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BOBBY ISAAC: NASCAR’s Mystery Champion
(PART II)
By Michael Smith
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It seems that nothing ever came easy for Bobby Isaac, but his rough-around-the-edges upbringing probably prepared him for the adversity he faced throughout his life. Having struggled to get his racing career off the ground, Bobby found himself hopping from car to car and from team to team in what must have seemed like a dismal repeat of his employment history as a younger man when he jumped from job to job in sawmills, pool halls and ice factories. Nineteen sixty-six found Bobby without a ride and even a temporary opportunity with the Cotton Owens team had fizzled due to mechanical troubles.
Meanwhile, K&K Insurance was fielding a car in the NASCAR circuit, first with Gordon Johncock behind the wheel, and then finishing out the season with Earl Balmer as its driver. At season’s end, K&K went shopping for a full time driver for their cars. Nord Krauskopf, the president of K&K, and Harry Hyde, the team’s chief mechanic picked Bobby Isaac as their man. (Harry Hyde was a legend in his own right and he would serve as the basis for Robert Duval’s character in the movie Days of Thunder.)
Krauskopf told Bobby in no uncertain terms that he wanted a Grand National championship. The team entered 12 races in the 1967 season, recorded just one top two finish (they placed second to Buddy Baker in that year’s National 500) and placed 14th in the final points standings. Some would say, not a very auspicious start.
The K&K team stepped up their effort in 1968. Bobby broke a four-year drought by taking the checkered flag in the season’s 10th race. Along with the win, Bobby took the points lead from Richard Petty who had failed to submit an entry blank and thus was not eligible for points from the event.
Three races later, Bobby again found his way to victory circle by finishing ahead of Buddy Baker and Tom Pistone in a 125-mile event in Augusta, Georgia on May 3, 1968. The win further solidified Bobby’s point’s lead, putting him 39 points ahead of second place Clyde Lynn. The championship seemed assured.
Eventually, as the season wore on, Bobby slipped into second place in points, despite a win and Pearson’s disqualification and 49 point penalty following the Maryland 300 in September. Isaac won the race and Pearson posted a second place finish. However, in post race inspection, Pearson’s car was found to be nearly 200 pounds underweight. Pearson forfeited the $1,000 prize money and the 49 points that went with it. Bobby’s point’s deficit was whittled down to a mere 55 points.
Bobby would have to be content with three wins and a second place finish in the point’s standings for 1968. He finished second to Pearson, having run in two more races. The clincher however was the win column. Bobby’s second place point’s finish was accomplished with three wins compared to Pearson’s astonishing 16 wins that season. To say that the K&K team was making great strides would have been an understatement. The 1969 season offered great promise for Bobby and the K&K team.
Isaac would look back on the 1969 season with pride as well as a little bit of pain. While he would post a personal record for season wins, he would also suffer the apparent rejection of his fellow drivers.
In August of 1969, eleven of NASCAR’s premier drivers met in Ann Arbor, Michigan to form the Professional Driver’s Association – the PDA. Present for that inaugural meeting were Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, Elmo Langley, Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, LeeRoy Yarbrough, David Pearson, Pete Hamilton, Charlie Glotzbach, Donnie Allison and James Hylton. Bobby Isaac was not invited to the meeting, despite his second place finish in the previous year’s standings and his obvious status as one of the sport’s front-runners. In fact, Bobby was the only factory-backed driver who was not invited to participate in the PDA meeting.
“It kind of hurt my feelings,” Bobby explained a couple of years later in an interview for Circle Track and Highway magazine. “My car owner asked me not to make any quick decisions…I don’t belong to the PDA, but I don’t condemn anybody for being a member.”
Petty and his co-conspirators managed to keep their maneuverings a secret and issued an official press release when the Grand National circuit rolled into Darlington for the Southern 500 in early September. Big Bill France bristled at the news, pointing out to the public that NASCAR racing had been pretty darned good to the drivers. To prove his point, France singled out LeeRoy Yarbrough. “Some of these fellows have gotten to be big heroes and they have apparently forgotten how they got there. I can’t see why LeeRoy Yarbrough, for instance, would want such a group. He’s won $150,000 this year alone. That’s not too bad.”
