Buddy Baker, NASCAR Legend

Buddy Baker had a legendary career in NASCAR and is honored and respected by all who know the sport. Buddy had a legendary 36 year career that started in 1959 and ended in nineteen ninety four at age fifty two. Baker ended his career with very impressive statistics. Baker had a total of nineteen first places in his career. Add to that 43 second-place finishes, 58 third-place finishes and 52 fourth-place finishes. All this in 699 career races. His good friend Richard Petty was very sure that with any luck Buddy would have won 50 races. At a time when the purses were very small by today's standards his career winnings were more than $ three,500,000. Baker ended his career at age 52 and then said "there comes a point when you simply got to say 'Hey it's been fun'".

Son of the Hall of Famer Buck Baker, Buddy had a hard start to his career not winning a single race until his ninth season. It was in a Ray Fox prepared Dodge in 1967 that he won his first race at Charlotte. After eight seasons Baker had begun wondering if he would ever win. His first victory came after more than 200 races.

You may say that nineteen wins in 699 races isn't that impressed. You may change your mind if you consider which races they were; he won four times at Charlotte, he had four wins at Talladega, then two more each at Darlington, Atlanta and Daytona and finally victories at Ontario, Michigan and Texas.

He was known to think that his best season was 1980. It was in that year that he won the Daytona 500 in a car prepared by Waddell Wilson. That black and gray impressive Olds was driven so fast by Baker that it came to be known as the "Grey Ghost" because it seemed to blend into the asphalt. He won the 500 that year at an average speed of 177 mph, a record that still holds today. Although he just had nineteen races that year he managed to finish in the top ten fully ten times in 1980.

His favorite race was the one he won at the Winston 500 in 1980. There, with a full nineteen seconds to make up he managed to defeat the young Dale Earnhardt passing him with just two laps to go. Buddy made a great charge that day drafting every car ahead of him, gaining the great respect of his fellow drivers. Baker was a modest champion. He later exclaimed that Dale would surely have won had he had more experience. Dale Earnhardt was in Baker's view the best NASCAR racer of all time.

Buddy Baker was seriously injured in 1989 in the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte. He suffered a blow to the head which caused a large blood clot which he was lucky to have removed. Some say he was never the same driver after that accident. Baker took seventeen more races but having crashed in a qualifying lap in Atlanta he finally decided to retire. At age 52 Buddy Baker understood that his time at the top was over.

Buddy Baker remained active in the sport as a valued consultant to racing teams.