The undisputed “King” of NASCAR modified racing, Richard Ernest Evans, known as “Richie,” was born on July 23, 1941, in Westernville, New York, where he lived with his family on his father’s farm.
Richie, who always had a keen interest in cars, left the family home at the age of sixteen to begin training as an auto mechanic at a service station in Rome, New York, and it was here that he had his first experience as a car mechanic. runner, beginning with some success as a street racer, progressed to endurance racing.
After winning drag races, a colleague suggested he build his own car and try stock car racing at Utica-Rome Speedway. His first race was in the Utica-Rome Hobby Division in 1964 after building his car, a 1954 Ford Hobby Stock, number PT-109.
He progressed to the Modified in the first division in 1965 and took his first victory on the last night of the season. In 1973, his first serious attempt at the points chase, he won his first NASCAR Modified National Championship, but he didn’t win another Modified Championship until 1978, and from then on, nothing seemed to stop him. He won the NASCAR Featherlite Modified Championship eight more times, from 1978 to 1985, reluctant to relinquish the crown to him and setting a record for any NACSAR racing division even to this day.
Over a thirteen-year period, Richie finished first nine times, second twice, and only finished in the top ten in all those years. His racing career was an impressive success, earning a total of twenty-six championships at eleven different tracks in four states, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. He won countless track championships in the Northeast and had a thirty-seven win season during 1979 while competing in sixty races.
In 1980 he entered eighty-four races and won fifty-two of them. He won the Modified Race of Champions three times, taking the 1.5 mile at Trenton Speedway in 1973, he was the last driver to win the 2.5 mile at Pocono in 1979 and the first to win the 3/4 mile at Pocono. The list of victories seems endless. No wonder his nickname was “The Rapid Roman.”
Sadly, on October 24, 1985, Richie was practicing for the Dogwood 500 event at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Virginia when he crashed during turn three, killing him instantly. He was just forty-four years old. His achievements have been recognized through many awards: – Selected nine times as NASCAR’s Most Popular Modified Driver, FOAR SCORE Hall of Fame inductee, 1986, New York Stock Car Association Hall of Fame inductee York, inductee into the National Auto Racing Press Association Hall of Fame, International Motorsports Hall of Fame, 1996, One of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers of All Time, 1998, New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame, 1998, Inducted inducted into the Oswego Speedway Hall of Fame, 2000, Named #1 on NASCAR’s Modified All-Time Top 10 List, 2003, one of the NASCAR Weekly Series Top 25 All-Time Drivers, 2006, Hall inductee of Fame, 2010. An impressive list of ways to show the respect the racing fraternity had for him, but perhaps the following really shows the devastation he felt when he died: – In the 1985 IROC Series, every orange car ja featured a ’61’ on the rear bumper to honor Richie and his orange #61 car, #61 being the only number retired in any series – #61 on the modified Whelan ed Tour. And finally, Richie’s #61 was retired at his local NASCAR race track: Utica-Rome Speedway in Vernon, New York.