Speedway in College Station was patterned after Michigan, and it brought high-speed oval racing to Texas.
- Texas World Speedway in College Station, Texas, introduced the great state of Texas to NASCAR Cup racing.
- The first race there, on Dec. 7, 1969, was won by Bobby Isaac.
- The track then was originally known as Texas International Speedway.
There are two things that pop into conversation when long-time travelers of NASCAR roads discuss Texas World Speedway: Deer and rattlesnakes.
“I remember the rattlesnakes there,” said Darrell Waltrip, a winner at the track, located in College Station, in 1979. “They said they would send their people in and clear the infield of snakes before we got there. But our guys went out and caught a few. Me? No, I don’t do snakes.”
And deer? Yes, hundreds.
“I got there about 7:30 in the morning one day during a race week and there were deer out eating grass in the parking lots,” remembered Donnie Allison. “A lot of deer. One of the guys said, ‘Wait until tonight.’ He was right. We went out about 5:30, and the parking lot was full of them.”
Benny Parsons was a NASCAR Cup winner at Texas World Speedway in 1981.
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It says a lot about the old Texas track, which was demolished in the 1990s to make way for a residential/commercial development, when people who raced at the place have as many memories of its animals as its racing.
But TWS introduced the great state of Texas to Cup racing. The first race there, on Dec. 7, 1969, was won by Bobby Isaac. The track then was known as Texas International Speedway.
Flash forward more than a half-century later, and NASCAR now races at two giant Texas tracks within a four-hour drive of each other – Texas Motor Speedway and the Circuit of the Americas, where the Cup series is scheduled to run Sunday.
Texas World Speedway and Meyer Speedway, a half-mile paved track which hosted Cup drivers in 1971, are largely forgotten. Bobby Allison won the Space City 300—the Meyer track was located near Houston, a NASA operational base, thus the name—by more than two laps over James Hylton. Allison led 253 of the 300 laps in a race that attracted only 14 cars and less than 10,000 fans. The Cup Series never passed that way again.
TWS, which opened in 1969 after two years of construction, seemed primed for success. The track was patterned after its sister track, Michigan Speedway, which also was owned by American Raceways and racing entrepreneur Larry LoPatin, who had big dreams but ran short of cash as he jumped into the auto racing world with both feet.
Like Michigan, TWS was two miles in length, but its turns were banked higher, providing a landscape for faster speeds. And those were delivered.
Richard Petty (No. 43) won the Lone Star 500 at Texas World Speedway in 1972. Much of the race was a close duel between Petty and Bobby Isaac (also pictured). Drivers endured outside temperatures of 101 degrees.
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The pole speed for the first Cup race at TWS was 176.284 mph, more than 15 mph faster than the Michigan pole the same year.
“The races there were like those at Michigan, just faster,” said Donnie Allison. “The racing was probably as good as you saw in Michigan, but the difference in banking made a difference in how you got into the corner. The fastest way was around the bottom, but you could run the top.”
Waltrip remembers TWS as “a great track, but rougher than heck. Real bumpy. I liked it. It was Michigan but with more banking.”
TWS hosted eight Cup races before NASCAR made its exit in 1981. Richard Petty won three. The other five checkered flags went to Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough, Benny Parsons, Isaac and Waltrip. The IndyCar Series ran at TWS in the 1970s, with Texan A.J. Foyt winning the final three races there.
The first Cup race in 1969 resulted in Isaac’s first superspeedway win, but it is perhaps best remembered for a weird circumstance that resulted in apparent winner Buddy Baker failing to finish. Baker had a dominant car and was leading under caution late in the race. He motioned to crew members on pit road as he drove by on the track. In doing so, he momentarily lost focus and hit the rear end of James Hylton’s car, which was rolling along in front of him under the yellow. The impact ruptured the radiator on Baker’s car, and he parked.
A.J. Foyt (21), Buddy Baker (71) and Richard Petty (43) race three abreast on the banked oval of Texas World Speedway as they try for the lead of the 1972 Texas 500. Baker was the winner at an average speed of 147.059 mph. Foyt finished 2nd and Petty was third.
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To say the least, Baker was embarrassed. The verb that would describe team owner Cotton Owens was much harsher.
The racing at TWS was riskier than at most tracks, largely because of the high speeds. Yarborough crashed into the wall about halfway through the inaugural race and shattered his shoulder blade, one of the worst injuries of his career.
“The track was fine as long as you had grip,” Allison said. “But if you lost grip you hit hard. When you crashed there, you crashed.”
Johnny Davis, now an Xfinity Series team owner, remembers traveling to TWS for the 1981 race as a crew member for Hylton’s Cup team. It was a bit more eventful than a casual “Let’s go to the race” trip.
“Six of us left James’ shop in Inman (South Carolina) in a 1969 Dodge four-door one-ton truck and drove non-stop to College Station,” Davis said. “It was hotter than Hades. Hottest place I’ve ever been. James had no money and one set of tires. Richard Childress was there driving the No. 3 car. He had all new tires but not enough pit crew. So I changed tires on both of the cars, and we put some of Richard’s used tires on James’ car.
“After the race, we loaded up and drove to Riverside, California for the next week’s race. Changed the car around in a hotel parking lot. Ran the race, then drove to Michigan for the next one. Did the same changes again in another hotel parking lot. Ran Michigan and came home.
“That track was fast—too fast.”
Why didn’t TWS survive as a Cup venue? Although Houston, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth were relatively close, fans didn’t flock to the facility. And several events, including the first race, were hammered by rain. Financial problems led to poor upkeep over the years.
“The track was kind of in a bizarre area where there wasn’t anything else,” Waltrip said. “It was supposed to be easy to get to from the bigger cities, but it never really caught on. I hated to see it go away. But it needed money spent on it, and nobody would do that.”
But…the deer.
“Before the race one year, a game warden took me and Bobby and Cale and (David) Pearson and LeeRoy (Yarbrough) out on the property adjacent to the track to go deer hunting,” Donnie Allison said. “There was a hunting preserve there. Bobby shot a doe. We took it into town to the Ramada Inn, and they fixed it for lunch for us.”
Keyword: NASCAR at Texas World Speedway Meant High Speeds, Deer, Rattlesnakes