The duration of the race was one hour and forty minutes. Speedy Thompson won the race but Gwyn Staley won the pole position by virtue of a drawing. This race took place at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Virginia, on October 16, 1955. Many locals would enter this race as an annual tradition and have their mechanics work on their cars for a month just for this race. As one of the major stock cars race to take place prior to the 1959 Daytona 500, it was considered to be an honor to qualify for this race. This race can be seen on DVDs showing classic stock cars of the 1950s and the 1960s. Herb Thomas won that race while Fireball Roberts started out at the pole position. The 1955 Southern 500 took place on September 5 at the Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina. The average speed of the race was 52.554 miles per hour. Eleven thousand people attended the one-hour-and-fifty-four-minute race. Jim Paschal won the pole position at the speed of 58.823 miles per hour but Tim Flock won the race with one other vehicle on the lead lap (Lee Petty). This race took place at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Virginia, on May 15, 1955. The fourth race of the 1955 season was run on February 27 at the Daytona Beach Road Course in Daytona Beach, Florida. Buck Baker defeated Dick Rathmann by three feet. The total duration of the race was one hour, twenty-two minutes, and three seconds with no cautions. One hundred and sixty laps were done on a dirt track spanning. The 1955 Wilkes County 160 was a NASCAR Grand National (now Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series) race that took place on April 3, 1955, at North Wilkesboro Speedway in the American community of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. There would be approximately 20 more years of dirt racing before paved oval racing would finally become the expected norm for NASCAR racing.
The move to paved tracks in later decades would produce dangerous speeds that would cause research to move towards making cars safer to drive as opposed to making cars faster. Dirt track racing helped produce the lower speeds that kept the action safe decades prior to the Car of Tomorrow. During this time, it was customary for the majority of the tracks to be dirt tracks as 40 out of the 45 races were raced in that manner. The first race of the season was held at Tri-City Speedway in High Point, North Carolina, while the last race of the season was held at Orange Speedway in Hillsboro, North Carolina. The average horsepower of a stock car competing the 1955 NASCAR Grand National season would be 230 horsepower (approximately 620 less horsepower than the vehicles used in the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season).
However, the generation that would gain notoriety and fame through nepotism (i.e., their father or older brother having a ride before them) would emerge about ten years later. They did not have any ties to the stock car racing world through their parents or grandparents although some of them served in World War II prior to their NASCAR careers.
As the ninth season of the series now known as the Cup Series, most of the drivers involved were still the first-generation race car drivers. This season was unusual because of its 11-month season (as opposed to the current 10-month season format). Tim Flock won the 1955 championship by a margin of 1508 over top of Buck Baker.
Even though the season was resolved in the course of two different years, all NASCAR personnel were allowed to have their traditional two-month silly season that traditionally comes between mid-November and mid-February. The 1955 NASCAR Grand National season began on November 7, 1954, and ended on October 30, 1955.