Neil Castles

Neil "Soapy" Castles (born January 22, 1934 in Charlotte, North Carolina) is a retired NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series driver who raced from 1957 to 1976.

History

He competed in the 1971 Daytona 500 where Richard Petty won the first major race done under the sponsorship of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company who was responsible for producing the then-popular Winston brand of cigarettes. Even though he failed to win a race in his entire career (which ended up spanning nineteen years), Castles has recorded an astonishing 51 finishes in the top five and 178 finishes in the top ten. Out of 90403 laps, Castles has led 90 of them (compared to Jeff Gordon's record of 21000+ laps led so far in his career). His total mileage in his career is 65,412.8 miles (105,271.7 km) more than the entire distance around the world.

There was a short story about Castles from the book American Zoom by Peter Golenbock. Castles was an also-ran of the old days who once found himself having an uncharacteristically good day. He had lapped Curtis Turner, but the flagman apparently did not believe it, for he kept giving Castles the move-over flag to let Turner around him. As Castles told the story: "The starter kept doing this, and I was getting real mad, so I just picked up my gun and when I come by the stand the next time I took aim and shot that flag out of his hand."