Red Farmer

Racing career

Red Farmer's first race was at Opa-locka Speedway near Miami, Florida in a 1934 Ford in 1948. He became famous as a member of the Alabama Gang and considered his hometown to be Hueytown, Alabama. Estimates of his career victories range from 700 to 900, most occurring in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He raced 36 NASCAR Cup Series races from 1953 to 1975, with his best finishes being fourth at the 1972 Talladega 500 and the 1968 Middle Georgia 500 near Macon, Georgia. He entered so few Cup races because he was content to run primarily in the Late Model Sportsman Series, where he was the NASCAR National Late Model Sportsman champion for three consecutive years from 1969 to 1971. Before racing in the Grand National series, he raced modified stock cars in the northeast and was one of the first to transition from the modified series to the early Grand National Series. Farmer was named NASCAR's most popular driver four times. He typically raced in the white and gold number 97 car, but in the mid-1960s he raced a white, gold, and red Ford Fairlane numbered F-97. Farmer was Davey Allison's crew chief in the Busch Series. In 1992 he competed in two Busch Grand National races, and in 1993 he ran the season-opening ARCA event at Daytona. At age 72 in June 2005, Farmer won a heat over current NASCAR Sprint Cup stars and finished eighth in the feature during the Sprint Prelude to the Dream at Eldora Speedway. As of 2022, Farmer still regularly competes in a late model at Talladega Short Track, a 1/3 mile oval dirt track in Eastaboga, Alabama, where his grandson Lee Burdett also races. On March 25, 2021, a tornado damaged Farmer's house, race shop, race hauler, and dirt late model.