How a labour law loophole enabled the biggest con in NASCAR history

Lining up in 36th position on the starting grid for NASCAR’s 1982 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway was a mystery man named L. W. Wright. After he was black-flagged just a few laps into the race, Wright disappeared.

See, Wright wasn’t a NASCAR driver; he was just a man with a big dream who happened to have enough forged checks and confidence to con his way onto the starting grid for a professional racing event. Today, we’ll look at the loopholes in the NASCAR rulebook that allowed it to happen.

L. W. Wright: NASCAR’s own D. B. Cooper

On May 2, 1982, a new face had joined the NASCAR Grand National Series (now known as the Cup Series) field for the start of the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway — and he’d already started to raise a whole lot of eyebrows.

That new face belonged to a man named L. W. Wright, and a triumphant tidbit in The Tennessean newspaper announced his entry to the race in April of 1982:

“Nashville driver L. W. Wright yesterday announced he will be attempting to qualify for next week’s Winston 500 Grand National Race at Talladega, Alabama. The 33-year-old Wright, a veteran of 43 Grand National races, will drive a 1981 Monte Carlo. The name of Wright’s team is Music City Racing, and among his sponsors are country music stars Merle Haggard and T. G. Sheppard. Haggard is scheduled to appear at Talladega with his driver.”

There were just a few problems. T. G. Sheppard came forward and said he’d never heard of the guy. And no one in the NASCAR Grand National field had, either, even though this newspaper clipping claimed he’d started 43 events.

This story is a tie-in to Elizabeth Blackstock’s podcast, “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.” Her latest episode centers on L. W. Wright, a mystery man who scammed his way onto the starting grid of the 1982 Winston 500, then disappeared for several decades.

Other folks had wondered about this mystery man, too. Somehow, L. W. Wright had talked a man named Bernie Terrell into giving him $30,000 in cash to buy a race car, plus an additional $7,500 for expenses, because Terrell had been wooed by the idea that two country music stars might somehow be involved with this unfamiliar racer.

Wright took that money to Stirling Marlin, a NASCAR racer who was selling a race-ready Chevrolet Monte Carlo. The aspiring driver handed Marlin $17,000 in cash, then wrote a $3,700 check to cover the remainder of the car’s cost. Marlin himself was so perplexed that he decided to offer to serve as Wright’s crew chief, just to keep an eye on him.

On top of that, Wright started cutting checks for things like tires, car parts, and even customized jackets for his roughshod crew.

He managed to qualify for the race, but his pace was so poor that officials black-flagged him 13 laps into the event. Wright pulled into the pits, collected his starting money, and disappeared, leaving his car and his crew behind.

Then, his checks started bouncing.

More tie-ins with Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys:

👉 ‘Like riding a buffalo’ – The chaotic story behind Lella Lombardi’s NASCAR debut

👉 Mario Andretti remembers convincing Colin Chapman to focus ‘100%’ on Team Lotus

Many modern motorsport fans hone in on one big question: Why did NASCAR issue L. W. Wright a competition license? It all comes down to a fascinating interpretation of American labor legislation known as “right-to-work laws.”

In effect, right-to-work laws are a set of regulations implemented on a state-by-state basis that state prospective employees do not need to join a union in order to be employed.

See, in the United States, businesses could adopt one of four different kinds of organizational structures: Open, closed, union, or agency shops. Open shops were businesses in which employees could not be forced to join a union, while closed shops were businesses in which employees had to join a union in order to be hired. That meant that if an employee failed to pay his union dues, he had to be fired.

The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act instated the “right-to-work” laws by outlawing closed shops; it also determined that the states themselves could decide on whether or not it would allow union shops (which allow non-union employees to be hired so long as they eventually join a union) and agency shops (where employees have to pay for union representation, even if they don’t formally join the union).

When interpreted and applied to NASCAR, though, these right-to-work laws meant that anyone who turned up to a race track with a functioning car, and who could pay both the license fee and the entry fee, had to be allowed a shot at qualifying for the event.

Or, as Doyle Ford, the Field Manager for NASCAR with a home base in Nashville, told The Tennessean: “If [someone] meets our rules and specifications, then there’s no way NASCAR can legally keep him from at least filling an entry and attempting to qualify for the race.

“Anybody can literally walk in off the street and — if they have the money and equipment — enter a race.”

According to Doyle, though, that kind of thing just didn’t happen, mainly because competing in NASCAR was expensive. Buying or renting a race car cost a lot of money, and if the cost didn’t deter a potential jokester, then the danger generally would have.  But in the case of L. W. Wright, we had a totally unqualified person schmoozing money and writing blank checks just to pull off one of the silliest cons in racing history.

After Wright left Talladega that day, he disappeared. Despite a lot of big talk by NASCAR officials, decades passed, and no one managed to track him down. Fans took to calling him NASCAR’s D. B. Cooper.

At least, not until 2022.

For more on the rediscovery of L. W. Wright, you’ll have to check out the latest episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.”

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