of the Interstate Highway system. Read a 1970 historical outline for the track...........
In the mid-1950s the concept for Pocono International Raceway was born as the product of informal discussions between Pocono Mountain business people. Each agreed that as racefans they would like to see a major championship racing facility on the East Coast. Their initial interest led to the formation of Racing Incorporated in 1957 and the resulting plans for Pocono International Raceway
Doctor Joseph Mattoili, a Philadelphia-area dentist, and his wife Rose, a foot doctor, were the prime movers behind Racing Incorporated, but when a 1,025-acre site near Long Pond, a famous duck-hunting stream, was purchased - at $100,000, a strikingly affordable land deal - the company was run by fellow fan David Montgomery, but he faced that he had no one to run the track. He hired short track veterans to help run the company.
The track was built as five tracks in one - a 3/4-mile oval within the main superoval; a 1.8-mile road course and a 3-mile road course, a revolutionary 2.5 mile triangle, and the mammoth frontstretch would serve as a drag-racing strip. With just three turns, each turn was banked differently, each turn representing another speedway - Trenton for the 14-degree banked Turn One, Indianapolis for the eight-degree second turn, named The Tunnel Turn because it bridges the tunnel entrance to the infield, and Milwaukee for the relatively sweeping 6-degree Turn Three.
The 1975 Schaefer 500
By 1969, however, only the small oval and the mammoth frontstretch was finished, when the very first race was run on May 4. It was a supermodified race and tragedy struck right away with the death of Troy Ruttman Jr. in the ensuing race. The track ran week after week as it struggled to finish the superoval. By 1970 Montgomery was fired and Mattioli was in command with USAC veteran Bill Marvel hired as GM. Pocono got a five-year agreement for a 500-mile Indycar race for 1971, but to get the 500 Pocono also had to run a 500-miler for USAC's stock car division, something other USAC tracks weren't required to do.
The Schaefer 500 took off in 1971 and despite period rain over the years Pocono drew well. The USAC stock car race, under ACME Super Saver supermarket sponsorship, first ran in September 1971 but rain interruption led the race after 1971 to run in late July, an off-week for NASCAR's Winston Cup Grand National tour. Richard Petty and Bobby Allison thus entered the ASS 500 with Petty winning it in 1973.
USAC withdrew its stock car division after a late-April 1975 500 won by Ron Keselowski - he of the now-famous Keselowski NASCAR clan - and NASCAR arrived in August 1974 with Purolator sponsorship.
It was 1975 that NASCAR at Pocono first established itself as compelling competition with controversy over David Pearson's win and a highly competitive affair. 1976 was even more exciting as the lead changed 47 times and Pearson's blown tire with two to go sent Richard Petty to a popular win.
Petty's 1980 crash, which broke his neck, was a fateful turning point for his career.
The decline in Indycar racing hurt Pocono as it continued with the race until 1990; driver complaints about the physical plant were addressed with money freed up from the cancellation of the Indycar race. NASCAR's rising popularity benefitted Pocono as it did other speedways, with highly competitive racing year after year.
The 1982 Mountain Dew may have been Pocono's greatest race.
Tim Richmond, of Ashland, Ohio, was brought to stock cars in the 1980 Coca Cola 500 and he won four times in the 1982-84 period, but it was hooking up with third-year team owner Rick Hendrick that erupted Richmond's career to legendary heights, with the 1986 Summer 500 Richmond's greatest win.
The track also ran the Modifieds, in the 1970s running them on the 2.5-miler. By 1980 they'd switched back to the infield short track.
The track saw spirited competition as well in 1990 in an exciting Geoff Bodine win.
Hard crashes have been a reality in Pocono's history.........
.........and when Darrell Waltrip took out rising superstar Davey Allison it became one of the worst.
Davey's death before the 1993 Summer 500 rocked all of racing and his memory permeated postrace reaction.
With the sport's technology arms race the racing was affected, but in the mid-1990s Pocono saw a renaissance of passing.
NASCAR's new Truck Series arrived and in 2010 saw a spirited affair
And in 2017 an even more exciting affair broke out.
Indycars returned in 2015 and the most competitive running ever broke out in 2017.
Happy 50 years, Pocono - keep at it for fifty more, and beyond.
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