"He Crashed Me, So I Crashed Him Back"

This is the title of a lately released book on the 1979 NASCAR season. The book is written by Mark Bechtel of Sports Illustrated. It's a great read! 1979 is the year that NASCAR hit the big time. The year started off with the first live "flag to flag" coverage of the Daytona 500. What a great race that was and what a breakthrough it was for NASCAR. Bechtel spends the first third of the book talking about that week and that race. The season ends with the battle for the championship between the rising star, Darrell Waltrip, and the long-in-the-tooth Richard Petty. In between you have the Pearson fiasco in which he loses his ride with the Wood Brothers, stories about Bobby and Donnie Allison, Buddy Baker, and Cale Yarborough and Junior Johnson. Oh, and there is some material about a rooking driver names Dale Earnhardt. Check it out!