John Havick

When John Havick's grandfather sold his car to local boy and aspiring racecar driver Johnny Beauchamp, the young Havick went to see how the car performed. Falling in love with the sport, he kept scrapbooks of newspaper articles and programs tracking the triumphs and defeats of Beauchamp, Tiny Lund, and many other successful racers from the town of Harlan, Iowa. Then he went away to high school and college, leaving his childhood hobby behind but never forgetting it. After a career teaching...See more

When John Havick's grandfather sold his car to local boy and aspiring racecar driver Johnny Beauchamp, the young Havick went to see how the car performed. Falling in love with the sport, he kept scrapbooks of newspaper articles and programs tracking the triumphs and defeats of Beauchamp, Tiny Lund, and many other successful racers from the town of Harlan, Iowa. Then he went away to high school and college, leaving his childhood hobby behind but never forgetting it. After a career teaching public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he revived his interest in the sport and decided to tackle one of its longtime controversies: who really won the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959? The result of years of research and scores of interviews, The Ghosts of NASCAR tells the whole story. John Havick lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia. See less