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AUTO RACING COLUMN

France Missed At Daytona

By MARTIN FENNELLY

Published: Jul 8, 2007

DAYTONA BEACH - Before Jeff Gordon was 24, there was the real 24, the 24 a lot of folks thought of at Daytona International Speedway this week.

For 24 was the radio handle of William Clifton France - Bill France Jr. - who died last month at the age of 74 after a long illness. How strange Daytona is without him.

At the speedway dreamed up by his daddy, Big Bill, at the high banks Bill Jr. helped build a half-century ago, driving a grader, NASCAR employees always knew 24 was watching, looking for anything amiss. He wanted it just right. If it wasn't, he hopped on the radio ("This is 24 …") and gave somebody hell, the voice deep and rich and with enough gravel in it to fill a dump truck.

Bill the Bear ran the show for 31 years and then some, wielding power over the hum of his motorized wheelchair - perfect - after promoting his boy, Brian. Bill Jr. turned NASCAR into the country's biggest spectator sport, a multi-billion-dollar industry, with drivers famous from Martinsville to Tokyo.

The Pepsi 400 was Saturday night, but they should have called it the Firecracker 400 again, because that was Bill France Jr. - a firecracker. He was an original with a vision as audacious as that Disney who made that deal down the road into something.

An American Success Story

Bill Jr. loved the 400, the flags, fireworks and patriotism. For years, he brought in Medal of Honor winners to the 400. He loved the troops. He also loved his smokes and scotch … and his hot dogs, dogs with lots of cole slaw, mustard and Tabasco. Flags, cars, hot dogs. You can't get more American than that.

True, he wasn't a true Junior. Big Bill was actually William Henry Getty France, but if Big Bill said his Billy was a junior, and Billy seconded the motion, well, that was that.

Big Bill left Washington, D.C., in the Depression with $100 and his family and big dreams. He opened a gas station in Daytona Beach and began organizing stock-car races. Big Bill founded NASCAR is what he did. It's one of the great American success stories. Bill Jr., when he took over as chairman in 1972, made damn sure of it.

Several years ago, Tom Cruise made a fairly awful movie on

NASCAR. But one scene rang true - Cruise and another driver being put in their place by a racing chief named Big John, played by Fred Thompson.

Everybody knew Big John was Bill Jr. And Bill Jr. loved it, because that's how he handled it once with Dale Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine. Bill Jr. told them they could find themselves another line of work if they didn't start behaving. Of course, Bill Jr. loved Earnhardt. He loved self-made men, who made nothing into something.

Around the NASCAR offices, people hauled butt when Bill Jr. wanted something done. He had no time for B.S. "What's your point?" is how he ended long-winded presentations, that or, "The fact is, you're wrong." Usually they were.

He worked like a fiend. "Good deal," he'd say to someone staying late. Years ago, Brian gave the employees the afternoon off. It was Christmas Eve. "They already got tomorrow off," Bill Jr. grumbled. He loved acting more gruff than he was. His friends lost count of how many times he helped someone in need and then made them swear not to tell anybody what he'd done.

He was listed as one of the 500 richest men in the world. He could have fished every day on his yacht, but always ended up at the office, even those last years, when an oxygen tank rode with him on his wheelchair.

One of the 500 richest men frequented a beat-up restaurant in Daytona Beach that had homemade egg salad. He loved Taco Bell - imagine, he'd tell his workers, three tacos for $3.50, what a bargain. Sometimes he'd be flying north and he'd tell the pilot to land in Winston-Salem just so he could go to Pulliam's, an old gas station turned famed hot-dog joint. Two dogs, don't forget slaw, mustard and Tabasco.

Said He Could Do It, And Did

He knew where he wanted the sport to go and how he wanted it to get there. He put NASCAR all over TV, all over the country, into cities everywhere.

He didn't watch the other sports. He always wondered why the Red Sox and Yankees didn't have sponsor's names on their uniforms. What, they got too much money? And tennis, that whole court with no sponsors' logos on it, all that room, what a waste.

He met with American president after president, but few people impressed him, least of all himself. But soldiers were the exception. Bill Jr. didn't show emotion easy. On the way to the NASCAR banquet in New York City, he visited the Walter Reed hospital and those wounded kids back from Iraq. Later, at the banquet, there was a video tribute to the troops. Tears rolled down Bill Jr.'s face.

He was sick for years, cancer all through him. He took to riding a "scooter." Nobody dared call it a wheelchair. Even then, Bill Jr. held his ground. You'd go to help him and he'd be the old bear again. "I can do it!" he'd growl.

And that was Bill France Jr. - a man who said he could do it, and did.

Saturday, before the race and fireworks, Richard Petty, the king of NASCAR, at least on the driving side, steered an all-white Bill France Jr. tribute car around the tri-oval. There was a moment of silence. Then someone told everyone else to start your engines, music to those ears, wherever they were.

Everybody assumes Bill Jr. is up there talking Saint Peter into a sponsorship deal. A lot of people will miss 24 on the radio, though at the funeral, Jim France, Bill's brother, said, "I wouldn't be surprised if I still heard it."

He was a firecracker.