Johnny Beauchamp was hailed into the winners circle, kissed the trophy queen as reporters snapped photos, and hustled off to the press trailer for interviews.  A Midwestern farm boy had pulled it off: he beat NASCAR’s best on NASCAR’s newest track at its premiere event. 

But the glow of the win didn’t last long.  Sixty one hours after the race NASCAR owner Bill France changed his decision, taking the win from Beauchamp and awarding it instead to Lee Petty.  

Did NASCAR owner Bill France merely correct an error, or was there something more sinister going on?  

There are several things to consider.  This was a relatively new sport, and many reporters didn’t understand it.  France claims to have discovered a photograph that shows Petty slightly in the lead across the finish line.  Despite the fact he didn’t release the photograph, reporters bought into the story.  (By the way, to this day no photo snapped at the exact moment of the cars crossing the line has been located).  

But those familiar with the sport… like those in the pit crews and other drivers… know crossing the line doesn’t mean anything if one racer is a full lap ahead.  And those in the crew say Beauchamp stopped four times, compared to Petty’s five or more pit stops, placing Beauchamp at least a lap in the lead.  

Another consideration is a lack of sophistication of the lap counters.  In this early time there was no mechanization.  The wives and girlfriends of the drivers and mechanics sat in the bleachers and counted the laps, along with patrons who were given free tickets, with no check to see if they were a fan or relative of any of the drivers.  There actually was a man whose job was to oversee the scoring, and perhaps he judiciously did just that.  But his objectivity is suspect… he had just formed the Lee Petty Fan Club.

There was also some allegation of southern bias.   According to Dr. John Havick in “The Ghosts of NASCAR,” most Iowa and Nebraska fans felt the “good old boy reporters were pulling for a southerner to win,” and indeed all twelve reporters that jumped on the Lee Petty bandwagon were from the south.  One wife called the track’s announcer “a Yankee,” and it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

Beauchamp returned to Iowa and started a business, the Frontier Trading Post, on North Broadway in Council Bluffs.  But racing was in his blood, so he kept returning to the track.  

Beauchamp never got over the feeling he was cheated out of the 1959 win, something over which Lee Petty publicly gloated.  So when they met on the track two years later the adrenaline was high.  

Beauchamp afterward insisted it was a pure accident when he slammed into the rear of Petty’s car, sending him over the top of the track and down a forty foot drop.  If it wasn’t an accident, then the plan was deeply flawed.  Beauchamp’s bumper had locked onto Petty’s, and the man that he felt had cheated him out of the biggest victory of his life now drug him along toward what seemed like inevitable oblivion.   Though the initial newspaper reports indicated both men sustained serious injuries, they survived.

Johnny Beauchamp’s back never fully recovered from the wreck, and though he raced occasionally, the glory days were behind him.  He returned to Iowa and tried several business ventures that never led to great success.  He lived modestly, managing a race track in Audubon and worked as a flagman at a track in Des Moines.  He died of a congenital heart ailment at the age of fifty-eight.