SEASON IN REVIEW
Watertown, New York driver Dick May scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1979, scoring three last-place finishes in nineteen starts during a thirty-one-race season. May edged Jimmy Means for the title by a single bottom-five finish, 8-7. The LASTCAR title was decided in the next-to-last race of the 1979 season at Hampton, Georgia, where May finished last while driving for owner John Kennedy, the defending LASTCAR champion. Means finished outside the Bottom Five in 19th, and neither driver raced in the season finale at Ontario, California, giving May the title.
May was competing in his tenth season on the NASCAR Cup Series tour, coming off a 1978 season where he drove in a career-high twenty-eight starts and finished 15th in the point standings. Gray accomplished this while racing for five different teams with most of those starts in the #19 Belden Asphalt Chevrolet fielded by Henley Gray. May and Gray raced together for most of 1979 as well - barely - as May raced for eight different teams that year, and finished last for three of them.
May’s first last-place finish came in Gray’s #19 Belden Asphalt Chevrolet at Martinsville, Virginia on April 22, where he lost the engine without completing a single lap. The next finish came eleven races later in Talladega, Alabama on August 5, this time driving for Billie Harvey in the #87 Fast Lane Ltd. Oldsmobile. Again, May was unable to complete the opening lap as this time a loss of oil pressure was to blame. The third finish came ten races later in his last start of 1979, the November 4 running of the Dixie 500. This time, May completed four laps before the engine detonated on his unsponsored John Kennedy-owned #0 Chevrolet.
May’s career-best finish in 185 starts came at Asheville, North Carolina on May 21, 1971, where he finished 6th. He raced in six more seasons after 1979 before retiring after the Northwestern Bank 400 at North Wilkesboro, North Carolina on April 21, 1985, finishing 25th in a field of 30. He passed away on June 9, 2009.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
The 1979 season started at Riverside, California on January 14, where a 21-year-old Terry Labonte scored his first last-place finish in his sixth Cup start. Labonte’s #44 Duck Industries Chevrolet lost the engine after seven laps. The car was owned by Billy Hagan, who with Labonte would pull off an upset victory in the Southern 500 at Darlington, South Carolina in 1980, then a NASCAR Cup Series Championship in 1984. By the end of his career, Labonte scored twenty-two victories and a second NASCAR Cup Series Championship scored for Rick Hendrick in 1996.
CBS aired live flag-to-flag coverage of the February 18 running of the Daytona 500, which is well-known for its wild finish where Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough wrecked on the final lap, setting the stage for Richard Petty’s sixth of seven Daytona 500 wins. It is also known for the early exit of polesitter Buddy Baker. Baker’s fleet “Grey Ghost” dominated SpeedWeeks only to fall out of the 500 after 38 laps with engine failure - at least that was what the Harry Ranier team thought until they realized after the race that they forgot to switch ignition boxes. Baker didn’t finish last that day, however, as Jim Vandiver’s unsponsored #89 Oldsmobile lost its engine eleven laps earlier.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Dick May [8 B5s], Jimmy Means [7 B5s] (3)
2nd) Bill Hollar, Travis Tiller (2)
3rd) Keith Davis, Jimmy Finger, Harry Gant, Vince Giamformaggio, Steve Gray, Jeff Halverson, Roger Hamby, Ferrel Harris, Bruce Hill, Jimmy Hindman, Ron Hutcherson, Henry Jones, Ralph Jones, John Kennedy, Terry Labonte, Elmo Langley, Tighe Scott, Bill Seifert, Jim Vandiver, Blackie Wangerin, Frank Warren (1)