In the midst of this turmoil, Bobby Isaac and the K&K team continued to run their races, managing to stay out of the fracas. In fact, by the time the circuit rolled into Darlington and the PDA had its big coming out party, Bobby had posted an impressive 11 wins, including a stunning victory at Weaverville, North Carolina in which he came from being five laps down to win by a staggering 4 lap lead. If being excluded from the PDA hurt Bobby’s feelings, his performance certainly didn’t reflect it.
Three races later, the PDA situation boiled over as the Grand National circuit rolled in for the inaugural event at Talladega. Deeming the track too fast and unsafe for racing, a group of drivers, led by Petty and the PDA, elected to pack up their cars and equipment and boycott the event. Bobby, never having been a member of the PDA, elected to remain and run the event along with one or two “name” drivers including Tiny Lund and a field of lesser known racers eager to showcase their talent.
In his typical roundabout way, Buddy Baker explained the Talladega situation like this: “Bobby Isaac was the one driver who raced (in the Talladega inaugural event). One thing about Bobby: he never told anybody he was not going to race. So you have to respect him. He was not a member of the PDA.”
Nope, Bobby wasn’t a member of the PDA, (neither was Buddy’s own father, Buck Baker for that matter) and it has been speculated that some of the PDA’s founding members viewed Isaac as a loner who could not be trusted. And yet Bobby Isaac, this man who couldn’t be trusted, did run the inaugural race at Talladega, finishing fourth, thus keeping his word to Nord Krauskopf, his car owner.
Bobby claimed victory in the very next race after the Talladega 500. There had been rumors of threats against drivers who had failed to honor the Talladega boycott, but Isaac again stepped up to the plate and in the pre-race introductions, the crowd reportedly cheered loudest when Bobby Isaac’s name was announced.
Four races later, Bobby again claimed victory in a 200 lap event in Savannah, Georgia and just two days later he won again at Augusta Speedway. Following the win, he lamented his lack of success on super speedways. “I’ve won several races on the short tracks this year. I just wish I could win a super speedway race. Lord knows I’ve run well enough to win one. The breaks have never come my way. We’ll win a big race one of these days.”
Bobby’s prediction would ring true just four races later in the 1969 season finale at Texas International Speedway. Bobby started the inaugural Texas 500 in the seventh position and, after dicing with Donnie Allison late in the race, Bobby took the lead with just 15 laps remaining to claim his first super speedway triumph. “I’ve been trying since 1963 to win a big race,” Bobby said. “I’ve been close many times. This is the greatest day of my life.”
Despite a staggering 17 wins for the season – more than any driver that year - Bobby only managed a 6th place finish in the 1969 points standings. Nevertheless, he remained above the off-track turmoil caused by the PDA and established himself as a driver to be contended with where it mattered most: on the track. The coming 1970 season loomed large with tempting promise.
For the 1970 season, Bobby again fielded the K&K insurance Dodge of Nord Krauskopf. Bobby posted a number of top-five and top-ten finishes in the opening weeks of the season and then pulled off a victory in the season’s 14th race, the Beltsville 300 in Beltsville, Maryland on May 15, 1970. With the win, Bobby also grabbed the point’s lead.
Three days later, Bobby again claimed victory, this time in a 120-mile event in Hampton, Virginia. Referring to second place finisher Bobby Allison, Isaac said, “I was watching Allison after all the pit stops. When I saw he couldn’t run as well as he had earlier, I took it easy.”
Bobby closed out the month of May with two more victories and then posted a victory at Hickory on June 20th, beating out Dick Brooks and Dave Marcis. With the Hickory victory Bobby increased his point lead over James Hylton. Six days later, Bobby again claimed the checkered flag in a 100-mile event in Greenville, South Carolina.
On July 9, 1970 Bobby again found himself in victory circle, and he took a shot at NASCAR’s point’s system, saying, “I don’t like a system that rewards a ‘stroker’.” Bobby was locked in a tight points battle with James Hylton, and his victory on July 9th placed him dead even in points with Hylton. There was some merit to Isaac’s comment, for at season’s end, James Hylton and Bobby Allison would claim just 4 wins between them, but they would finish directly behind Bobby Isaac who notched 11 victories, and amazingly, Hylton and Allison would beat out Richard Petty in the points race, despite his 18 wins that year! “I don’t think a person not running to win should be this close in the championship,” Bobby said flatly.
