Terry Labonte Wins the Southern 500! (in 1980)

How many of you use twitter? I, like many old guys, didn’t think I’d have much use for it. I wasn’t even on facebook except for the NorCal Car Culture page. But it is, supposedly, a good way to promote your website, so I though I’d give it a try. Boy, was I wrong. It’s great! I am always finding interesting bits of news and information to write about. When the Kings were about to leave Sacramento, it was easy to keep up on the latest developments on twitter. A lot of times I would read it on twitter several hours or even days before it made the regular news. It is also a great way to keep up on favorite race car drivers and car events. Many race teams will “tweet” the progress of their cars during the race, which is great for the races that aren’t televised like most from Northern California tracks. The “tweets” go by fast so you can follow a lot of different people or organizations, most have links to articles or pictures.

Now, here is a perfect example of why I’m on Twitter. I have mentioned in the past that I am a big Terry Labonte fan. He is a 2-time Champion in NASCAR and one of the classiest guys in sports. He is older than me and doesn’t tweet much but I also follow his little brother Bobby who is a former champion and currently drives the No. 47 for former NBA star Brad Daugherty. Last week, he retweeted a tweet from Terry’s daughter Kristy that said: “This is a video of my dads first win. Gave me chill bumps while I watched. Enjoy”. It included a link to the following video on You Tube.

What a great video! It was interesting to see who Terry raced against back then, David Pearson, Benny Parsons, Dale Earnhardt and Neil Bonnett. All but David Pearson have passed away, and he was just inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Terry still races a few times a year against a whole new generation of drivers. Terry was the champion in 1984 and 1996 and this was his first win. I became a fan after the 1996 season and haven’t seen many races from early in his career. I really enjoyed this chance to see him race and listen to his post race interview from 31 years ago.

My conclusion is, that I need to keep a more open mind. I didn’t expect much from twitter and I’m still not much into texting or facebook, but there are a lot of great uses for modern technology and I should be smart enough to take advantage of them.

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