The Hard chargers

Series: Life

Duration: 52

Year Published: 1971

Creator: Time-Life

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: Stock-car racing is more than a sport in the South, it is a folkway deeply woven into the fabric of Southern culture. This look at the high-speed vocation visits the raceways at Darlington, Bristol, Charlotte and Rockingham and follows the fortunes of race-car greats Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Pete Hamilton. Richard Petty, son of racing giant Lee Petty, is the focal point of a cottage industry involving his brother Maurice and a phalanx of technicians who fine tune a bevy of automobile engines. Hailing from Massachusetts, Pete Hamilton (The Yankee Bandit) is the newest member of the Petty clan and as a northerner, an anomaly in the world of stock-car competition. Cale Yarborough, who boasts the fastest pit crew in racing, is a sportsman on Sunday and the overseer of numerous business enterprises the rest of the week. Along with the racing superstars and their Detroit corporate sponsors, the stock-car racing scene is also composed of less celebrated drivers called independents, who discuss their hardscrabble nomadic lifestyles. Also seen are the die-hard fans who arrive via trailer and jalopy to cheer on their favorite drivers.