{"id":14401,"date":"2018-01-16T16:07:33","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T22:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=14401"},"modified":"2018-01-21T15:21:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T21:21:51","slug":"with-hall-nod-squier-earns-his-own-place-among-the-legends-he-helped-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/16\/with-hall-nod-squier-earns-his-own-place-among-the-legends-he-helped-build\/","title":{"rendered":"With Hall nod, Squier earns his own place among the legends he helped build"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Ken Squier<\/strong>, the man who coined the phrase \u201cThe Great American Race\u201d to describe the Daytona 500 will formally join NASCAR\u2019s \u201cGreatest\u201d later this week. The co-founder of Motor Racing Network (MRN) and longtime voice of the sport will become the first broadcaster among the NASCAR<\/a> Hall of Fame\u2019s legendary list of inductees.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Noted broadcaster Ken Squier was the lap-by-lap voice of the Daytona 500 on CBS-TV from 1979 through 1997. He also called the first race ever aired by MRN in 1970. Squier coined the name \u00f1The Great American Race\u00ee for the Daytona 500 and developed the in-car camera that was first used in 1982. (Photo by ISC Archives via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The 82-year old Vermont native is a broadcast icon, setting the standard for calling NASCAR race broadcasts. He famously worked NASCAR\u2019s flag-to-flag network television debut, the 1979 Daytona 500 featuring post-race fisticuffs between Bobby and Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough and his smooth voice and polished insight made him a broadcast favorite for decades thereafter in a sport he famously described as “common men doing uncommon things.”<\/p>\n

Squier will forever be most associated with that historic ’79 Daytona race telecast and selling the NASCAR product to network television. It\u2019s a source of great pride and he is certainly accustomed to the questions about the landmark race and the scuffle in the closing credits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were on each other, both (Donnie Allison and Yarborough) as determined as any race drivers that ever walked the face of the earth,\u2019\u2019 Squier recalled of the tangle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were not going to give it up. There you saw the result.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very dramatic moment.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

And as for the overall significance of the broadcast?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a matter of introducing people from Manhattan into the scope of American stock car racing,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cIn the bread basket of America, that was the name of the tune that turned people on the most at that time.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ken Squier introduces Cale Yarborough into the NASCAR Hall of Fame during the 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Charlotte Convention Center on January 20, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by John Harrelson\/Getty Images for NASCAR)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cHaving them, CBS, take an interest in it. … we did a group of races before we ever did the Daytona 500 and they did so well. It was like everything the network did in those days. They spent the time, spent the energy, forethought to really put together what it was about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a new page.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

It was new to many of Americans and set a high bar for race excitement, but for Squier, calling NASCAR races was essentially old hat. He began race play-by-play for the MRN network he co-founded in 1969 – before getting the call regularly for the television broadcasts.<\/p>\n

In addition to his talent behind the microphone, in 1982 Squier is credited for helping to develop the sport’s first \u201cin-car camera\u201d \u2013 a hugely popular and unique broadcast feature still used today in later variations.<\/p>\n

That camera was an invaluable tool in giving the world a glimpse of the most popular Daytona 500 victory in modern time \u2013 Dale Earnhardt\u2019s 1998 triumph.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ken Squier introduces Cale Yarborough into the NASCAR Hall of Fame during the 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Charlotte Convention Center on January 20, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka\/Getty Images for NASCAR)<\/p><\/div>\n

Squier remembers how emotional the steely Earnhardt was after that win, and how emotional everyone on pit road was for Earnhardt to finally win after 20 tries. The car in Earnhardt\u2019s famous No. 3 Chevrolet picked up the amazing greeting the champion received after pulling onto pit road headed to the Daytona 500 victory lane for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust how emotional he could be, he pretty much always hid it, but you couldn\u2019t hide that,\u2019\u2019 Squier recalls of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Squier was also in the television booth for the FOX Sports pre-race show before its full season debut in 2001 when the seven-time champion Earnhardt was killed in the final corner of the final lap of the Daytona 500 \u2013 a race ultimately won by Michael Waltrip in a car Earnhardt owned.<\/p>\n

Humbled and awed by his historical selection to the sport\u2019s great Hall of greats, Squier still insisted he was most pleased to have witnessed the competition and tell the stories of all the great men and women behind the steering wheel and behind pit wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess what\u2019s most impressive, is the competition,\u2019\u2019 Squier said last week when asked what memory stands out the most of his NASCAR broadcasting career.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you have today, that is the fruit of it. It\u2019s pretty good tasting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service Ken Squier, the man who coined the phrase \u201cThe Great American Race\u201d to describe the Daytona 500 will formally join NASCAR\u2019s \u201cGreatest\u201d later this week. The co-founder of Motor Racing Network (MRN) and longtime voice of the sport will become the first broadcaster among the NASCAR Hall of Fame\u2019s legendary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[535,16],"class_list":["post-14401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-ken-squier","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ken-Squier-2012-NASCAR-Hall-Of-Fame-Podium-CBS-MRN.jpg?fit=4896%2C3264&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-3Kh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14401"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14407,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions\/14407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}