By James Stewart

Hello everyone, sorry for the month absence. It all started with 3 trees falling on our house during a storm in late February, a pre-planned getaway for the wife and me, and some health problems I’ve been battling, but we’re back up and ready for the season to start! In less than 4 weeks the 2016 season will be under way.

Bowman Gray Stadium is known as a family friendly place. Lots of families make it a weekly adventure to attend each and every week. You will see the occasional bird flipping……OK, sometimes a lot of it, the occasional fight, but always lots of loud cheering for your favorites and booing the ones you dislike. With plenty of free parking, reasonable ticket prices, four or five $2 ladies nights during the season, a family can easily be entertained for less than the price of some college football and basketball tickets. The concession prices aren’t unreasonable, but Bowman Gray affords you the option to bring your own food and beverages. You must remember though, no glass bottles, no coolers over 14 inches, and if you bring beer, you must sit in the beer garden, the fenced in area in sections 26-30. Beer is sold but ONLY in the beer garden and it must be consumed there also.

Throughout the history of the Stadium there have been many families involved in the racing. Starting at the top, the founder of the track, Alvin Hawkins, his family is still involved in the running of the track thru Winston Salem Speedway Inc. Think about that, the same family running the track for 67 years!! There were racers in those first years that have grandsons or great grandsons racing today. Cousins, uncles, nephews, wives, lots of families.

One of the best known names in NASCAR is Petty. Richard Petty and his father, Lee Petty, won a total of 7 races at BG. Now the information used for this article was obtained by a joint venture that I helped my friend Justin Mincey with. Justin is a stats guy and has compiled a list of all the winners in every division. Using some of my old programs and to the best of our knowledge, these win totals are correct. My buddy Chad Freeman also provided some info. Wins in heat races were not counted. Each week the program list the winners of the feature races from day 1, that being the modifieds and special event races like the Whelen Southern Modifieds, K&N, Goody’s Dash and when the Grand National cars used to come. For this article, I have used win totals of a family from all divisions raced. I’m sure I’ve probably missed some relative connections, but this is what I have. This includes winners of all divisions that have run.
I will start with one remarkable feat. The Blunderbust division ran a total of 175 races thru the dozen or so years that they ran. 88 of those races, that is one race over half of the total, were won by the 3 families of the Wards, Greggs, and Kimels!!! Let’s see where these racing families fit in as we count down the 20 winningest families in the history of Bowman Gray Stadium! We’ll also see where the Myers family fits in…they are often referred to as the “first family of BG racing”! Are they? Let’s see!

As stated before these numbers are as accurate as I know. If you read this and can help with some corrections or additions, then by all means mention them in the comments or email me at [email protected]! There are some drivers that their wins alone would place them, but for the sake of this article we’re just looking at families.

We start at #20 with my hometown friends forever, we all grew up together, the Stimpson family from Lewisville, NC. Brothers Lee, Kenneth, Mitchell, and Kenneth’s son KJ have amassed 25 wins. At #19 brothers Shannon and Tim McGlamery won 27 times. At #18 we find Mt Airy’s Fleming Family racing with 34 wins by brothers Frank and the Showstopper, Chris, and Chris’ two sons Luke and Jordan. #17 is 36 wins by Walkertown cousins Derek and Ethan Stoltz. At #16 is Ridgeway, Virginia, if truth be known, actually Horsepasture, VA., brothers Billy and Jimmy Hensley with 39 wins. #15 gives us 41 wins by Virginia cousins Satch Worley and Gerald Compton.

At #14 with 42 family wins, is a family connection that some may not know, Don Smith, his son Dean, and his 2 nephews, Jonathan and Bobo Brown. At #13 we find the father, son duo of Yadkinville’s David and Michael Adams with 47 wins. #12 takes us back to Walkertown where Gene Pack, son Brian, and grandson Austin have totaled 50 wins. At #11 with 51 wins is the Wallburg father and son duo of Robert and Lee Jeffreys.

That brings us to the top 10!! #10 is the father, son-in-law combination of Dink Osborne and Mark Knott with 54 wins. At #9, and actually tied with 10th with 54 wins is Tommy and Kevin Neal. We find #8 a total of 64 wins accumulated by Ricky, Jimmy, and Billy Gregg. #7 brings us to King, NC and 72 wins for Barry, Kyle, and Austin Edwards. At #6, we have a total of 76 wins for the Kimel family, Billy, Spider, Butch, Ricky, and Susan, the only female on our list!!
Top 5!! #5 takes us once again to the Walkertown area where the racing Ward family Dale, Dean, Randy, and Frank, totaled 79 wins. I think there may be a couple more relatives here but I could not confirm before writing. Even with the assumed wins of those, this family would still be in 5th place, We’re getting there!! We go to Jonesville with Al Hill and his son Phillip for most of the wins by the #4 family. 95 wins for this family which includes Max Martin and Noah Triplette. Now get this, IF we were to count wins in heat races, Al himself has over 200 wins and has each one documented in a notebook! #3 and we go back to where else? Walkertown!! Winston Salem brothers Jimmy and Johnny Johnson won a total of 138 races in their careers. In fact, if feature wins were counted in every division, Jimmy would have the most feature wins with 98!

Now for #2, where we find out that including wins in all divisions does NOT make the Myers family the “first family”!! And by including all divisions, don’t forget that Burt started out in Stadium Stock before running modified and also has a win in the Sportsman division. Jason started out in the Street Stocks and won there also before jumping to modified. So between Burt, Jason, their dad Gary, and grandfather and great uncle Bobby and Billy, the Myers family has a total of 183 wins. Notice the last 2 numbers in the Myers total, 83. Who drives that car number and has won 76 modified races at BG, more than anybody else? Tim Brown!!

So why was he not listed as #4 by himself? Because he is a member of the #1 family in wins at Bowman Gray, the Clifton family!! Ronnie and Michael Clifton and Tim Brown are cousins!! Tim’s grandfather is Eb Clifton. Along with these already mentioned, add the wins of Fuzzy, Carlos, and Zach and this family has been to victory lane 185 times!!! Just 2 more!!

So as the 2016 season gets under way in a few weeks, a lot of these families still have current members racing. The totals are going to change…will the top 17 be the same at the end of the season or will some family move ahead of another? We’ll update on this after the season. There are some large gaps, but there are also some very close ones. At the top it’s Tim and Burt. Is that a surprise? Isn’t that the way it usually is at BG? In the next week or so, I’ll give you my picks for the 2016 champions for each division. See you at the races!