Victory Lane’s Wendell Scott: Pioneering The Great American Race

Photo Credit: Breanna Gergen, courtesy of Motorsports Hall of Fame.

A Short Track Star is Born

Bearing checkered flags and NASCAR’s infamous rainbow emblem, Daytona Beach and its beloved Daytona International Speedway is a place Hatters have called home since the Speedway’s inaugural race held in 1959, which introduced it as the the lifeblood of Volusia county’s cultural scene. Since the ‘60s, countless Stetson students have spent their first days of the semester in the grandstands for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 — back then it was the ‘Firecracker 400.’ Spring break goers, too, kick off their vacations with “The Great American Race” – as the Daytona 500 is often referred to – to open the Cup Series’ season. I, myself, have religiously been one of those track-goers, long before my Stetson career.

However, few of today’s Speedway regulars, with the exception of true-blue NASCAR fans, know the name of Wendell Scott, the first Black driver to race in the NASCAR premier series and for nearly 60 years was the only one to ever win a Cup race.

Perhaps one of the most notable of these attributes: Scott was the only driver to ever have his trophy wrongfully taken from him by race officials – who feared any prospective spark of Black publicity.

In hindsight, Scott is now revered as a pioneer of the asphalt, who paved the way for Black drivers like Bubba Wallace, Jesse Iwuji and Chase Austin who followed in his footsteps. “He was a good driver,” said Don Cooper, Operations Manager of the Motorsports Hall of Fame at Daytona International Speedway.

The Prodigal Trophy

Before he ever got behind the wheel, Scott served in WWII for three years as a mechanic and then owned an auto repair shop in his home state of Virginia. With a wife and seven children's mouths to feed, he also worked side gigs as a taxi driver and moonshine hauler.

It was on May 23, 1952, at Indiana’s Danville Fairgrounds dirt track that Scott drove beneath his first green flag in an old Ford. He left Danville that day with a third-place finish and a $50 payout – equivalent to almost $600 today, according to the American Institute of Economic Research – driving him to pursue short track racing full-time. Scott would go on to compete on a tight budget; for most of his career, he purchased used cars from other drivers, repairing and modifying them himself to compete against teams with substantially greater funding. Thanks to his grit, by March 1961, he was racing for NASCAR.

Although Scott has quite a posthumous reputation, his living career was riddled with racial discrimination. After all, Scott began racing competitively in the still-segregated South of the ‘50s. Scott would be the first in the sport to navigate a society still comfortably nestled in its prejudice, and reluctant to legitimize his success as a driver.

Traveling the country in the pre-Civil Rights era proved difficult for Scott. Oftentimes he and his family were denied hotel and restaurant access, simply because of the color of their skin. Unfortunately, the same strand of discrimination followed Scott onto the racetrack.

On December 1, 1963, at a Grand National – now referred to as “the Cup” – Series race held at the former Jacksonville Speedway Park, Scott officially struck his first victory in the big leagues. Yet, race officials devastatingly declared Buck Baker, the second-place – and “coincidentally” white driver – as the winner, presenting the unearned trophy to him in victory lane. It has since been confirmed that the officials did so in fear of a Black driver being seen publicly accepting the award from a white trophy girl.

Trophy girls were a central part of NASCAR’s racing tradition at the time, and tradition usually called for the winning driver to kiss the girl who handed over the Cup. Of course, for the officials, the mere thought of Scott engaging in this particular tradition barred him from claiming his rightful top-step on the podium. It was not only underlying prejudice but an outright, outspoken act of racism that robbed a champion of stardom – all because the flag-bearers claimed sovereignty over asphalt that was not theirs to rule.

Posthumous Legend Steps to the Podium

Despite this bleak moment in Scott’s career, the racer refused to lose his spark of passion for the sport. He went on to compete for another decade until 1973, when he officially stepped back from NASCAR with a total of 495 series starts. Up until his death in 1990, Scott still religiously competed as a ‘weekend warrior’ short track driver, racing locally simply for the love of it.

Motorsports Hall of Fame Manager Don Cooper recalls the racer’s son, Frank Scott, testifying to this. “Three years ago we had a museum exhibit set up at a show right across the street [here] in Daytona, and up to the booth walks Wendell’s son,” said Cooper. “We chatted for a little bit, and he told me…about the trophy incident, and…that right up until a few years before he [Scott] passed away, he was still playing around with late model cars…[at] a few local short tracks and a dirt track now and then.”

By 2015, Scott, though no longer present to see it, began to earn long-past-due credit when he was posthumously inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame – the most prestigious of honors a driver could boast. What’s more, he entered a mystic, seemingly-unattainable realm of prestige as the honor made him the first Black driver to earn the title.

Yet it took six more years for Scott’s 1963 victory at Jacksonville to be rightly made tangible in silver. On August 28, 2021, the eve of NASCAR’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 race, NASCAR executives presented a custom-built trophy to Scott’s family in tribute (if not a few decades late) to his win that day. More than 57 years had passed since that checkered flag flew and the racial injustice that had followed it, but the gleaming cup, engraved with the word ‘WINNER,’ made the wait worthwhile for Scott’s children and grandchildren.

Warrick Scott, Wendell’s grandson, told NBC Sports that the trophy was “a tangible artifact that, naturally, he earned, but it is something that will be an inspiration for [an] untold amount of people going forward.” Warrick also commended NASCAR for its growing efforts towards an ideal of inclusivity. “I see the growth in NASCAR and I see the growth in diversity that didn’t use[d] to exist, and I think that’s something that this will lay a really solid foundation to build on…When you learn better, you do better…We’re not getting stuck in the past,” Scott said.

Regardless of whether or not you are a NASCAR fan, there is no doubt that Wendell Scott was a historical contributor to something larger than just the world of racing and burnt rubber. He set a courageous precedent for those that came after him, both for Black men and women who shared in his love for adrenaline fixes, and for those that did not. Scott defied the prejudices of his waking era, stepping into the limelight pre-Civil Rights movement, and continuing to chase finish lines throughout it. As a cultural and societal figure, Scott takes the crown (or helmet) as one who current generations can see as an embodiment of racial justice.