Editor’s Note: Each month in recognition of SPEED SPORT’s 90th anniversary, the SPEED SPORT Insider will use the National Speed Sport News archives to look back at what happened in the racing world 50 years ago.
Top Story
-Stateside Stars Dominate IROC
A quartet of visiting Europeans got a look at superspeedway racing, American style at Michigan Int’l Speedway and came off second best in the first round of the $225,000 International Race of Champions.
USAC’s Bobby Unser beat NASCAR’s Cale Yarborough in a side-by-side finish in a strenuous non-stop century run over the 18-degree banks as American drivers swept the top five places in a bumper-to-bumper race.
David Pearson virtually pushed the top two finishers
across the line as Bobby Allison and George Follmer were only a length back with former world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, best of the Europeans, coming home sixth.
The first of the series of four events matching 12 of the world’s best drivers lived up to advance billing and was one of the finest races in the five-year history of the track. A crowd of 17,000 roared approval of a race which saw a constant shuffle of positions alongside and behind Unser, who held total command of the 50-lap race.
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