zombola
04-22-2017, 04:43 PM
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"It happened at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama in 1986. As best as track officials could determine, a man named Darren Crowder left his home in Birmingham, Alabama that morning to test drive a motorcycle he was interested in buying. He got caught up in race traffic, bought a ticket, found his way into the infield, slipped by security onto pit road, saw that the pace car was running and unlocked, stepped into it, and started driving. Seriously. The start of the race was minutes away, so the pace car being on the track seemed normal—until someone asked over the radio communication system used by NASCAR officials and teams, "Who's that ****er in the pace car?" All the crew men on pit road heard that and turned to watch Crowder turn the lap. Says Jim Freeman, who was Talladega's PR director at the time: "The teams are going crazy cheering him on: Go, go, go, go, go. Somebody said it's the first time everybody on pit road has been for the same car." Maybe the crew men were impressed by the way Crowder handled the Pontiac Trans Am. Talladega's banks are even steeper than Daytona's. "I don't think I've ever heard an official reading," Freeman says, "but I've seen enough cars going around the track, giving track rides and stuff, to know he was doing between 80 and 100 miles per hour." Local law enforcement officials were not impressed. They set up a road block on the track to stop Crowder. He locked the brakes and came to a complete stop. Police approached the car. "They started playing a deal of lock the doors, unlock the doors. They apparently had another set of keys. They would unlock the doors with the key, and he would lock them back. Lock, unlock. Lock, unlock. Finally they managed to grab the door handle before he could lock it back one time," Freeman says. "They dragged him out of the car. Well, he didn't have a shirt on. They got a big fist full of his hair. One of these long-haired hippie guys. They grabbed a big fist full of his hair and pulled him out of the car. The crowd starts booing. Police brutality and all that sort of stuff. But they had nothing to grab onto except his hair." Crowder was escorted from the pace car to a police car. Also: All of this happened on live TV, during which a commentator described the crowd of 125,000 as "the largest gathering for a sports event in the history of Alabama."
"It happened at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama in 1986. As best as track officials could determine, a man named Darren Crowder left his home in Birmingham, Alabama that morning to test drive a motorcycle he was interested in buying. He got caught up in race traffic, bought a ticket, found his way into the infield, slipped by security onto pit road, saw that the pace car was running and unlocked, stepped into it, and started driving. Seriously. The start of the race was minutes away, so the pace car being on the track seemed normal—until someone asked over the radio communication system used by NASCAR officials and teams, "Who's that ****er in the pace car?" All the crew men on pit road heard that and turned to watch Crowder turn the lap. Says Jim Freeman, who was Talladega's PR director at the time: "The teams are going crazy cheering him on: Go, go, go, go, go. Somebody said it's the first time everybody on pit road has been for the same car." Maybe the crew men were impressed by the way Crowder handled the Pontiac Trans Am. Talladega's banks are even steeper than Daytona's. "I don't think I've ever heard an official reading," Freeman says, "but I've seen enough cars going around the track, giving track rides and stuff, to know he was doing between 80 and 100 miles per hour." Local law enforcement officials were not impressed. They set up a road block on the track to stop Crowder. He locked the brakes and came to a complete stop. Police approached the car. "They started playing a deal of lock the doors, unlock the doors. They apparently had another set of keys. They would unlock the doors with the key, and he would lock them back. Lock, unlock. Lock, unlock. Finally they managed to grab the door handle before he could lock it back one time," Freeman says. "They dragged him out of the car. Well, he didn't have a shirt on. They got a big fist full of his hair. One of these long-haired hippie guys. They grabbed a big fist full of his hair and pulled him out of the car. The crowd starts booing. Police brutality and all that sort of stuff. But they had nothing to grab onto except his hair." Crowder was escorted from the pace car to a police car. Also: All of this happened on live TV, during which a commentator described the crowd of 125,000 as "the largest gathering for a sports event in the history of Alabama."