Glenn Dunaway is often a forgotten name in NASCAR history after being disqualified in the series’ inaugural race. (Photo: NASCAR Research & Archives Center | Getty Images)
On April 19, 2025, the NASCAR Xfinity Series made its long-awaited return to the hallowed grounds of Rockingham Speedway for the North Carolina Education Lottery 250.
What ensued was a race of patience, resolve and attrition. Several contenders bowed out of the race at various points, whether it be mechanical issues, fuel-mileage miscalculations or getting rattled by “The Rock.”
In the end, Richard Childress Racing driver Jesse Love used the overtime restart to nudge JR Motorsports’ Sammy Smith up the track in Turn 1 and ultimately claimed the victory, his second of the 2025 season at the time.
Love stood on the frontstretch being interviewed by The CW pit-road reporter Kim Coon, where he acknowledged the adoring fans fired up after a great race and complimented his race team for his fast No. 2 Whelen Chevrolet.
The 20-year-old racer capped off his victory speech by referencing his girlfriend’s sister, who passed away from complications related to skin cancer.
The race took place on the first anniversary of her passing, so Love used the opportunity to give an impassioned plea on the importance of dermatological care.
Speaking with Dillon Welch on pit road, Smith chalked up the contact to “good, hard racing” and accepted his defeat, though a tinge of disappointment was detectable in his voice.
From there, Love snapped pictures with the trophy, suffered through the hat parade with a big smile on his face while surrounded by his race team, and left the track in elation.
However, that elation would be short-lived.
Just three hours after the checkered flag fell on Saturday evening, NASCAR announced that it disqualified Love’s No. 2 team for an issue with the rear suspension, focusing on the u-bolt’s travel.
Sammy Smith won the Xfinity Series’ return to “The Rock,” thanks to Jesse Love’s post-race disqualification. (Photo: James Gilbert | Getty Images)
NASCAR implemented a rule to disqualify the winner of a race for failing post-race inspection before the 2019 season. Since then, just one winner in the Cup Series has had their win stripped away due to a technical infraction: Denny Hamlin at Pocono in 2022.
Before 2019, NASCAR used the term “encumbered” when a driver’s car failed post-race inspection.
So, when Richard Petty possessed a larger-than-allowed engine at Charlotte in 1983 and Kevin Harvick’s spoiler was a fraction of an inch out of alignment at Texas in 2018, NASCAR simply ripped away all the points and accolades that came with the win while letting the victors keep the win in the record books, including the trophy.
That policy stood for nearly six decades, dating back to the 1960 season when future champion Joe Weatherly inherited a victory from Emanuel Zervakis at Wilson Speedway, due to Zervakis’ car containing an oversized fuel cell.
In the series’ infancy, NASCAR rules required a disqualification on six different occasions, which you can read more about by checking out this great piece from the late Al Pearce.
The most glaring disqualification of all does not concern a series champion or anyone that can be found in NASCAR’s vast record book; instead, it goes back to its very first race in 1949.
On Sunday, June 19, 1949, a field of 33 cars entered the inaugural race for the NASCAR Strictly Stock division, an entity presided over by founder and race promoter Bill France Sr.
The field featured a myriad of drivers that became big names as the series blossomed. The Flock brothers — Bob, Fonty and Tim — took up three of the first five spots, where future champion Red Byron and journeyman driver Otis Martin joined them.
Short-track ace Curtis Turner lined up sixth with future series champions Buck Baker, Lee Petty and Herb Thomas filling up what would now be looked at as a star-studded lineup. Sara Christian drove a car owned by her husband to a 13th-place starting spot, becoming the first woman to enter a NASCAR event.
Bob Flock took the lead from pole and led the opening five laps before giving way to eighth-place starter Bill Blair in his 1949 Lincoln. Flock’s automobile dropping back quickly went from bad to worse as he was the first retirement in NASCAR history, exiting the event with overheating problems after just 38 circuits.
Blair dictated the pace for the next 145 laps, leading a whopping 72.5 percent of the 200-lapper. His R.B. McIntosh-owned Lincoln pushed through the hot Carolina air, ready to become the first victor of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
Unfortunately for Blair, his maiden victory aspirations went up in smoke with just 50 laps remaining when his Lincoln overheated, putting him out of the race.
Though Blair stumbled in his pursuit of a win that day, he made sporadic starts when he was not bootlegging, snagging a trio of victories in the early 1950s, with the most notable being his last, winning the 1953 Daytona Beach & Road-Course race in a self-owned Oldsmobile.
From there, the man who started to Blair’s outside in the fourth row assumed the top spot. Glenn Dunaway, a 34-year-old driver from nearby Kings Mountain, piloted a 1947 Ford to the front of the hungry field with 11 remaining drivers.
Those final 50 laps trickled down at a snail’s pace as more machines suffered from the dreaded overheating issues that plagued some of the early contenders, allowing Dunaway to amass a multi-lap advantage over his closest competition.
Dunaway crossed the line after completing the 200th lap, becoming the first winner in NASCAR history and collecting a big $2,000 (worth almost $27,000 in 2025) payday for his efforts.
