The Turtle knew how to get the most out of a race car

If, like Aesop's fable suggests, slow and steady wins the race, then there will always be a place in NASCAR's record book for the Turtle. A hard crash in Saturday night's Southern 500 ended Clint Bowyer's streak of consecutive races running at the finish at 83, a modern day record but one shy of the all-time mark set by Herman Beam more than four decades ago.

Beam

Jeff Bobo of the Kingsport (Tenn.) Times-News wrote a fascinating article about Beam in 2007 that gives a little bit of background into one of NASCAR's most unusual characters. Unlike most of the drivers of his day, Beam was a college graduate, majoring in chemical engineering at the University of North Carolina. And he used a very analytical approach to racing.

In an era when reliability was as much of a factor in a top-10 finish as sheer speed, Beam employed a contrarian strategy. His Fords were top-notch, as his qualifying records would show. But when the race started, Beam would immediately drop down to the apron and run consistently but conservatively, with the idea of getting his car to the finish line without too much wear and tear.

"He knew the distance to each racetrack, how many gallons of gas it took to get there, what you had to do to qualify for the race, how much money the race paid for each position, and where he thought he could finish," Gene Glover said. "He built his own car and towed his own car, and didn't have much help and didn't really have a lot of overhead. He was really a genius at stretching a dollar and stretching his equipment longer than anybody.

"They called him Herman the Turtle because he had good equipment but he just didn't want to drive fast, so he just got down on the apron and stayed out of the way. A lot of times he'd end up with good finishes." (Continued)