• His driver, Stan Bowman, was making his first USAC sprint car start as a licensed driver (he raced twice in 1961 with a USAC temporary permit), going against racing greats Parnelli Jones, Johnny Rutherford, Jim Hurtubise, Don Branson and Roger McCluskey, among others.
• And Bowman was driving with injured hands that were burned the night before in a stock car race.
“I believe he expected to win every week,” Diane (Beck) Lane said of her father Harold, “even though we didn’t.”
For Beck and Bowman, though, April 22, 1962, was one of those weeks.
Bowman led 25 laps — many in an edge-of-your seat duel with Hurtubise — in the 30-lap race stopped short because of rain.
It was a stunning win for the Beck Construction team and cemented their place in Eldora history. Seventy drivers have won 181 USAC sprint features at Eldora, but Beck and Bowman will always be No. 1 on the list.
Jones, who won USAC sprint titles in 1960, 1961 and 1962, is among those who never earned a sprint victory at Eldora.
“Probably at the time, yes,” Jones said of being disappointed at never claiming an Eldora win. “I was fortunate to win the championship in the sprint car, so I won my share of races. It just happened I didn’t get one there.”
On that day in April, 50 years ago, he wasn’t alone.
“For a 220 to come in and win a sprint car race was a pretty big deal,” Lane said. “(Hurtubise) came over after the race and talked to both Bowman and my father. In his words, ‘I did every damn thing I could but I couldn’t catch that 220 Offey.’
“That race at Eldora, the place was packed. Everybody in the pits came over after the race to talk to my dad. Don Branson, Parnelli Jones, all the big names in sprint car racing at the time were there.”
The win was Bowman’s only sprint appearance at Eldora. On June 17 at Terre Haute Action Track in Indiana, Bowman — who had a ride lined up for the 1963 Indianapolis 500 with Dean Van Lines — was hot lapping a sprinter owned by Cincinnati’s Clyde Gutzwiller when a front axle broke. His car flipped end-over-end multiple times before coming to a rest outside the track. Bowman — wearing the open-faced helmet of those days and with no roll bar to protect him — died five days later.
“Stan Bowman would still be here today if they had roll cages back in 1962,” said Lane, adding her brother Sonny was one of the first to put a roll cage on a sprint car a few years before USAC made them mandatory.
To honor the 50th anniversary of Beck and Bowman’s achievement, Lane and Randy Bowman — Stan’s son — will be in attendance at Eldora. Lane’s father died in 1971 and her brother in 2003.
“I was standing in the back of my dad’s pickup truck watching the car go around every lap,” Lane said of that special day in April. “It was an amazing race.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2400, ext. 6991, or gbilling@coxohio.com.
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