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Trip Down Memory Lane: National Sprint Cup Hall of Fame Super Modified Legends Reunite at Five Flags

By Chuck Corder

All these years later, Hugh Richards still has a need for speed.

Some two decades after he raced competitively, the 78-year-old super modifieds legend’s motor still runs hot.

Two years ago, the last time the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame Southern Super Modified Racers held a reunion at Five Flags Speedway, Richards was on the track as the winged sprint pavement cars took laps.

“The thought occurred to me, ‘If I paid one of the drivers, wonder if he’d let me drive his car,’ � Richards said with only a half-joking laugh. “The cars are a much better quality than what we ran in years past.�

You better believe those same feelings will wash over Richards, a Mobile resident and one-time world record holder at Five Flags, come this Friday when the super modifieds once again convene in Pensacola.

While Richards and about 20 other drivers from yesteryear won’t be racing, about eight cars from that bygone area when super modifieds were popular will be on display inside the front gates and most will take a ceremonial parade lap around the famed half-mile asphalt oval.

It promises to be a night where the spotlight shines solely on open wheels as the King of Wing sprint cars highlight Friday’s festivities along with the Modifieds of Mayhem and motorcycles.

“With an open-wheel car, you can’t lean and bang around like they do in stock cars,� Richards said. “When the tires touch, bad things happen. It’s safer that way not to bump and grind.�

Gates open at 4 p.m. with racing slated for 8. Admission is $20 for adults; $15 for seniors, military and students; $5 for children ages 6 to 11; and free for kids 5-and-under.

Old hotshoes along with super modifieds owners and builders, such as Richards, Dickie Davis, J.D. Parker, Ikey Jerome, Andy Anderson, Johnny Ardis, “Buddy� Bielarski, Marty and Terry Broadus, Stewart England and Mack Gillis will all be on hand. Additionally, NSPCHoF inductees Shane Carson and Gene Marderness

Camping World Trucks Series legend Rick Crawford, a nephew of Bielarski, will be on hand to coast the late Wayne Niedecken, Sr.’s famous roadster around Pensacola’s high banks one more time.

There will also be an autograph session with these iconic figures from a sport that was auto racing until stock cars began making its big push in the 1960s. Super Modifieds would often race five nights a week at tracks across the Gulf Coast, including Five Flags, which at that time did not have a retaining wall.

Richards, who operated a machine shop business and worked on balancing engines for local racers and car owners, vividly recalled just how quick the change occurred for drivers, such as Niedecken.

“Wayne didn’t like the full-body cars. He didn’t think they were going to work,� Richards said. He added with a chuckle, “Three weeks later, he was in one.�

Before he won two of the first three Snowball Derby races (1968, 1970), Niedecken was battling in Houston to win the Liberty Bell 300 — long considered the "World Series of Super Modified Racing.�

Richards won it once, as well. Clay Reeves, Richards’ car owner, was an electrical engineer by trade. Reeves had enough money to not only maintain the car, but tinker with it so his driver always had an edge in days where technology and rules, for that matter, were foreign concepts.

When Richards set the “world record� at Five Flags — a term used loosely in that era because there was never a sanctioning body for these type of records, only word of mouth — he went 16.30 seconds.

“That’s not necessarily that fast today, but it’s as fast we could go then,� Richards said.

He’s right. The King of the Wing drivers will be flirting to get under 13 seconds when they qualify Friday at 7 p.m. And this past December during Derby qualifying, Ty Majeski’s time of 16.120 seconds set a new track record for Super Late Models.

“We called it a world record, and it was definitely the fastest anybody had ever been around a half-mile track,� Richards said of his blistering time. “But we were outlaws, and it was anything goes in those days.�

Those days are long gone. While the fire in Richards’ belly remains, he’ll be content with being a spectator once again Friday and reminiscing with old rivals who have now become friends.

“It’s always good to relive old memories,� Richards said. “When you start looking back on good times, you understand you didn’t realize those were the good times when they were happening. There are a lotta fans still around that love the supers. On a normal night, the wing would put off a vapor trail because they were going so fast. It’s what racing’s all about.�

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