1958 Jim Mideon 500
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1958 Jim Mideon 500
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 31 of 51 in the 1958 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season | |||
 An actual advertisement photo for the 1958 Jim Mideon 500 race in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. |
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| Date | July 18, 1958 | ||
| Location | Canadian Exposition Stadium (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 0.333 mi (0.535 km) |
||
| Distance | 100 laps, 33.3 mi (53.5 km) | ||
| Weather | Temperatures ranging from 12.2 °C (54.0 °F) to 24.4 °C (75.9 °F)[1] Wind speeds ranging from 8.15 kilometres per hour (5.06 mph) to 9.90 kilometres per hour (6.15 mph)[1] |
||
| Avg Speed | 43.184 miles per hour (69.498 km/h) | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Rex White | Julian Petty | |
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Rex White | Julian Petty | |
| Laps | 69 | ||
| Winner | |||
| 42 |
Lee Petty |
Petty Enterprises | |
| Television | |||
| Network | untelevised | ||
| Announcers | none | ||
The 1958 Jim Mideon 500 (known officially as 1958-31) was a NASCAR Grand National Series racing event that took place on July 18, 1958 at Canadian Exposition Stadium in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[2]
Children were entertained with a jigsaw puzzle of the Royal Family before the race began.[3] Most of the cars in the race were either Chevrolet or Ford.[2] All of the 19 drivers on the racing grid were born in the United States of America.[2] Admission to the race was $2.00 for adults ($15.76 in today's money) and $0.50 for children ($3.94 in today's money).[3]
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Contents
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Summary
General information
The first green flag of the race was waved at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Savings Time[3] and the checkered flag was waved at approximately 8:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Savings Time. One hundred laps were resolved in forty-six minutes on a paved oval track spanning 0.333 miles (0.536 km); making it a shorter track than Martinsville Speedway.[2][4] Lee Petty (in his 1957 Oldsmobile 88) defeated Cotton Owens (in his 1957 Pontiac Catalina) by racing at speeds up to 43.184 miles per hour (69.498 km/h).[2] Rex White earned the event's pole position by qualifying with a speed of 51.406 miles per hour (82.730 km/h).[2][4] Dick Walters received a last-place finish in this race due to an incident with his car's rear end.[2]
This race is known for the debut of a young driver at 21 years, 16 days, Richard Petty, in car #142 (triple-digit numbers were legal in NASCAR until the 1970s).[5] He finished in 17th place; ten positions worse than he started.[2] It was suggested that Lee Petty intentionally knocked his son out of the race due to racing issues. However, the truth of the matter was the Lee was trying to outlap his son Richard (who was driving too slow) but used his "chrome horn" to take out the young Petty in his first race. More than 9700 live spectators were on hand for this race even though heavy rainfall made the track somewhat slippery.[3]
The other drivers in the top ten included: Jim Reed, Shorty Rollins (NASCAR's first Rookie of the Year), Johnny Mackison, Billy Rafter, Rex White, Tiny Benson, Bill Poor, and Bob Duell.[2]
Post-race consequences
The purse of the race was $4,200 in American dollars ($33,832.53 in today's money).[3] To this day, this is the only event in the modern-day Sprint Cup Series to take place in Canada as the track itself was later torn down to make way for newer development.[6] The Canadian media, however, found NASCAR to be boring and the CNE drivers to be more interesting due to their bias towards Canadian athletes.[3] All the local Toronto newspapers could find from the event that was "fit enough to print" was a dispute in pit road between two "local" drivers.[7]
NASCAR would eventually return to a more prepared Canada in the 21st century. However, it would be to Montreal (Circuit Gilles Villeneuve) for the Nationwide Series in addition to various small town tracks for the "local" NASCAR Canadian Tire Series. Cayuga Speedway (in Cayuga, Ontario) wanted to host the first ever Nationwide Series race in Canada but was turned down by NASCAR at a later date.[8] Since then, the track has been on hiatus due to economic issues.
In 2010, the Canadian National Exposition Center hosted its first NASCAR-sanctioned race, the Jumpstart 100, since this 1958 race, on a temporary street course spanning 1.721 miles (2.770 km), for the Canadian Tire Series as part of Honda Indy Toronto weekend.
References
- ^ a b "1958 Jim Mideon 500 weather information". Almanac. http://www.almanac.com/weather/history/ON/Toronto/1958-07-18. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "1958 Jim Mideon 500 information". Racing Reference. http://racing-reference.info/race/1958-31/W. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
- ^ a b c d e f "1958 Jim Mideon 500 information (second reference)". Canadian Racer. http://www.canadianracer.com/nascarincanada1.asp. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
- ^ a b "Canadian National Exposition Speedway information". Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet. http://racing-reference.info/race/1958-31/W. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
- ^ "Richard Petty's Toronto racing number". NASCAR.com. 2003-12-31. http://www.nascar.com/2003/news/headlines/wc/12/31/history_43/index.html. Retrieved 2011-02-18.
- ^ "The Fate of the Canadian Exposition Stadium". SpeedTV. http://nascar.speedtv.com/article/hall-of-fame-profile-richard-petty-part-3-of-5/. Retrieved 2011-02-16.
- ^ "Speeding through Toronto a tradition". Wheels.ca. http://www.wheels.ca/Article%20Category/article/754047. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
- ^ The Simcoe Reformer - June 8, 2006
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