While cruising on a southern California freeway, en route to covering the latest race on our schedule, we were listening to Dave Moody’s show on Sirius Satellite Radio as we always do. Moody was commenting on NASCAR legend Cotton Owens and told a story about how he recently visited a Sprint Cup Series garage. Moody relayed that Owens introduced himself to many of today’s young super stars in the series but the vast majority of them didn’t seem to have any idea who he was.
Moody’s assessment of that situation was quite correct: it’s shameful. A legend like Cotton Owens, who’s on NASCAR’s all time 50 Greatest Drivers list. deserves better.
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For you newer NASCAR fans, and for that matter young drivers, allow me to tell you about this racing legend.
Everett “Cotton” Owens, a favorite son of Spartanburg-South Carolina, was born May 21, 1924 in Union-South Carolina. He was one of those barnstorming NASCAR drivers who raced all over the country while helping to create the sport that we know and love today.
His racing career began in the 1950’s in open wheel modifieds. Today that series is known as the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. During his modified stint Owens won over 100 features and was a back to back series champion in 1953 and 1954.
During that same time he also ran some limited NASCAR Grand National, now known as the Sprint Cup, races. But it would be during the late fifties before he began his rise to prominence in Grand National racing. His first series win came February 17th, 1957 at what was then the series’ premiere annual event: the Daytona Beach Road Course. Driving a 1957 Pontiac prepared by car owner Ray Nichels, yet another NASCAR pioneer, Owens beat runner up Johnny Beauchamp by a whopping 55 seconds. Historically, there are two reasons why this particular race was so important. First, the average race speed was 101.541 MPH and it was the first ever NASCAR sanctioned race with an average speed in excess of 100 MPH. The race is also significant because it was Pontiac’s first ever manufacturer’s win in NASCAR.
Owens visited victory lane again in 1958 but it was the following year that he began to hit his NASCAR stride. The 1959 season saw him finishing second, to Lee Petty, in the Grand National championship standings. That was pretty remarkable because he only made 37 starts but managed to score a win, 13 top five finishes and 22 top tens.
The 1961 racing season was also highly productive for Cotton Owens and saw him win four races and 11 top fives despite the fact that he only ran a limited schedule of 17 races.
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At this point Cotton Owens decided to hang up his driving helmet to focus on a budding career as a team owner and car fabricator. In 1962 he hired the legendary Junior Johnson to drive his car. That same year he hired a young, unknown but up and coming development driver by the name of David Pearson.
That’s right young people. It was Cotton Owens who brought David Pearson to NASCAR and launched the legend of the “Silver Fox.”
In 1964 Owens put on his driving helmet once again for a rather unusual reason. The promoter of the Richmond, (Virginia), Speedway enticed him to come out of retirement to participate in a special race to see if the now prominent car owner could beat his rising star driver. Owens beat Pearson that night and collected his final NASCAR Grand National career win.
