A trip down NASCAR's memory lane

RACIN'
Steve Mickey

Count me as one of those old longtime race fans who still likes to daydream about when the sport was known as the "Winston Cup Series." Call me sentimental or just an old romantic, but for whatever the reason I still love to talk and read about the sport back when the acceptable color scheme was that of R.J. Reynolds' Winston red and white.

I still love the sport and have adopted Nextel's yellow-and-black paint scheme as the unofficial color of my study, but I still love to go back to my Winston roots. This desire led my wife and I to take a two-day trip to, of all places, Winston-Salem, N.C. This city is not only home to R.J. Reynolds but also the newly-opened Winston Cup Museum.

As it turned out, it wasn't one of those interactive deals many museums have now turned into. Instead, it was a pictorial history of the 33 years Winston sponsored the series. There were plenty of cars and displays to fill the building, but the timeline the pictures told grabbed your attention. It was not only a history of the sport, but also a history of the early characters and races of the sport which has evolved into what we now watch every weekend.

After having one last picture taken in front of the first-ever Winston Cup show car, it was time to map out the rest of our trip into "Winston Cup" country. The next stop was just a few miles down the road to Richard Childress Racing's new museum located in Welcome, N.C.

Childress knows about Winston Cup history, as he has six Winston Cup championship trophies won with the late Dale Earnhardt in his museum (Earnhardt's 1980 championship was with Rod Osterland). The museum, built in the old RCR shop, was set up just like the way it was when the shop was still building Earnhardt's black Chevrolets. Many of the cars Dale drove to his biggest Winston Cup wins - including the 1998 Daytona 500 - were on display.

Childress had us in that championship mold when the visit was over and what better place to continue our search for Winston Cup history than to motor up I-85 to Randleman, N.C.? Randleman is the home of the new Richard Petty Museum, one of the greatest collections of Winston Cup memorabilia you will see anywhere.

If you really want a history lesson of the sport, this is the place to go. As you soon as you walk in, you are greeted with the race car Richard's father, Lee Petty, drove when NASCAR first started what has evolved into the Nextel Cup series. Lee won championships, but it was his son Richard who will forever be linked with Winston Cup racing.

Richard Petty was a seven-time champion like Earnhardt, but only five of his titles came during Winston's tenure as series sponsor. However, it's evident throughout the museum that Petty and Winston were packaged together to help grow the sport. Along with the five Winston Cup championship trophies, a huge collection of gifts R.J. Reynolds gave Petty over the years for his dedication to the sport was also on display.

Like the Winston Cup and Richard Childress Museums, the Petty Museum was more of a celebration of the sport than a shrine. Besides his father, Richard also included his son Kyle and late grandson Adam to share some of the spotlight. Kyle now runs Petty Enterprises and still races in the series but the most sobering sight in the entire museum is that of Adam's car and a picture of him standing in Victory Lane at Lowe's Motor Speedway with Richard and Kyle after winning an ARCA race.

They finally turned out the lights in Randleman that day or we might still be there soaking it all in. It had been a great two days of getting back to our Winston Cup roots, which now run deeper than ever. The "tour" can be made in a day and I highly recommend it to anyone who longs for the good old days of the sport or a new fan wanting to get a feel for what the sport was built on.

Steve Mickey's NASCAR column appears Wednesdays in the News-Express.