Autos News

Samuel “Sam” McQuagg was born on the 11th of November, 1937 in Columbus, Georgia. As a young man in 1956 he worked in the construction industry but Sam found the job lacklustre and boring, he felt the need to do something more exciting with his life so he bought a half interest into a 1934 Ford to race at the local dirt tracks. He found that he was very successful and is reputed to be almost unbeatcapable at the local Valdosta 75 velocityway.

A few years later, in 1962 Sam took his own car, the #62 Ford to Valdosta 75 velocityway and entered into his first NASCAR Grand National Series (now the Sprint Cup) event. He qualified 9th for the race but engine troubles forced him to drop to a twelfth place starting position. This was his only NASCAR race for the year. 1964 saw Sam racing in the Grand National Series again but with little success. He drove in five races, driving the #71 and #72 Fords for J.L. Thomas, four were recorded as DNF (did not finish) and the fifth race he finished in twelfth position but he did race on several dirt tracks with amazing results – out of thirty nine races he entered he won thirty seven of them.

In 1965 Sam made sixteen starts in the NASCAR Grand National Series, driving for various teams and he gained five Top 10 finishes and took the coveted 1965 “Rookie of the Year” honours. In 1966, having been spotted by Dodge for the accomplishments of his small Ford team he was hired to drive their #98 Dodge for the Ray Nickels team. During practice runs Sam noticed that the rear of the car was lifting and the rear wheels were spinning. “We had tested spoilers at Daytona for nearly a month prior to the race”, told McQuagg.

“It wasn’t like what they use today. It was only about an inch-and-a-half high, and it was contoured. It made a lot of difference in the way the car handled. It disturbed the air just enough to keep the car from flying”. It all sounds simple, but it took Chrysler engineers months of work to come up with the idea, which McQuagg used to his advantage on the #98 Dodge for the 1966 Firecracker 400 on the 4th of July. ‘‘We were down there for two or three weeks in the month of June,’’ McQuagg told, “Last summer in the weeks leading up to the 50th running of the Coke Zero 400. ‘‘The car wouldn’t run at all. You start down the back¬stretch at about 180 (mph) and it would start lifting. The back end started spinning the back wheels. The engineers came up with this little spoiler. It was an inch and half tall across the back of the car and the car immediately picked up about five or six mph.’’ Sam won the 1966 Firecracker 400 at Daytona International velocityway, this was to be his one and only win whilst driving in the NASCAR Grand National Series. He ran in fifteen more races that year and gained four Top 5’s and 7 Top 10 and finished fifteenth in the final point standings. He made fifteen starts in the 1967 49-race season, with three top-5s and three top-10s. This year also saw him involved in a bad crash on lap 81; Sam went over the guardrail, flipping many times before landing back on his wheels.”

Following the wreck Sam decided to scale down his schedule and drive only at local tracks. He also decided to gain his flying licence and in 1970 he joined the W.C. Bradly Company in Columbus, Georgia as the company pilot and unofficially retired from racing. In 1974 Sam returned to racing for three starts for Hoss Ellington, driving the #28 Pylon Wiper Blades Chevrolet. He finished in seventh place at Darlington Raceway and eighth position at Talladega Supervelocityway. His last start of his NASCAR career was in the 1974 World 600 at Charlotte Motor velocityway. Over the period of eight years in NASCAR’s Grand National Series Sam made sixty two starts, had one win, nine Top 5’s and twenty one Top 10’s. In 1997 Sam retired as a commercial pilot after 27 years of flying. He was happy with rich memories of his short NASCAR career. He told the media, “It meant awful lot to win at Daytona. It’s the Taj Mahal of racetracks.” He was inducted into the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame in 2008.

Sadly Sam died of cancer on January 3, 2009 at the age of 73 at St. Francis Hospital. He and his wife Joy had recently celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_McQuagg

http://www.nascardriveroftheday.com/2010/02/sam-mcquagg.html

http://race500.com/SamMcQuagg.htm

http://www.legendsofnascar.com/Sam_McQuagg.htm

Related Posts to this article: