Sunday during Fox Sports 1’s pre-race coverage of Talladega Superspeedway’s GEICO 500, long-time race car driver and Hueytown native Red Farmer reflected on seven decades of competing in motorsports.
Farmer is an original member of the Alabama Gang, among which also include fellow Hueytown natives Bobby Allison, Donnie Allison and Neil Bonnett, Huntsville’s Jimmy Means, Calera’s Hut Strickland and Gadsden’s Steve Grissom.
Farmer, who still competes at the Talladega Short Track, a dirt track across the street from the Talladega Superspeedway, joked that some have been trying to retire him since his last ARCA win at Talladega in 1988.
“I’m going on 87 years old right now,” Farmer said. “I’ve been racing for 72 years. [They’ve been] retiring me for probably 30 years, so I know the last time I won the ARCA 500 across the street over there at Talladega Superspeedway, and I was 56 years old. They said that was your last race probably, and that was, you know, that was 30 years ago. I still enjoy working on my cars, and I still enjoy driving them.”
“I’ve won 752 races,” Farmer explained. “I don’t have to win anymore. If I come here and have a good time at the race track, and have a good finish – I run ninth or tenth or something like that and I have a good race, I enjoy it. I don’t have to win anymore.”
Farmer insists there are only three actual members of the Alabama Gang, Bobby and Donnie Allison and himself.
“People don’t understand – everybody that’s a good driver in Alabama, they’re supposed to add them to the Alabama Gang,” he said. “There’s not – there’s only Bobby, Donnie and me. We always traveled together, two pickup trucks and I pulled a station wagon. We come in like a convoy. The three of us were bumper-to-bumper, and somebody said, ‘Here comes that damn Alabama Gang again.’ And a reporter heard it, and that’s kind of how it got started.”
Farmer made a pitch during his FS1 appearance to be inducted in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
“I would like to get in the NASCAR Hall of Fame,” Farmer added. “I think that would be icing on the cake. I’m in nine hall of fames right now, and I’d like to make it 10. It would be nice to get it while I’m on the green side of the grass.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.
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