1,000 Greatest Drivers: Bob Welborn
Overrated in convertibles but underrated in Cup.
Welborn was fairly hard to research because most of his exploits occurred in races in NASCAR’s Convertible Series, which attracted much less attention than the Cup Series (especially in retrospect, since the series folded after four seasons in 1959). If you look at almost any retrospective of him, it’s all just a mundane roll call of stats with few interesting anecdotes, and those aren’t the type of columns I tend to want to write. However, when I started looking up more personal information about him, I can’t say I very much liked what I found. There was a race at Fayetteville in 1956 where Welborn wrecked Herb Thomas (probably intentionally), Thomas wrecked Welborn in retaliation, and it almost resulted in a riot as Thomas needed protection to leave the track. Both drivers were suspended and forced to pay a $250 “peace bond” although that obviously mattered much more for Thomas who was fighting for the Cup championship rather than Welborn who never competed for Cup championships. Suddenly I feel less bad about Thomas losing that title, although the way he lost was still gross. I also uncovered two stories where he was accused of driving without a license (after which he successfully passed the blame upon a waitress who he claimed was really driving; I honestly don’t buy it) and another when he was accused of drunk driving, although he ended up being acquitted both times. Nonetheless, even though these all might be sexy stories, I didn’t really want to bring up things like that in the article itself for a long-dead driver, because those things have been swept under the rug and it feels like emphasizing them in the profile itself would be more of an expose than a proper survey of his career. I did decide to bring them up in the public section though. While I clearly admire him less than I did 24 hours ago, he still belongs on this list and he still belongs in the Hall of Fame.
As for his actual career, I think he is weirdly overrated and underrated at the same time. Occasionally, people hype him as “King of the Convertibles” because he won three out of four titles, but to me, Curtis Turner’s vast dominance is enough to compensate for Welborn’s slightly greater consistency. However, I think his actual Cup career is much more impressive than people realize. His 9 wins in 183 starts gives him the 50th best winning percentage in the Cup Series, just over Martin Truex, Jr. and Dale Jarrett. Unlike many of the ‘50s drivers, several of his wins came against pretty big fields, especially his greatest win at Martinsville in 1958 against a 47-car field. He was mostly driving for either himself or Lee Petty’s brother, and I do not think Julian Petty’s team was as strong as Petty Enterprises. And he was as I discovered the first Cup driver ever to win four races in a row, although they weren’t consecutive on the schedule. Since the Convertible Series has been swept under the rug overall, I guess I’d say Welborn is more underrated than overrated, but he’s probably overrated to some extent amongst people in the know.
