One of the most legendary teams in Carolina motorsports history was honored this week by the North Carolina Auto Racing Hall of Fame and, for the very first time, it was a team that never took the checkered flag at Wilkesboro, Charlotte, Rockingham or even Bowman-Gray.
 
Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin earned their in-ground plaque on the auto racing Walk of Fame not for turning hard left, but for negotiating drag racing’s straight line better than anyone else in the era in which the straight-line sport developed its unique personality.
 
The legendary Sox and Martin team, based in Burlington, N.C., was anchored by driver Sox, owner Martin, engine builders Jake King and Randy Norton and do-it-all Dave Christie, who worked with sponsors including Plymouth.
 
Although the Sox and Martin name already was well known within the sport because of the team’s Super Stock dominance in the 1960s (in an era in which there were only four races in the NHRA series, Sox won five times from 1967 through 1969), it wasn’t until the NHRA introduced its new factory hot rod class that it took on legendary status.
 
Sox won nine of the first 15 NHRA Pro Stock races and the team won 10 (with Herb McCandless taking a Sox and Martin Plymouth to victory at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis in 1970).  Sox succeeded McCandless a year later and the team’s legacy was secure.
 
Unfortunately, Sox died in 2013 and wasn’t on hand when the team became the first from drag racing honored by the NCARHOF.
 
“This is a great honor not only for Sox and Martin but for all of drag racing,” Martin said in ceremonies in front of the Charles Mack Citizens Center.  “To be in the company of people like Dale Earnhardt (Sr.), Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and the Allisons is really a credit to the great people we had.”
 
Honored with Sox and Martin was Donnie Allison, brother of previous Hall of Fame inductee Bobby Allison of NASCAR’s famous “Alabama Gang.”
 
Others attending the event, in addition to Martin and the Allison brothers, were Ned Jarrett, Waddell Wilson, drag racers Jim Oddy, Doug Herbert and Roy Hill and Steve Earwood, owner and operator of Rockingham Dragway and chairman of the North Carolina Motorsports Association.
 
“We are very happy to honor the first drag racing team on the Walk of Fame here in Mooresville,” said Don Miller, Chairman of the Board of the NCARHOF, “and I am also very excited that, thanks to Travers Webb, we (had) two of the Sox and Martin cars at the dedication plus Richard Petty’s 43 Junior Plymouth Barracuda drag car.
 
“And it gets even better for drag racing fans,” Miller said, “as Travers Webb is loaning the Sox and Martin car to the North Carolina Hall of Fame to be on display here at our museum.”

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