Junior Johnson, NASCAR giant, died Friday.
By the middle of the 1974 season, the accomplished former driver had two racing teams to his name. One was the No. 52 that had belonged to Allan Brooke, with Earl Ross driving. In late September, Ross won the Old Dominion 500 in Martinsville. More famously, there was the No. 11 team. Cale Yarborough already had six victories that year, and after the halfway point, the South Carolinian won four more, repeating as the second-highest finisher in the season standings.
What brought these two teams together was Carling beer. The Toronto company, according to Johnson, "had been sponsoring Ross on a smaller team," but wanted to boost the Canadian driver's chances of winning Rookie of the Year. The beer makers came to Johnson, who was Richard Howard's partner in the Yarborough venture, and proposed buying the team with the points leader. "As far as I knew," Johnson recounted years later, "to have a business like Carling actually own a team was a first in NASCAR."
This arrangement began with the Firecracker 400 in July, but ended that fall, when the brewery owners suddenly abandoned their NASCAR aspirations. Johnson bought back his enterprise. The Rookie of the Year from north of the border would return for a few more races thereafter, but not under the banner of Junior Johnson & Associates.
Yarborough stuck around, and later in the '70s, the man driving the white and orange No. 11 car would be the Winston Cup champion three times in a row. Darrell Waltrip would bring another three titles to that team in the '80s.
"Carling's sponsorship efforts had served the team very well," Johnson wrote, but from there, the owner and his driver would have to overcome a rough 1975 to build on the legend of No. 11 and the legacy of a man who came from moonshine-running roots.
Mr. Johnson's own account of 1974, written in 2011 for Motorsports Unplugged
Yarborough's 1974 season and Ross's, from Racing-Reference.info
Some more about Earl Ross, from NASCAR Yesteryear
