NMPA Honors Tommy Houston With Induction Into Hall Of Fame

[PressRoom-GFN]

By Rick Houston

[Editor's Note: Rick Houston, who authored the book “Second to None: The History of the NASCAR Busch Series”, is no relation to Tommy Houston.]

There are a handful of elite athletes who are so closely identified with their sports that the mere mention of their names stir memories of greatness.

Breathe the initials M.J., and everybody knows you're talking about Michael Jordan and basketball immortality. The Babe, Babe Ruth, is the most legendary figure in all of baseball lore. Joe Montana ... football. Wayne Gretzky is “The Great One” in hockey. Pele ... soccer.

And then, there's Tommy Houston.

For 15 years, Houston was the very definition of what it meant to be a driver in the division now known as the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Houston was the Babe Ruth of NASCAR's No. 2 national series. He won the second race in series history, at Richmond, Va., in 1982. He started its first 360 races, a record likely never to be topped. Houston held the record for most starts in the series until just last year, when Jason Keller topped his mark of 417.

When all was said and done, Houston won 24 races and captured nearly 200 top-10 finishes. On Jan. 19, Houston will be inducted into the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame in recognition of his achievements in and contributions to the NASCAR Nationwide Series.

"To be inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame, it's just such a great honor," Houston said. "It's just really exciting. I don't know ... it's hard to put into words."

For Houston, racing has always been a family affair.

"It's something that I never dreamed would happen out of our racing career, and I call it ‘our' racing career because I have to include my wife, Martha, and I have to include our sons, Scott, Marty and Andy, and their families. It goes way back, a long time. My brothers introduced me to racing."

There may be more fans in the stands for a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, Houston says, but that doesn't necessarily mean the competition is any better. NASCAR Nationwide Series races, he continues, don't afford time for riding around. No ... in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, you've got to race.

It's Old School, from the drop of the green flag.

"The Nationwide Series ... you have to put it back-to-back with the Cup series," Houston said. "There's no question about it. It's one of the major deals, one of the major series in the country. Whether you race in the Nationwide Series or whether you race Cup, it doesn't matter. There's a lot of notoriety there.

"What is better, 300 miles or 500 miles? Preferably, I like the 300-mile races. The 500-mile races, I think it gets to a point where you run a couple hundred miles where you're just running them, making sure you keep your nose clean."

Houston is so closely associated with the NASCAR Nationwide Series, it might come as a surprise to some that he did, in fact, make 13 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts between 1980-85. His best finish was an 11th in the fall of 1981 at North Wilkesboro, N.C.

He tested for Bill Elliott, and qualified Ken Schrader's Hendrick Motorsports entry at Martinsville, Va., in 1989 while much of North Carolina cleaned up from Hurricane Hugo. Make absolutely no mistake about it. Houston could get the job done on the race track, regardless of what division he happened to be racing in at the moment.

"It's something I don't regret," Houston said of his decision to stay in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. "We had some good people with us. Our sons were really coming of age, and they knew a lot about racing as teenagers. I got to thinking, ‘You've got a pretty good thing going here, so don't jeopardize it.'"

Another mark that Houston still possesses is his pole-winning speed of 194.389 mph for the 1987 season opener at Daytona International Speedway, the fastest qualifying lap ever turned in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. And while series teams took to the track Jan. 18 for the first of two three-day tests during NASCAR Pre-season Thunder, it's interesting to note that Houston didn't test at Daytona prior to his record-setting performance.

He did put the car through its paces at Talladega Superspeedway and, in fact, made a couple of trips to the wind tunnel, an almost unheard-of luxury at the time. Still, 20 years ago, Houston admits there simply wasn't the emphasis on testing that there is now.

"We didn't really get into all that (testing)," Houston said. "We were just trying to keep our cars ready to go to the next race."

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