On July 24th Bobby battled a close race with Richard Petty at Maryville, Tennessee, but in the end, Petty would prevail that day. At this point in the season, Hylton had again slipped ahead of Bobby in the point’s battle. The following day, however, fortune smiled on Bobby and he battled his way to a win at Nashville, Tennessee. Driving carefully, partly because he was exhausted by a grueling schedule and partly due to the fact that the new track was tearing up tires at an alarming rate. Hylton slipped in the points chase and lashed out at the track. “This is the lousiest track in the country,” he groused. “They topped Bristol with this one.”
Bobby claimed a dirt track win – one of the last races to be run on dirt in the Grand National series - just two weeks later in Columbia, South Carolina, capitalizing on Richard Petty’s spin late in the race. The following week saw Bobby drop out of the West Virginia 300 with rear end gear trouble, which propelled James Hylton to a 31-point lead in the standings.
Not to worry though, in just three races Bobby found himself again leading the points, though only by 9 points. Three races later, on September 11, 1970 Bobby grabbed the checkers in the Buddy Shuman Memorial at Hickory and solidified his point’s lead. It looked as if Nord Krauskopf was going to make good on his dream to garner a NASCAR championship.
Bobby grabbed his final victory of 1970 on October 4th, the same day that former NASCAR star Curtis Turner was killed in a plane crash in Pennsylvania. Harry Hyde elected to run a softer tire set up in the race and the gamble worked in the team’s favor as they battled Richard Petty for the win. “….it was our only chance to beat Petty,” Bobby commented afterward. “He’s a good man to race against. He doesn’t hog the track or try to wreck you. He’s a clean driver.”
Bobby would seize the championship just four races later by finishing 7th in the American 500 in Rockingham, South Carolina. After running a conservative race, Bobby commented, “I wasn’t worried about how many laps I was behind. I just wanted to run fast enough to stay behind the factory cars and in front of the independents. I wanted to make sure we finished and wrapped this championship up. I hate to stroke, but it’s been worth it.”
There had to have been a great measure of vindication in the championship victory for Bobby Isaac that season. He had struggled up the hard way to reach the pinnacle of success in the Grand National Division. To make the situation all the more sweet, his three closest competitors in the points battle, Bobby Allison, James Hylton and Richard Petty, were all members of the PDA, the organization that had frozen him out in 1969. Bobby expressed his feelings the following year in a magazine interview. “Winning the title gives me personal satisfaction. I don’t know one driver who wouldn’t like to own that title. It means running all the races and emerging as the best….Think about all the guys who never get in a position to win.”
Nineteen seventy saw two other milestones for Bobby Isaac as well. On November 24, 1970 Bobby broke the record for a fast lap on a closed circuit by turning a 201.104 mph lap to surpass Buddy Baker’s earlier record. “It was a thrill,” Bobby commented later. “But I can tell you there’s a tremendous difference between 199.5 and 201.” Again, there had to be some vindication, because Baker was another of the PDA drivers who seemed to ostracize Bobby earlier in the season. Finally, the National Motorsports Association named Bobby Driver of the Year. Bobby Isaac had arrived.
Ironically, after his stellar 1970 performance, Bobby Isaac never again ran a full race schedule. Having often spoken about the grueling pace of trying to make every race, Bobby seemed to be backing up his words. “I would like to run all the races….” Bobby commented shortly after the 1970 season. “But we are planning on only going to the money races. When you run all the races you get tired. After a week’s rest you feel okay though.”
Bobby continued with the Nord Krauskopf team until September 1972. In that time he notched 5 more victories and he established 28 stock car speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, including a speed of 217.368 mph on the one-mile course.
Nineteen seventy three found Bobby driving for legendary car owner Bud Moore but evidently the magic was gone. During the Talladega 500 on August 12th Bobby pulled his car into the pits while in the lead; he retired on the spot. “He was driving in the race and in the middle he pulled his car into the pits and quit,” David Pearson recalled afterward. “He told me on the way back home, ‘I just quit.’ I said “What do you mean?’ He said, ‘ I quit driving.’ He was driving for Bud Moore. He said, ‘I told them to get somebody else to drive.’ That’s all he ever said to me about it.”
