![]() Flock announced his retirement from a hospital bed.įonty Flock was inducted into both the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association and the Talladega-Texaco Walk of Fame in 2004. Truman Fontello 'Fonty' Flock (Ma July 15, 1972) of Fort Payne, Alabama was an American stock car racer. Split seconds later, Bobby Myers and Paul Goldsmith smashed full-bore into the idle Flock. On the 28th lap, the car escaped his control and spun at the entrance of turn three. The car was in bad shape: it blew a tire on the sixth lap and got hit by two other cars. In 1957 he entered only the beach-road race at Daytona, though he also drove in the Darlington 500 as relief for Herb Thomas, who’d been injured in a practice crash. He had established an insurance agency in Nashville and raced only part-time beginning in 1954. He returned to NASCAR in 1955 and won three races, including a Maevent that gave Chevrolet its first NASCAR Winston Cup victory in a 200-lap, 100-mile dirt-track race at Columbia (S.C.) Speedway. Fonty quit NASCAR early in the 1954 season and campaigned in a Midwestern stock car series. He finished second in the point standings in 1951, fourth in 1952, fifth in 1953, and tenth in 1955. Flock won 34 races in a few more than 100 starts.ĭuring the early 1950s, Flock drove mostly in Grand National events. He finished second in the 1948 NASCAR standings and won the 1949 Modified title. Despite the late start he was crowned the champion of the 1947 National Championship Stock Car Circuit, the forerunner to NASCAR. Fonty missed the 19 seasons because of his injuries and the ’47 season was well under way when he was healed enough to race again. After running the dirt tracks in Georgia for a couple of years he made his way to Daytona Beach, Florida searching for the high speed excitement of the Beach-Road courses.ġ951 was the year Fonty Flock put #14 on the map, as he won eight times driving Frank Christian’s “Red Devil” Oldsmobile.įive months after Fonty’s wreck the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and auto racing was banned until 1945. ![]() By the time he was 20 in 1941, Flock was regarded as one of stock car racing’s best drivers. He ran some of the semi-organized races before World War II broke out, winning a 100-mile race at Lakewood Park in Atlanta in 1940. The sheriff didn’t have the sources to get the parts to make his car keep up with Fonty’s. Fonty would send off to California and get the best parts for his car and the sheriff couldn’t keep up with him and loved to tease him. Fonty once said that he would seek out the sheriff and get him on a chase because he had a faster car. Payne, AL native delivered moonshine as a teenager on his bicycle, and a few years later he was making trips in his car from Atlanta to Dawsonville, GA hauling moonshine. You could say July tended to be an eventful month for NASCAR pioneer Truman Fontell “Fonty” Flock. And years later, after all the track dust settled, he died on July 15, 1972. He raced his two brothers and his sister in the Jrace at the same course, the only NASCAR event to feature four siblings. ![]() During the Jrace at the Daytona Beach-Road Course he suffered a crushed chest, broken pelvis, head and back injuries, and severe shock.
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