Jim Roper is most known as the winner of the first ever NASCAR race at Charlotte.
13 Facts About Jim Roper
1.
2.
Jim Roper was first able to use the car after World War II since all racing was halted in the United States during the war.
3.
Jim Roper drove numerous types of cars after the war.
4.
Jim Roper won the Beacon Championship at CeJay Speedway in Wichita, Kansas in 1947 in a track roadster.
5.
Jim Roper raced on the International Motor Contest Association circuit in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Missouri.
6.
Jim Roper was nicknamed "Alfalfa Jim" after he drove through a wooden fence into an alfalfa field, turned around, and finished the race with a car full of alfalfa.
7.
Jim Roper heard about the first race at a three-quarter-mile dirt track in Charlotte, NC by reading a note about it in Zack Mosley's The Adventures of Smilin' Jack comic strip in his local newspaper.
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Glenn Dunaway 8.
Jim Roper convinced local car dealer Millard Clothier to drive two of Clothier's Lincoln cars more than 1000 miles to Charlotte to compete on June 19,1949.
9.
Jim Roper finished in second to the winner Glenn Dunaway, completing 197 of 200 laps.
10.
Jim Roper was credited with the win in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock race.
11.
Jim Roper used the same car to finish fifteenth in NASCAR's third race in his only other NASCAR start.
12.
Jim Roper finished sixteenth in the 1949 final points standings.
13.
Jim Roper continued racing in midgets in Kansas until he broke a vertebra in a sprint car accident in Davenport, Iowa in 1955.