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Recalling fame and misfortune

In legendary 1976 Daytona 500, Ramo Stott shockingly was on the pole, but finished 26th.

By KEVIN KELLY

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 10, 2001

DAYTONA BEACH -- Priorities have changed since Ramo Stott retired from racing 10 years ago.

He tends to a seven-acre bean farm in Keokuk, Iowa, during the warmest six months of the year. And when the weather turns colder, he and wife Judy head south for their winter home in Mission, Texas.

They make it a point to dance with each other every morning and play cards in the afternoon.

"I keep up with racing as much as I can," the 67-year-old said. "But I got involved on a financial committee for a park and that's kind of tied me up."

So why should we care about Ramo Stott when he sounds like every other snowbird? Because he is the answer to a trivia question: What driver's only career Winston Cup pole position came in the 1976 Daytona 500?

"I can't remember how everything went that day," Stott recalled this week. "But it wasn't that big a deal to win the pole back then."

The big deal was how it happened, the events that followed and how Stott became part of a legendary Daytona 500 that featured the Petty-Pearson wreck on the last lap 25 years ago.

Qualifying for the top two spots in this year's race begins at 1 p.m. today at Daytona International Speedway.

An accomplished driver in the IMCA series, Stott was awarded the pole after Darrell Waltrip, Dave Marcis and A.J. Foyt, the top three qualifiers, were caught cheating by NASCAR.

"Ramo's car was a good one," Waltrip said. "It was a sister car to A.J.'s so whatever A.J. was doing, Ramo was probably doing too. But Ramo got away with it."

NASCAR found tanks of nitrous oxide -- laughing gas -- inside the Chevys of Foyt and Waltrip.

When sprayed onto the carburetor, nitrous oxide boosts horsepower, which might explain how the drivers' first qualifying lap was significantly faster than the second.

"(NASCAR) had already warned my team not to bring the car over there with any kind of nitrous oxide bottle in the car because they were going to look for it," Waltrip said. "Sure enough, they confiscated my car right after qualifying, and I don't know if they ever found anything wrong with it or not.

Harry Hyde, well known for thumbing his nose at NASCAR's rule book with his clever inventions, had installed a movable air deflector on the radiator of Marcis' Dodge.

"We were allowed, because it was real, real cold, to plug the radiators up with duct tape," Marcis said. "I specifically remember that Harry Hyde put a piece of aluminum in front of our radiator. We qualified third, put the car in the garage and everybody left that day. The next morning we came back and found out about all this other stuff.

"Harry said he didn't give a damn whether it was dirty underwear, duct tape, aluminum, cardboard or what the hell it was ... plugged was plugged. Anyhow, they threw us out and put Ramo Stott in."

Waltrip and Marcis didn't object to the disqualification.

Foyt did and it took NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. rolling into the garage to ease the situation.

Stott was the innocent bystander, happy to be in a fast car.

"I was glad we were running as well as we were," said Stott, who competed in just 35 career Winston Cup races and never won. "I took everybody out for dinner down at the fisherman's wharf that night. All of the sudden, somebody comes running in saying, "You're on the pole! You're on the pole!' "

Corrie Stott, a former Busch Grand National crew chief, learned of the situation that day from track officials and rushed to let his dad know.

"A couple of folks came by the mobile home park where we were staying there and kind of clued us in," he said. "Then we had to find my folks and tell them the information. It was pretty exciting."

But the fun didn't stop there.

Overly excited about the good fortune, Stott's crew killed the car's battery by leaving the ignition on before the 125-mile qualifying races.

"I got in the car, tried to get the thing started and I'll be dog-gone, it was dead," Stott said. "I called to a wrecker nearby and they gave me a push around the track.

"Back then, the pole winner had to start the 125s to keep his spot on Sunday. Luckily, they jumped that thing. I lost three laps and went back out there."

Decades have faded the memories of the Daytona 500 days later.

Driver introductions are a blur. So too the national anthem.

But Stott can remember the first lap.

He lost the lead to Buddy Baker and wound up finishing 26th, 87 laps behind David Pearson, who sputtered across the finish line after his wreck with Richard Petty.

"The car ran up the track and I dropped back all the way to 15th or something like that," said Stott, who had finished third in the 1974 Daytona 500. "I never could get back to the front. I felt real bad that I didn't do better. I wasn't a regular in NASCAR and to do that made me look kind of bad."

But he had gained respect in the garage.

Everyone knew Stott from his success on tracks in the Midwest where, according to him, he won more than 400 career races.

"He certainly wasn't an unknown in auto racing," said Marcis, who is from Wisconsin. "He was very competitive. But in Winston Cup, Ramo didn't run that much with us."

Said Waltrip: "He was not a superstar by any means, but he was no rookie either."

Stott planned to fly to Daytona to celebrate the silver anniversary of his only pole, but his job on the financial committee of a park in Mission is his priority.

His ticket will go unused.

"Most of my memories from that weekend are of sitting there with all those people when they got ahold of me to tell me I was on the pole," Stott said. "It felt really good."

How they qualify

Here is how the field for the Daytona 500 is determined:

POLE QUALIFYING: Drivers run two laps each today with the fastest times clinching the first two positions in the field, the pole and the outside position on the first row. The only thing that can knock today's fastest two drivers from those positions is if they wreck during the week and have to enter their backup car in the 500. That would move them to the back of the 43-car field.

QUALIFYING RACES: Positions 3 through 30 will be set using the finishing order of Thursday's 125-mile qualifying races. Fourteen drivers from each race make the Daytona field.

REMAINING SPOTS: The next six spots are filled by the top remaining qualifying speeds, then seven more cars will get in under provisional rules.

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