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 Robert Vance Issac was born August 1, 1934. Professional stock car driver, advocate of speed and competition, he was defiant and proud of what he was. Somewhere along the way, sometime during those years, the Catawba, N.C., driver acquired the
one ingredient of any successful athlete-an over-whelming competitive spirit.
Some people choose to call a man shiftless if he likes to shoot pool, or hunt, or fish, or drive a race car for a living. But any man who has ever talked with Isaac would disagree. His life was stock-car racing and his goal was to become the best there is in a sport where men prove themselves with great amounts of skill and unlimited supplies of raw courage. Bobby received a well-deserved break in 1964 when veteran mechanic Ray Nichels chose him to drive a Dodge on the NASCAR Grand National circuit. It was really the beginning of life for him, although he
had been South Carolina sportsman champion in 1958.
Isaac grew out of a large family and at the age of 12 went to work in a
sawmill. He got tired of working at the sawmill and that's when he decided he wanted to make a
living driving race cars. He used to sit up on top of a hill there in Catawba and watch the guys tow their race cars down the road on the way to Hickory and the races. He quit his job one day and hitched a
ride over there with one of the racers.
By the summer of 1962, Isaac had become a legendary figure on the short tracks of the Carolinas. A young race enthusiast, Bondy Long of Camden, SC, offered Isaac a ride in a new Ford for the 1963 season. The car was as first rate as money could make it but Long's crew left something to be desired. Isaac and the chief mechanic on the car had words and Bobby lost his first chance at GN racing. Smokey Yunick offered Isaac a ride in his Chevrolet for the National 400 in Charlotte. Yunick said of Isaac afterwards, "He's a race driver. I know that."
So Nichels, an excellent businessman with a flair for picking stock-car driving talent, offered Isaac his Dodge for the 1964 season. The young driver did not wait long to respond. He won a 100-mile qualifying race at Daytona in his initial outing, and was running well up at the front of the pack in the 500-miler when paper and debris clogged his radiator and forced him
to make unscheduled pit stops. Later he said, "The car was the strongest I've ever driven. I guess you'd have to say getting the ride in the Nichels Dodge was my biggest thrill in stock-car racing."
Isaac made money in the succeeding years except for a futile foray into USAC. He drove for Dodge, switched back to Ford, then returned to Dodge. In 1968 he decided to abandon the chase for that first superspeedway victory. He would run instead for the
season point championship. That meant finishing as well as possible at the superspeedways -which he did when his car held together -and winning on the short tracks. He led David Pearson until the Southern 500 when a 7-car crash put him out of the race and out of the point competition.
Running for the points crown is an expensive and grueling undertaking. It means having at least 2, possibly 3, cars set up for the various kinds of tracks Grand National championships are run on. It means running some 50 races, often 2 or 3 a week, during the season. It also
means discipline, because the key to one's racing strategy is to finish high in every race. Running the K&K Dodge, Isaac did what he had to do. When it came down to Rockingham's American 500, postponed into November, he had fought off point challenges from James
Hylton, Richard Petty, and Bobby Allison, and needed only a 28th-place finish to win the crown. He motored
around "trying to stay out of everyone's way," eventually finishing 7th and NASCAR point champion.
To cap the season, the K&K team went to Talladega, Alabama, to try for a "new world closed-course mark." It was a raw blustery day, with the
temperatures near freezing, when Isaac made the try. The wind was blowing in the 10-to-18 m.p.h. range as the orange Dodge Daytona picked up speed and rose higher and higher on the banking of the 2.66-mile course. He circled the empty track 24 times, 4 of them faster than Buddy Baker's old speed mark of 200.447 m.p.h.; his fastest was the 22nd lap at 201.104 m.p.h.
Isaac was exhilarated when he climbed from the car. "This is the pinnacle of my career," he said. "Winning the championship and now this."
Yet in 1971, he went on to set 28 world class records on the Bonneville Salt Flats in his Dodge. Many of these
records still stand today.
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