Remembering Ailsa Craig’s Earl Ross, Canada’s Racing Legend by Richard Young Ailsa Craig’s Earl Ross (September 4, 1941 – September 18, 2014) was a Canadian race car driver who competed in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series from 1973 to 1976 driving the Carling Red Cap #52. On September 29, 1974, at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia, he became the only Canadian to win what is now the Sprint Cup Series. His victory helped him secure the Winston Cup Rookie of the Year title. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of his historic achievements. “Twenty-five years after my Dad’s Martinsville win, we went back to the track for the race and to celebrate as a family. We were treated like royalty. We were even invited to join the drivers in the pits and shake their hands during driver introductions. Dad took us to race shops and to visit Junior Johnson and his wife Flossy whom my parents had remained good friends with over the years,” recalls Earl’s youngest daughter, Lisa Ross VanderWal.
NASCAR Cup win at Martinsville was his first season out. Today his Rookie of the Year jacket is on loan and displayed at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina. After competing in two events in 1975 and 1976, Earl retired from NASCAR racing and participated in regular Friday night racing at the Delaware Speedway before his ultimate retirement in the late 1990s. He was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2000, FOAR SCORE (Friends of Auto Racing Seeking Cooperation Of Racing Enthusiasts) Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Maritime Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2011. “Over the years my Dad was presented with many awards in Canada and the U.S. and asked to speak at engagements
Earl was born in Charlottetown, P.E.I. where his father had a farm and ran a small sawmill. When he was eleven, the family moved to London, Ontario. In 1970, Earl and his wife Bonnie moved to Ailsa Craig. He was always described in U.S. racing programs and newspapers as being from Ailsa Craig, Canada, never London, Canada, or London, Ontario, and the fans liked him even more for that. Lisa says her Dad started racing by accident. “When he owned a gas station in the 1960s, a gentleman came in and asked him to build a race car. When the gentleman took it to the track, he realized he was too scared to drive it so he asked Dad if he would like to try driving it. Dad did, he won the first time out and was hooked.” Ron Ling, later a member of his pit crew, and Earl built a stock car out of a 1953 Plymouth sedan, worked on it in their spare time, and took turns racing it through the summer season at small southern Ontario tracks. “In 1971, the McKickan brothers invited my Dad to attend a really big race they had heard of in the U.S. It was the Daytona 500. My father was in awe. He turned to one of the McKickan brothers and said how amazing it would be to be on the track racing one of those cars against those drivers,” says Lisa. Earl eventually moved up to racing late-model stock cars, won several Canadian championships, and was then asked by Carling O’Keefe Breweries to drive for its racing team on a full-time basis. He finished in the Top 10 ten times and the Top 5 five times. His
Page 10 Ilderton and Area Villager • September 2024
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