NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Benny Parsons’ lone Cup title almost didn’t happen

Benny Parsons needed only to finish the 1973 season finale American 500 at N.C. Motor Speedway to win NASCAR’s coveted Winston Cup championship in something of an upset.

But in the flash of a grinding crash just 13 laps into the race, it appeared he wasn’t even going to be able to do that.

The wreck essentially destroyed his car, a Chevrolet owned by top track official and local businessman L.G. DeWitt. The right side was ripped away, the wheels torn from their sockets and an axle broken.

Parsons’ team, led by crew chief Travis Carter and engine builder Waddell Wilson, decided to try and make repairs – although that seemed a hopeless, impossible task.

As they began work, something astonishing took place. Members of rival teams swarmed in to help, assistance that’s unimaginable nowadays. Parts were cannibalized from a car that hadn’t made the field.

Finally, Parsons, returned to the track 136 laps down, bringing lusty cheers from a partisan crowd estimated at 48,000, testimony to his popularity. He finished 28th, 184 laps behind winner David Pearson. It was good enough to give him the title by 67.15 points, a relatively thin margin in the scoring system of that time. He edged standings runner-up Cale Yarborough, who finished third in the race.

“I was lower than the gutter when I got back to the garage after the wreck,” Parsons said, his eyes filled with tears. “Then I saw my guys and the others working all over the car and I got inspired. I was looking a fifth-place finish in the points dead in the eye, but a miracle happened.”

Parsons had won only one race that year, the Volunteer 500 at Bristol, Tenn. Nevertheless, the president of the PTA at his two sons’ school in Ellerbe had placed his name among NASCAR’s major champions.

That’s a big part of the Benny’s record leading to his posthumous induction Friday night into the NASCAR Hall Of Fame in Charlotte

In retrospect, it’s an honor no one aside from Parsons would have imagined almost 50 years ago. It never showed, but he carried a confidence of victory in every race.

That came through the first time I met him.

His handshake was firm. His smile was bright and wide.

“Nice to meet you,” Parsons said, and I could sense that he genuinely meant it.

It was May 7, 1970, the morning of the Rebel 400 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, and I had just introduced myself to the driver that had joined NASCAR’s major tour – then called the Grand National Division.

I had seen Benny race six years earlier – but didn’t meet him – on Aug. 9, 1964 when he made his NASCAR debut in the Western North Carolina 500 at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway. He and another young driver named Cale Yarborough had been entered in the race on a tryout basis for Ford in cars fielded by the powerful Holman-Moody team.

It did not go well for Parsons, who started ninth at the half-mile track but steadily fell back. Yarborough, meanwhile, ran with the leaders, veterans Junior Johnson, David Pearson and Ned Jarrett, the eventual winner.

However, overheating problems developed in the cars of both newcomers. Sidelined, Yarborough finished 20th and Parsons 21st.

Benny returned to ARCA, winning championships in 1968 and ’69.

That was enough to convince DeWitt, the president of N.C. Motor Speedway and a NASCAR team owner since 1965, to give fellow Parsons another Cup Series shot in 1970, hiring him on a full-time basis. Parsons, who was born in Wilkes County, moved his wife Connie and young sons Keith and Kevin from Detroit to little Ellerbe, not far from DeWitt’s racing shop at even smaller Norman.

Parsons was to win the Daytona 500 in 1975, one of 21 victories he logged at the top level, 12 of them with DeWitt. He also won the 1980 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and season finales in both the 1979 and ’80 L.A. Times 500s at Ontario Motor Speedway in California. He scored his final win in the Coca-Cola 500 of 1984 at Atlanta Motor Speedway for a team fielded by owner Johnny Hayes and crew chief/engine builder Leo Jackson.

Parsons retired after the 1988 season, but didn’t leave the sport. He went from the cockpit to the ESPN booth as an analyst on racing telecasts. He was a natural. Viewers loved his easy-to-understand explanations of complicated situations and also his warm, down-to earth, personable nature. Benny was so good on TV, including NBC and TNT, that he won an ACE Award in 1989 and an Emmy in ‘96.

Parsons had lost his wife, Connie, in 1991 to complications from a gall bladder operation. He later married a friend, Teri Kiel, and they built a magnificent hilltop home in his native mountains of Wilkes County.

The couple was in the early stages of developing a winery, Rendezvous Ridge, when devastating health news struck. Benny was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006. It appeared Parsons was beating the disease, but he was readmitted to Carolinas Medical Center, where he passed away on Jan. 16, 2007.

More NASCAR Hall of Fame induction coverage

This story was originally published January 18, 2017 at 5:43 PM with the headline "NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Benny Parsons’ lone Cup title almost didn’t happen."