His No. 25 Ford, owned by Hubert Westmoreland, would go down in the record books as the first driver to put his name on the series’ official wins list. That was the case until NASCAR inspector Al Crisler disqualified Dunaway’s car for having its rear springs spread.
Spreading the rear springs allowed the car to handle the treacherous turns offered by Charlotte Speedway’s muddy .750-mile layout, a practice that France and the sport outlawed. This was in spite of the fact that bootleggers often spread their springs to outrun the authorities.
France took the check and the trophy from Dunaway and Westmoreland. While Dunaway was cordial to the media at the track in his defeat, he took his grievances up with France at his hotel later that night, demanding the return of his check and trophy.
Westmoreland further escalated the dispute by taking France to court, where the lawsuit was thrown out by the judge, essentially establishing NASCAR’s right to set the parameters of and handle the discipline of their racing series.
While Westmoreland found Victory Lane a few times with various drivers over the years, Dunaway ended his career without a certified trip to the winner’s circle.
The closest Dunaway came to earning a trophy was the following year, when he ended the Poor Man’s 500 at Canfield Speedway in second place, behind eventual season champion Bill Rexford. Notoriously, that was Rexford’s only win in NASCAR and the lone win of his title run.
Dunaway ended his 18-race career after 1951, winless.
When the dust settled, France handed the trophy and check to second-place finisher Jim Roper.
A native of Halstead, Kansas, Roper found out about the race in a newspaper comic and convinced a local car dealership to loan the 32-year-old figure-8 racer a pair of 1949 Lincolns to go compete with the nation’s best and brightest in the Carolinas.
Roper brought one of those Lincolns for himself and gave the other to Blair, but McIntosh’s machines appear to have dominated the day, according to NASCAR records. He limped his overheating Lincoln to the finish right behind Dunaway, completing 197 of 200 laps en route to a runner-up result in the inaugural event.
According to NASCAR records, the winner of its first race failed to complete all of the scheduled laps, let alone lead any of them.
The legend of Roper lasted for just one more NASCAR race, where he finished 15th in the series’ third event at Occoneechee Speedway.
Roper returned to Kansas, where he ran in the IMCA series before his career came to an abrupt end after breaking his back in a sprint-car crash in 1955.
Jim Roper inherited the win at Charlotte Speedway after Glenn Dunaway was disqualified. (Photo: NASCAR Research & Archives Center | Getty Images)
Before we continue, ask yourself this question: When the 13,000 fans in attendance at NASCAR’s first race returned to their homes, did you think they knew that the winner was disqualified?
In that era, Bob Pockrass was not there to post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the winner lost the race due to a disqualification. So, unless they saw it in the paper the next morning or stayed long enough for the announcement, some of the folks in attendance never learned the real result.
Since Westmoreland used a common trick in bootlegging to make his Ford easier to handle, NASCAR erased Dunaway’s name from their record books forever, although we know the sport is now renowned for its “ingenuity.”
Drivers, crew chiefs and lifelong mechanics appear on Dirty Mo Media’s Dale Jr. Download to chat with the Hall of Famer about their exploits, bragging about all of the technological innovations they made that skirted NASCAR’s rulebook without getting caught.
In the past, the sport observed a rule that worked, but in a world where fans saw “cheaters” prosper all too often, NASCAR’s sanctioning body saw fit to adjust its rulebook to include harsher punishment for technical violations.
With all due respect to Roper, Chase Elliott, Sammy Smith and every driver who has benefited from a competitor’s disqualification, this rule change was a mistake.
Punishing a driver for something they had little to no control over by taking away the trophy they risked their lives to earn is unfair.
It is unfair to the driver who won the race outright on pace, and it is unfair to the driver who goes on to be awarded the victory after the fact.
Smith did not get a trip to Victory Lane, did not toss hats to cheering fans with a big smile on his face and it looks like he may never see the trophy after being credited as the winner of the North Carolina Education Lottery 250 at Rockingham because Love appears intent on keeping it for himself for crossing the line first.
Does that sound fair?
Inheriting a win is not the same as being the first to take the checkered flag. (Photo: James Gilbert | Getty Images)
In certain instances, a full disqualification is necessary. Nobody wants to see someone dominate the Championship Race with an egregiously illegal car to win the title, only for the second-place driver to be handed the Bill France Cup.
Here’s the great thing: That never happened when we had the encumbered win rule or after the disqualification clause was implemented.
Winning the championship and getting penalized for your ingenuity would put a permanent stain on a race team and its entire organization. The teams know that, which is why we have not found a confirmed instance of teams “cheating” in the season finale.
At the end of the day, no fan wants to leave the track after a race and be told hours, days or even weeks later that the driver they watched wheel their way to victory did not win the race.
There is not a driver in the NASCAR garage who wants to be given a trophy by another driver they were soundly defeated by in the race.
Should the sanctioning body revisit this rule, it would be great if the winner kept the trophy and credit for the win in the rulebook while the highest-finishing car that passes inspection receives the points, playoff points and playoff eligibility associated with a win.
It was bad enough that Dunaway’s inaugural victory was erased by the sport. Let’s not repeat those same mistakes in the present day.