When crusty ol’ race fans say today’s drivers aren’t as tough as they used to be, this is their example: Jack Ingram once ran six short-track races in five states over a five-day holiday weekend, winning three times and finishing in the top five in the other three. No wonder the five-time NASCAR champion is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and the NASCAR Hall of Fame. That extraordinary performance alone might have made the Asheville, North Carolina, native a stock car racing legend. Over Labor Day weekend of 1973, he raced on Thursday night in Columbia, South Carolina; Friday night in Beltsville, Maryland; Saturday night in Coeburn, Virginia; Sunday afternoon in Maryville, Tennessee; Monday afternoon in St. Paul, ­Minnesota; then Monday night in Nashville. He won at Columbia, Coeburn and Maryville, was second in Beltsville, fifth in St. Paul and fourth in Nashville. For all that, he won the princely sum of $5,880 and more than 1,000 National Championship points.

“That’s how we did things back then, at least if we wanted to win the Sportsman championship,” said Ingram, now 81 and recovering nicely from a serious highway crash in December that landed him in the ICU for several days. “You had to run as many races as you could, especially the National Championship ones that paid double points. Columbia and Nashville paid double points, so we had to go there. We started planning that Labor Day weekend schedule when the entry blanks came out (about a month before each race). “We wanted to get as many points as we could, so we’d leave after a night race, go a little way up the road and get a room. Two of us would sleep and clean up while the other guy slept in the truck. At some point, we’d swap out so he could sleep in a bed and clean up. Then we’d all get back in the truck and head for the next race. We’d get maybe one or two hours sleep before getting back on the road. We didn’t think it was that unusual.” Each race was on a half-mile paved oval, ranging from relatively flat to moderately banked. Ingram ran 100 laps in Columbia, 250 in Beltsville, 300 more in Coeburn, another 300 in Maryville, 500 in St. Paul and 200 in Nashville. Other than commercial flights from Knoxville to St. Paul on Monday morning and back to Nashville (a tight change in Chicago) on Monday evening, Ingram rode all 1,700 miles in his hauler with crewmen Roy Lee Jones and Clarence Ogle.

“Just the three of us,” Ingram said, “but we always had locals volunteering to help, without pay, just to be involved. We made do.” Comparable to Triple-A baseball, the Xfinity Series began as the Sportsman Division in 1950, with sponsorship by Budweiser, Busch, Nationwide and currently Xfinity. Between 1950 and 1981, drivers raced whenever they wanted, earning National Championship points based on their finishes. In 1982, the schedule was adjusted to create a touring series of about 30 points-paying races. Until the schedule was trimmed, the indefatigable Ingram often ran upward of 65 to 80 times a year. During that memorable ’73 weekend when so much could have gone wrong, nothing did. “We were pretty lucky in that everything went like it was supposed to,” Ingram said. “There were no weather issues. No travel or highway problems. I barely made my flight from Minneapolis to Nashville, then changed into my driver’s suit in the cab between the Nashville airport and the track on Monday night. Somebody (Ingram can’t remember who) practiced and qualified the car, and I got there just in time to start it. That’s the closest we got to missing a race that weekend.”

Jack Ingram is congratulated after his election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. John Harrelson/Getty Images for NASCAR

Ingram won the 1972, 1973 and 1974 Sportsman titles under the “run all you want” points system. His 1982 and 1985 titles came under the shorter, more manageable touring system. His “Ironman” nickname testifies to his goal of at least two and often three races each weekend during the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s. Records are sketchy, but it’s estimated he made about 1,200 starts at 28 tracks, won 317 features and a dozen championships at eight tracks in three states. He was the first and remains the only full-time Xfinity driver in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Several years back, during a lighthearted debate about such things, Ingram half-jokingly called himself, “the best short-track racer ever.” If he considered it a joke, he was the only one.

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