One BMS Fan’s Memories Go Back to the Beginning

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Fred Hayter had no notions of streaks or commercials when he attended the first race at Bristol Motor Speedway in 1961.

He was simply a fan, delighted that he could watch his favorite sport and his favorite drivers in what amounted to his back yard.

Back then, the proposed race track was the talk of the town. Hayter, an Abingdon native who moved to Bristol in 1958, would drive past the site regularly to check the construction progress. And he wondered, as did many of his friends and neighbors, what it would look like when it was finished.

“You’d just keep looking at that big pile of dirt they were pushing around out there,” he recalled. “There were pros and cons to it … people wondering whether it would help the area.
People had no idea back then what it would become.”

Hayter also could not have guessed that his own history would become intertwined with that of the speedway, or that his personal BMS story would eventually help to sell tickets to a race there.

“This race [the Aug. 22 Sharpie 500] will be No. 98 for me and the track,” the 70-year-old Hayter said during an interview last week. “I could not have imagined in 1961 that I’d still be here today.”

When BMS officials announced in 2007 that they planned to form a fan advisory board, Hayter applied. Asked on the application what qualifications made him a strong candidate,
Hayter answered that he’d attended every NASCAR race at the track.

While the answer didn’t get Hayter a seat on the advisory board, it didn’t go unnoticed.

Kevin Triplett, the speedway’s vice-president for public affairs, was so intrigued by the streak that he invited Hayter to appear with the speedway’s own George “The Painter” Wilson and driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. during a 30-minute television special before the 2007 summer race. Hayter made a similar TV appearance in 2008.

All of that, it turned out, paled in comparison to what Hayter did this year.

After the Food City 500 in March, BMS officials and representatives of the Knoxville firm that handles the speedway’s advertising met to plan a promotional campaign for the summer race – keying on the fact that, for the first time in years, fans could actually buy tickets for it.

The advertising concept that sparked the most interest was to have a real fan – not an actor – speak from the heart about what it’s like to attend a race at Bristol. The ad agency reps hoped to find someone who’d been to, maybe, 15 or 20 races in a row. Triplett smiled, then asked if they’d be interested in someone who’d been to every race.

“We were looking to appeal to everyone, and we thought Freddie would resonate with people because he’s a real fan who has memories of what he saw when he was here,” Triplett said. “Maybe people don’t know Freddie, but they know someone like him.

“It’s been a long time since an opportunity like this [to buy tickets] has been available here,” Triplett said. “We wanted to let people know that if they wanted to come here and make memories of their own, now was their chance.”

Asked if he’d be willing to be the subject of such a commercial, Hayter readily agreed. And on a spring Monday evening, during a videotaping that lasted until the wee hours of the morning because of sporadic rain showers, Hayter shared his Bristol memories.

Nothing was scripted. Standing at various points along the track and in the stands, he simply answered questions. For instance, when he was asked about the summer night race,
Hayter offered this observation: “When they added lights, this place went crazy!”

Hayter proved to be an ideal choice to make the commercial about Bristol because he is a walking encyclopedia of the place.

He remembered that Jack Smith won the first race in 1961, with relief help from Johnny Allen, and that Larry Thomas’s car jumped the guardrail between turns three and four in 1964.

He pointed out that Charlie Glotzbach won a 1971 summer race that had no cautions, and he recalled that Richard Petty would sit on the back of his Plymouth race car for more than an hour after a race to make certain that every fan who wanted one got an autograph.

He also has plenty of perspective to go along with his vivid memory. He’s seen races at nine other tracks – including Martinsville, Daytona, Talladega and Darlington – and he’s been to games at 25 major-league ballparks and a number of large college football stadiums.

None of those places, he contends, compares to Bristol. The only place that comes close, he says, is the Coliseum in Rome.

“This is the best track because you can see everything,” he said.

He knows that from experience, too. Until he had to start buying season tickets – he has eight of them 45 rows up in turn four – he sat all over the place. In the commercial, he pointed out, he once sat in turn two under a big tree.

He has seen the speedway grow from an 18,000-seat asphalt flat track to a 160,000-seat, banked-track behemoth that bills itself as the world’s fastest half-mile.

Even now, any time he drives past the place, he shakes his head in amazement. It’s still Bristol, he observed, but it sure has changed.

“I don’t think there is a thing that exists out there today that was there when Bruton [Smith] bought the track, except maybe some maintenance buildings and the old ticket office down front,” he said. “He has built basically the whole track. It’s really something to see.”

The commercial had been on television for almost three weeks before Hayter finally saw it. By then, he’d become something of a local celebrity. A couple at church gave him a picture they shot off their TV set. Another woman asked him to autograph a Dale Earnhardt Sr. card.

He first realized that the commercial was playing to a national audience when a Seattle-based customer service representative for his cable television provider told him she’d seen it.

Hayter wasn’t compensated for his time, but he said he never asked for anything. He suspects BMS officials might have offered him seats in one of the speedway’s luxury suites, but he’d just as soon watch the race from his usual spot, sitting right next to his son, Rick, and his grandson, Miles.

“You have to hear the roar of the engines and hear the fans,” he said. “I’ve got my radio headphones, and my grandson and I listen to that. It’s the way to go.”

With three weeks left before the Sharpie 500, Triplett said, track officials are closer to a sellout than they were in the spring at this point. The Food City 500 played to a capacity crowd – the track’s 54th consecutive sellout – but the last tickets weren’t sold until the final days of race week.

“It’s hard to know how much the commercial has helped,” Triplett said. “People who have seen the commercial and taken the time to comment about it, they overwhelmingly relate to Freddie.

“Has it sold tickets? You can debate that. But it certainly has gotten a response.”