Sports and Racing games

One of NASCAR's first superstar drivers, is buried in a cemetery almost within sight of the Daytona International Speedway. On race days, and hear the roar of the race cars hurtling around the track.

The plaque on his tomb reads:

He brought to stock car racing a freshness, distinction, a championship quality that surpassed the rewards collected by the checkered flag.

Edward Glenn Roberts Jr. was born January 20, 1929, in Tavares, Florida. He loved baseball and car racing, and his nickname -- Fireball -- came from the speed of his fastball while pitched with the Zellwood Mud Hens in American Legion Baseball. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1945, but was discharged 90 days later due to asthma.

As a teenager, Fireball raced at the Daytona Beach and Road Course, a race track that ran parallel to the Atlantic Ocean and went from pavement to sand and back again. What began as informal speed trials on the beach in 1903 became enshrined as stock car races with the foundation in Daytona of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) in 1948. Eleven years later, the races were moved from the sand to the newly opened Daytona International Speedway.

In 1962, Fireball -- driving a gold and black customized by the legendary -- won the Daytona 500, beating the 24-year-old Richard Petty. He also won the 1958 and 1963 Southern 500, and won the 1957 Grand National Series Most Popular Driver Award. In 1958, he entered 10 races... and won six of them. He was named Florida's "Professional Athlete of the Year," the first time a race car driver had won the award. Over his career he won seven races at his home track, the Daytona International Speedway, including the Firecracker 250 in 1959, the year the track opened, and again in 1962.

On May 24, 1964, at the World 600 in Charlotte, Fireball was in the middle of the pack on lap seven when, ahead of him, Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson collided. Roberts, trying to avoid them, lost control of his Ford and spun out, crashing backward into a wall and rupturing the gas tank. The car, now engulfed in flames, continued spinning down the track before flipping over.

"Junior and I were racing side-by-side going into Turn 1 and there’s a bump between Turns 1 and 2. Junior was on the inside, hit that bump, hit me and I spun to the inside of the racetrack while Junior spun to the outside. When I hit the wall, it burst the gas tank open. As I skidded down the wall, there was a spark and the gas caught on fire, so the car was on fire. Then, something caused Fireball to spin into me and his gas tank burst open as well, so all hell broke loose. We landed about 30 feet apart. I got out of my car and the wheels were still turning on his car. It landed on its top." -- Ned Jarrett

Fans in the stands could hear Roberts, trapped inside the burning car, screaming "Ned, help me!"

Jarrett pulled Roberts from the inferno, but his racing suit was still burning. Many drivers in those days wore cotton suits soaked in flame-retardant chemicals, but the chemicals aggravated Fireball's asthma, and so he wore an untreated cotton jumpsuit... to fatal consequences. "He was wearing a custom made uniform," Jarrett said. "It had zippers on the sleeves and up the sides and looked very nice, but if you tried to pull it off in a hurry, we both got our hands burned from the heat on the zippers. We had it basically torn off while it was burning on him."

Roberts suffered second- and third-degree burns to more than 80 percent of his body, and was airlifted to a hospital. (Jarrett also was treated at the scene for burns to his hands and face.) After five weeks in agony, Roberts contracted pneumonia and sepsis, and went into a coma on July 1. He died the following day.

The 35-year-old Roberts had accepted a public relations job at Falstaff Brewing Company, and it was believed this was going to be one of the final races of his career.

Among his many accolades, Fireball was named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998. He also is in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, the Florida Sports Hall of Fame, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The NASCAR Hall of Fame calls him "perhaps the greatest driver never to win a NASCAR title."

The at Universal Studios is named in his honor.

Roberts would be the second of four prominent drivers -- Joe Weatherly, Eddie Sachs, and Dave MacDonald -- to die in 1964. Several other drivers, including Johnson and Jarrett, retired that year. It led to the development of fuel cells and fire-retardant uniforms for drivers, and the use of a five-point safety harness and a specially contoured driver's seat. Smokey Yunick invented a safety wall of old tires sandwiched between plywood that could be hung against the retaining wall to try to protect drivers from catastrophic crashes, but NASCAR didn't use it; they also refused to employ some of the safety measures already in use by other racing organizations. Frustrated by NASCAR's stance on driver safety, Smokey quit the association in protest in 1970.