H. Clay Earles, Founder Of Martinsville Speedway
It’s difficult to find a word to best describe H. Clay Earles.
He was a stock-car racing pioneer, but that doesn’t do justice. Neither does visionary nor creative thinker, or diligent or persistent.
Perhaps if you combined all of the above, it would adequately describe the founder of Martinsville Speedway. And one thing is certain: he was one of a kind.
Earles built and opened Martinsville Speedway in 1947. What began as a dusty tribute to one man’s vision endures today as a modern speed plant that rivals any in the land.
Earles seen the sons, and even grandsons, of great drivers grow up to compete here. Earles knew Red Byron, Fireball Roberts, Joe Weatherly and Fred Lorenzen as well as he does Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace.
"I can remember watching Buddy Baker, Richard Petty, and later Kyle Petty, and Davey Allison following their fathers around the pits when they were just kids," Earles said.
"I can remember giving a young kid enough money to get home on after a race because he was broke. His name was Fred Lorenzen."
NASCAR is the premier stock car racing sanctioning body in the world and Earles was there at the very beginning. The .526-mile asphalt speedway, built as a dirt track, has grown from a dusty, primitive operation into one of the most beautiful racing facilities in existence.
Earles, who died November 16, 1999 as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the speedway, spans racing's rough and tumble birth to its current mega-bucks attraction.
The track runs basically the same weekends each year and highlights four NASCAR racing divisions.
Back in 1947, Earles originally had planned to put only $10,000 in the facility, but spent $60,000 before an engine was fired.
"When we finished building the track and filling in the lake, we had only about seven to ten acres left for parking, enough to accommodate about 1,400 cars or about 4,000 people," Earles said. "And we had completed only 750 of our proposed 5,000 seats.
"But we went ahead and ran our first race, they called them Modified Stock cars then, on September 7, 1947."
Today, Martinsville Speedway covers over 340 acres. Earles has turned the track into a multi-million dollar facility. It has 800-foot straights, short, tight turns banked at only 12 degrees and has been called "two drag strips with short turns."
Despite the fact that there were no fences and some 3,000 fans were able to watch the race without paying, the initial effort was a financial, if not artistic, success.
"We had a paying crowd of 6,013," Earles said.
