By The Time NASCAR Figured Out This Driver’s Strange Motive, It Was Already Too Late

This story takes us back to the springtime of 1982 when racing enthusiasts were getting ready for the Winston 500. For a lot of people back then, the Winston 500 was the best race around. And to make things even more enticing that particular year, word had got out about some newcomer who fancied his chances.

On paper, L.W. Wright looked like the real deal. His stats suggested he’d gained a lot of racing experience over the years, plus he was sponsored by famous musicians T.G. Sheppard and Merle Haggard. These stars obviously trusted this up-and-coming racer, so expectations were now running high. Could Wright even manage to take first place on the big day?

Well, first things first, Wright had to enter a qualifying race so he could actually compete at the Winston 500. But despite all the buzz, this qualifier didn’t go as well as might have been expected. In fact, Wright only just scraped through it. Maybe he’d been having an off day?

Regardless, Wright had done enough and eventually the day of the Winston 500 arrived. He was about to drive in what some regarded as the greatest of all races — but something seemed a little off. People around Wright noticed his behavior was strange, almost like he wasn’t prepared. Was it nerves? Well, as the day unfolded, it became clear that Wright wasn’t quite the racer people thought...

Drivers need nerves of steel and a lot of experience if they want to do well on the Talladega Superspeedway. It’s not the type of course where you can just show up to and automatically expect to succeed. There’s a reason why the “’Dega” is considered to be among the best oval tracks in the world.

The ’Dega was the brainchild of NASCAR’s own founding father, Bill France Snr. Right from the off, France intended this track to be the biggest and best. And in the end, that’s what came to pass. Measuring 2.66 miles, this oval track was longer than the other great speedways, including Indianapolis and Daytona.

The ’Dega was constructed on the site of an old air base, situated roughly ten miles from the Alabaman city of Talladega. This 2,000-acre plot had been sitting idle for years after the Air Force had moved out. But in 1968 works got under way to breathe new life into this spot.

About $4 million was pumped into construction of the ’Dega, which in the ’60s represented an even more significant investment than it does today. France was pulling out all the stops for his new racing track. He wanted it to be the best and it was designed with spectators’ interests specifically in mind.

The ’Dega wasn’t initially known as the Talladega Superspeedway upon its completion in September 1969. It was originally called the Alabama International Motor Speedway, a moniker which would stick for two decades. Regardless, races were now being staged on the new track. The first was the Bama 400, followed by the Talladega 500.

Right from the off, the track’s potential was realized. Speed records were immediately broken there, with the quickest driver reaching a top speed just shy of 200mph. This must have been exhilarating for audiences, but the drivers had their concerns. They were afraid such extreme speeds would inevitably lead to dreadful accidents.

Even though some drivers were expressing their worries about the potential for disaster, races still went ahead. And in those early years, the track became a huge attraction for motorheads. Many of the races that took place there were extremely tight, with winners ultimately decided by the slightest of margins.

The speedway proved so competitive that leaders of a given race would change constantly. The most times this happened in a single race occurred in 1984 during the Winston 500 event. That year, the car at the head of the pack changed a whopping 75 times. Spectators must have been dizzy by the end!

As the years wore on, speed records continued to be broken. The 200mph mark was surpassed for the first time in 1982 and speeds were pushed higher and higher over the following years. By 1987 all cars racing on the track were maxing out at speeds in excess of 200mph, with the quickest breaching the 212mph mark.

With such high speeds becoming the norm for the ’Dega, arguably tragedy was unavoidable. With such close running in NASCAR races, losses of control were, after all, fairly commonplace. The first ’Dega death happened in 1973 when competitor Larry Smith lost control of his car. Another driver was killed two years later, with four more fatalities occurring in the decade or so between ’82 and ’91.

The ever-increasing speeds at the ’Dega were ramping up the peril for the drivers year on year. Eventually, something had to give. That happened in 1987, when a driver who had lost control was launched into the air, hurtling towards the crowd. Thankfully, a retaining fence did its job and the vehicle was repelled back towards onto track, sparing the spectators; the driver, too, emerged more-or-less unscathed. All the same, the episode made it crystal clear that the trend of climbing maximum speeds couldn’t continue.

Measures were introduced to keep speeds down after that near miss. Devices were installed in engines to reduce horsepower, meaning that speeds tend to average out at about 190mph nowadays. Still, this measure arguably carries its own dangerous pitfall: because all competitors now complete laps at roughly the same speed, cars can often become jammed together. And occasionally that can have disastrous consequences.

If up to 40 cars are all packed together in a line, one slip-up can trigger an horrific chain reaction. A huge number of drivers can be taken out in incidents like these — and they’re not uncommon. They’re so frequent that these types of crashes even have a special name, with people dubbing such an occurrence “The Big One.”

Disaster is never far away at the ’Dega, leading superstitious types to suggest the track is “cursed”. People have died there in crashes and other strange incidents, only adding to the venue’s mystique. Realistically, though, motorsport is a dangerous pursuit by its nature, so fatalities on racing tracks are hardly a surprise.

It’s fair to say, though, that the ’Dega has seen its fair share of strange stories over the years. But the weirdest of all was arguably the episode in 1982 when L.W. Wright showed up on the scene. He took NASCAR by storm that year — but not for the reasons you’d expect.