There may have been more to the story however. Buddy Baker related later, “He said voices told him to get out of the car. That wasn’t like him at all. I don’t know what the problem was. Maybe he just decided that was it. I know if I heard someone tell me something in a racecar, I’d look to see who was in there with me. But when you hear that, it’s time to quit. He did the right thing.”
Bobby made abortive attempts at a return to racing in the seasons that followed his sudden withdrawal at Talladega; with Banjo Matthews in 1974, ’75 and 1976. He ran his final Winston Cup race on May 30, 1976, finishing 38th at Charlotte.
The following year, in August, Bobby pulled out of a Late Model Sportsman event at Hickory Speedway with 25 laps remaining. He climbed from the car and collapsed onto the hood of a nearby truck, suffering a heart attack. He was admitted to a local hospital where he died.
David Pearson, the man who was perhaps closer to Bobby Isaac than any other driver, would later remember having had clues about Bobby’s dim health outlook. “Nobody else knew it. He said things to me that I didn’t really think nothing about like, ‘If anything happens to me, my car and my keys are here,’ or ‘I’m staying at a certain motel.’ I didn’t realize it, but he meant if he died. I thought he meant if he wrecked. But I didn’t know he was having heart problems and wasn’t letting anyone know it. Bobby had come around asking Dr. Jerry Punch questions like, ‘How does it feel if you’re fixing to have a heart attack?’ So he knew there was something wrong with him.”
Perhaps it was an inglorious end for a NASCAR champion, but if we allow ourselves a cliché now and then, we can certainly point out that Bobby Isaac “died doing what he loved to do the most.” More importantly, he left a legacy of good will behind, even if he was often misunderstood, or not understood at all. A skinny North Carolinian with a tough upbringing, he bore the letters “L –O-V-E” tattooed across the knuckles of one hand and he seldom opened up to even those who considered him a friend, but as a racer, he was anyone’s equal, once commenting, “When you get in that damn car, you’re just as big as anybody.”
David Pearson, who probably knew Bobby Isaac better than any other driver, had this to say years later: “He was a heck of a race car driver….Didn’t matter where he was at or what he was in, he was hard to beat. And that just made me like him that much more. Bobby didn’t have too many friends. Nobody could get too close to him. Even back when I was running short tracks when I first started, he would come and run. He’d always get out of the race car and walk over and be by himself, and if sombody’d go up to him, he’d walk away. He was real shy, or felt self-conscious, or something. I don’t know, I’d just walk up to him and ask him questions, anything, to make him say something. I just MADE him talk to me. Bobby and I were real close. I feel like perhaps I was his best friend. We played golf together. He used to come to my home, and he’d fly to races with me.”
Despite his obvious talent and his driven desire to win, Bobby Isaac’s aloof shyness would make him a liability in today’s corporate driven sports circles. NASCAR historian Bob Latford summed it up best when he wrote: “Bobby Isaac was the kind of guy who couldn’t get a ride now because all he could do was drive. He couldn’t have gone to a national sales meeting and talked to customers. But he came up on dirt, and he won the driving championship…and he set all kinds of records at Bonneville and Pikes Peak. He could drive a car, and he knew what made them work, and he could tell Harry Hyde what it needed. There were a lot of drivers like that. They could work on them and drive them, but they didn’t want any part of the other aspects of it, the PR and the appearances, which now is a necessity in the sport.”
The much anticipated re-entry of Dodge into NASCAR racing has occasioned a great deal of media attention. It is not surprising that, in newspaper advertisement inserts early in the 2001 season, Dodge ad designers chose to show a picture of a mean looking orange and white Dodge Daytona carrying the number 71 and sponsorship from K&K Insurance. If a reader is interested enough to look closer they’ll be able to cipher out the name of the driver who wheeled this beast around the track. So, in the end, Bobby Isaac is serving as a corporate sponsor, some thirty years after his improbable championship and nearly 25 years after his death. We’ll never really know, but perhaps Bobby would have liked it that way.
copyright 2001. Michael Smith
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