FIREBALL ROBERTS

'Edward Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, Jr.' (January 20, 1929 – July 2, 1964) was one of the pioneering race car drivers of NASCAR.

Contents

Background

Racing career

Death

Legacy

References

External links

Background

Roberts was born in Tavares, Florida, and raised in Apopka, Florida where he was interested in both auto racing and baseball. He was a pitcher for the Zellwood Mud Hens, an American Legion baseball team, where he earned the nickname "Fireball" because of his pitches, not his driving style, which is sometimes disputed. He enlisted with the Army Air Corps in 1945, but was discharged after basic training because of asthma.

Racing career

He attended the University of Florida but raced on dirt tracks on weekends. In 1947, at the age of 18, he raced on the Daytona Beach Road Course at Daytona for the first time. He won a 150-mile race at Daytona Beach the following year.
Roberts continued to amass victories on the circuit, despite the changes in NASCAR as it moved away from shorter dirt tracks to superspeedways in the 1950s and 1960s. In his 206 career NASCAR Grand National races, he won 33 times and had 32 poles. He finished in the top five 45 percent of the time.

Death

On May 24, 1964, at the World 600 in Charlotte, Roberts had qualified in the eleventh position and started in the middle of the pack. On lap 7, Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson collided and spun out and Roberts crashed trying to avoid them. Roberts' Ford slammed backward into the inside retaining wall, flipped over and burst into flames. Witnesses at the track claimed they heard Roberts screaming, "Ned, help me!" from inside his car after the wreck. Jarrett rushed to save Roberts as his car was engulfed by the flames. Roberts suffered second- and third-degree burns over 80 percent of his body and was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition. Although it was widely believed that Roberts had an allergic reaction to flame-retardant chemicals, he was secretly an asthmatic and the chemicals made his breathing worse.^[1]
Roberts was able to survive for several weeks, and it appeared he might pull through, but Roberts' health took a turn for the worse on June 30 1964. He contracted pneumonia and sepsis and slipped into a coma by the next day. He died on July 2 1964.
Roberts' death, as well as the deaths of two drivers at the Indianapolis 500 the same year, led to an increase in research for fire-retardant uniforms. It also led to the development of the Firestone RaceSafe fuel cell, and all race cars today use a foam-backed fuel cell to prevent severe fuel spillage of the massive degree that Roberts had. Also, fully fire-retardant coveralls would be phased in leading to the now mandatory Nomex racing suits.

Legacy

Despite having his career cut short and having never won a Grand National title, Fireball Roberts was named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers.
Other career awards he won include induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990, and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1995.
In 2000 the city of Concord, North Carolina named a street near Lowe's Motor Speedway in his honor. In 2006 American Rally event was named in his honor.

References

1. http://www.fireballroberts.com/


★ Glenn "Fireball" Roberts at NASCAR.com

★ Glenn "Fireball" Roberts at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame

★ "Fireball" Roberts at racing-reference.info
The second picture is of Banjo Mathews leading Bobby Johns. Fireball drove the #22 car and had a three speed transmission while the other Pontiacs like Mathews had four speeds. Reference Motor Trend in 1962 and http://www.racing-reference.info/race?id=1962-29&series=W

External links

★ Official "Fireball" Roberts homepage

★ "Fireball" Roberts web site

★ The FIREBALL RUN® web site

★ "Fireball" Roberts' Gravesite