When Sabotage Ran Rampant through the Talladega Garages

Fifty years ago, on August 11, 1974, the morning of the Talladega 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, Cup Series teams arrived in the track’s huge garage area to find chaos.

During the overnight hours, a person (or several people) had sabotaged almost half the field of race cars scheduled to compete for 500 miles on one of the fastest race tracks in the world. From front-end geometry changes to fuel cell tampering to cut oil lines and tire damage, cars throughout the garage had been hit by dangerous vandalism. Driver Buddy Baker described the sabotage as “attempted mass murder.”

Talladega County sheriff’s deputies and NASCAR officials conducted an investigation, but, despite the widespread damage, no one was arrested. There were no video cameras in the garage, and security was not as tight as at most current tracks.

Officials concluded that the damage likely was caused by someone “on the inside,” someone with knowledge of race cars, because of the specific nature of the vandalism.

Surprisingly, retired NASCAR official Joe Gazaway said in a recent interview with Autoweek that officials figured out who had damaged the cars and that the individual was involved in racing. “It took us most of Sunday to figure it out,” Gazaway said. He refused to elaborate, however, and said he couldn’t comment on why the person wasn’t arrested.

The incident, which occurred prior to the 11th race at the relatively new Talladega track, remains one of the oddest in NASCAR history.

The targets were mostly the top cars of the day, but backmarkers like Joe Frasson and Neil Castles also were impacted. They dropped out of the race in the first 30 laps because of oil leaks caused by cut oil lines that had not been detected before the race.

The cars of race favorites Richard Petty and David Pearson were among those impacted. Front-end settings were changed on both cars. Ironically, Petty won the race and Pearson was a close second.

“We always checked the toe-in every morning, and they had messed with it,” said Eddie Wood, then a Pearson/Wood Brothers Racing crew member and now co-owner of the team. “They had loosened the adjusters on both sides of the front end. It would have been a big drag on speed. It’s something David would have noticed right away on the pace laps.”

The sabotage apparently was noticed first by team owner Roger Penske, whose Matador was driven that season by Bobby Allison. Penske said some kind of material had been poured into the fuel tank.

Word spread quickly through the garage, and many teams discovered damage to their cars. Sand had been funneled into fuel cells. Cale Yarborough’s team found sand and a soft drink in his Chevrolet’s fuel cell, necessitating a replacement.

After mechanics corrected the issues prior to the start of the race, NASCAR threw a caution flag on lap 12 to allow teams to check their cars.

“Once somebody found something wrong, everybody was onto their cars,” said Dale Inman, then Petty’s crew chief. “We noticed the toe-in right away. If you tried to push the car (in the garage area), you would have noticed that.

“The big worry was about something we might not have found, but we certainly checked the car really good. People checked really close because of what could have happened. You didn’t want to overlook anything.”

Inman and Wood agreed that the perpetrator was educated about race cars.

“They would have had to have at least a little bit of mechanical knowledge,” Inman said. “I guess it’s one of the great mysteries that was never solved.”

“Anybody would know how to put sand in the fuel filler,” Wood said, “but to do some of the other stuff they would have had to know what they were doing. Security was not like it is now, and you probably could have ‘flim-flammed’ your way in. And to do some of what they did they would have had to have tools.”

Petty told reporters he was puzzled by the incident. “I don’t know if it was done as a prank or if they were really trying to get somebody hurt or slow somebody down,” he said. “You could change the toe-in in two minutes if you knew what you were doing, but I don’t think it was professionals.”

Security was increased at the following races on the schedule. Police dogs patrolled garage areas. There had been isolated incidents of car sabotage in previous seasons, but the Talladega incident was easily the most widespread.

“From that day on, we always wired the hood and the decklid down and fixed things so we would know if anything had been tampered with,” Wood said. “Some teams started loading up their cars overnight, but that ended when people started staying overnight and working on the cars.”