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00:00And in early 70s, R.J. Reynolds.
00:10They got involved.
00:11They got involved.
00:12TV, they couldn't advertise their cigarettes and all that stuff, so they said, we just
00:26got off TV and we got millions of dollars that we want to spend.
00:33Junior Johnson sent them to Bill France, the NASCAR, and they sat down and cut a deal.
00:40Hi, I'm Bill Smith, president of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
00:47I'm talking to you from the pit row of the International Speedway at Talladega, Alabama,
00:51the world's fastest auto racing track.
00:55Princeton really got involved in 1971.
01:03Up to that time, you know, we ran Rockingham, we ran Charlotte, Martinsville, Wilkes-Barre.
01:09They said, well, no need of us advertising to the same people with this much money.
01:15We want to go to California, we want to go to New York, we want to, you know, make a
01:19national sport out of it because we're spending all this money.
01:24Six-time stock car racing, America's fastest growing spectator sport.
01:29And in the same time, NASCAR come in and said, okay, we got to look at our cars also.
01:36So they started modifying their cars from year to year.
01:41As you guys saw them come into the sport, did you look at that as a good thing, that
01:45they were, that they came in and had that much power?
01:48We definitely looked at it from a good thing because when they came in, they started paying
01:54more money.
01:55Okay.
01:56Up to that time, we was just working out behind the house, everybody had a little shop, they
02:03worked on their cars.
02:04Of course, people didn't really look at the money, they just, if they had enough to get
02:08to the next race, as happy as Junebugs.
02:17The championship deal went up, they had different segments year in the year that if he's leading
02:22the points, you got a bonus.
02:24One of the highlights of the Winston Western 500 race week is the points payoff to the
02:29top NASCAR drivers.
02:32They brought a lot of publicity to it so that these teams then could go out and get sponsorship.
02:43Winston come in and said, we want to go nationwide.
02:47That was the beginning of a new era.
02:52Realized, hey, this is not just the Southern sport.
02:55We can advertise our product and it goes all over the country.
03:01That just changed the whole complexity of racing.