Wright’s name emerged ahead of the Winston 500 event, when a newspaper in Nashville reported on his intention to compete. This paper, The Tennessean, stated that Wright was 33 and had competed in 45 top-tier NASCAR races in the past. It also mentioned that he was being sponsored by country music stars Sheppard and Haggard.

All of this was impressive, but it begged a question: why did nobody know who this Wright figure was? Wasn’t it odd that he’d raced so often in the past, yet no one seemed to remember him? It was strange, certainly, but it didn’t matter much to NASCAR. So long as Wright could pay the fees to enter the Winston 500, then he’d be allowed to race.

Wright coughed up the money for the fees, so he was now in a position to enter the race. But before that could happen, he needed a car — and cars are expensive. So, he turned to a businessman named B.W. “Bernie” Terrell in the hope of getting the money out of him.

Terrell must have been won over by Wright’s past credentials as a racer, as he handed him over $30,000 for a vehicle. The businessman also gave Wright another $7,500 for additional expenses. Let’s not forget that this was back in the ’80s, meaning these sums would amount to something closer to $100,000 in today’s money.

With Terrell’s cash, Wright set out to look for a car. He met up with a driver named Sterling Marlin, who owned a Monte Carlo: he agreed to sell for a little over $20,000, most of which Wright provided in hard cash. And to top it off, Marlin also signed up to lead Wright’s crew on the day of the race.

So, Wright was now scheduled to compete in the Winston 500 — and he had a car and an experienced crew member to help. Now it was just a case of organizing the finer details, like obtaining spare parts and tires. Wright wrote some checks for these items, amounting to a few thousand dollars.

The new driver’s preparations had been going fairly smoothly up to this point, but now things started to unravel. Not long before the race, Wright was interviewed by the press. While chatting with a reporter he mentioned his sponsors Sheppard and Haggard, the two country stars. The thing is, though, when Sheppard was alerted to this interview he wasn’t happy about it.

Sheppard outright denied that he’d sponsored Wright, even stating that he had no links to the driver at all. The country musician’s tax attorney Gary Barker publicly reiterated this claim. In Barker’s words, “In fact, T.G. said he had never heard of the guy... Something mighty fishy’s going on somewhere.”

But when challenged, Wright simply answered that Sheppard just didn’t want to be hasty in announcing his involvement. The rookie was also asked about why nobody remembered him racing before, which led him to admit something. He allowed that he’d talked himself up a little bit, but he still maintained that he really did have some racing experience.

By now, of course, Wright had already paid his fees and been given the green light to compete. But that didn’t stop people from feeling suspicious, especially Marlin. And the pit crew chief’s concerns were only intensified by the fact that Wright really seemed to have no idea what he was doing — in fact, he didn’t appear to be an experienced driver at all.

That year, the standards at the Winston 500 were generally extremely high. In fact, it was the first year that someone passed the 200mph mark during qualifiers. Wright, though, only hit 187mph. He also had a minor crash, though it wasn’t serious enough to prevent him entering the actual race. Despite the question marks hanging over him, he was ready to go.

Wright lined up in 36th place for the race. And with that, he set off. For 13 laps, he managed to keep out of trouble. But then he blew his car’s engine, and was forced to retire. By this stage one of his fellow competitors had already succumbed to an accident, so Wright didn’t actually come last. In a way, then, it had been a successful effort.

But Wright didn’t stick around. In fact, right after the race, he vanished into thin air. Everyone was left scratching their heads — where had he gone? Why did he disappear right after the race? It didn’t take long, though, before the penny started to drop.

It soon emerged that all the checks Wright had written in the build-up to the race had bounced. And his debts weren’t just limited to car parts, either. The man also owed huge sums of money in rent and phone bills, too. The rookie driver was thousands of dollars in the red — and nowhere to be found.

Yes, L.W. Wright had been little more than a conman, albeit a talented one. Using only his cunning and persuasive nature, he’d managed to dupe various parties into giving him money to enter a race he had no real intention of winning. And when all was said and done, he disappeared with the leftover cash.

Naturally, many feathers were ruffled by Wright’s elaborate and devious scheme. A big hunt was organized to try and track him down, with those who’d been burned by the con determined to seek reparations. NASCAR itself backed the search effort, with the businessman Bernie Terrell also playing a major part.

But in the end, the search bore no fruit. To this very day, L.W. Wright — or whatever his real name is — has never been found. The conman disappeared without a trace, leaving investigators scratching their heads in his wake. It was almost as though he’d never existed.

If Wright is still alive today, he’d probably be in his 70s. It’s tempting to imagine him, wherever he might be, tuning in each year to NASCAR events at the Talladega Superspeedway, maybe having a giggle to himself. Remembering the time he somehow managed to race on the fastest track of them all.

You have to wonder, though, why Wright went to so much effort. He made some money, sure, but it wasn’t a huge amount — only a few thousand dollars, in the end. He actually could have made more if he’d taken the sponsorship money and disappeared right away, but he didn’t. He stuck around, bought a car, and entered the race. Based on that, you’d have to presume he just genuinely wanted the thrill of racing at the ’Dega.

Another theory about Wright’s underlying motive has actually gained a lot of currency. This idea states he actually concocted and pulled off his great scheme for the sake of a bet. Who knows? Maybe that’s the truth of it. No matter what, though, for better or worse the driver who never was has become a part of NASCAR folklore.