Possibly not a name that will resonate with many on here,
but Junior Johnson has died aged 88.
Born Robert Glenn Johnson Jr. in Wilkes County, North Carolina. He came from a bootlegger family - at one point the family home was the subject of the largest alcohol raid in US history, revenuers seizing 400 gallons of moonshine
He himself was never caught transporting 'shine, doing so at high speed on the back roads of rural NC. Which is presumably why he was able, like many of his contemporaries, to turn his hand to NASCAR racing in 1953. Unlike a lot of those contemporaries though, he was incredibly good at it.
His first full NASCAR season saw him win five times. And he kept winning races, though his career was interrupted for a year in '56-'57 by a stint in prison for operating an illegal still. By the end of the '50s he was regarded as one of the best short-track racers in the business, not just on the paved tracks that were taking over the majority of the calendar but on the dirt tracks as well. It took until 1960 though to get a win on the superspeedways (the larger tracks), and it came at what was then the biggest and fastest in NASCAR - Daytona. That race (only the second Daytona 500, though it wasn't called that until '61) was the moment that 'drafting' (slipstreaming in our money) became a thing in NASCAR. Johnson's car wasn't the quickest there that race weekend, more than 20mph down on the fastest cars in practice. But he noticed when he got behind someone that he could pick up speed, and use the momentum gained to slingshot past them. He repeated the trick in the race, taking the win in a car much slower than those of his opponents. Very quickly everyone else caught on to what he had done, and drafting has been a staple of the sport on the big tracks ever since.
Johnson retired as a driver with 50 wins and 148 top 10 finishes to his name. He ran a team in NASCAR for many years (Junior Johnson & Associates) which produced six drivers' championships and 132 race wins, and was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (1990), the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (1991) and the NASCAR Hall of Fame (2010). In 1986 he received a presidential pardon from Reagan for his moonshining conviction, and latterly teamed up with Piedmont Distillers in NC to make a legal version of the family 'shine (Midnight Moon).
Godspeed Junior Johnson. And give them revenuers what for on those dirt roads in heaven