The Official Website of Hard Driving: The Wendell Scott Story by Brian Donovan

Hard Driving is the dramatic story of one man’s dogged determination to live the life he loved, and to compete, despite daunting obstacles, at the highest level of his sport.

Wendell Scott figured he was signing up for trouble when he became NASCAR’s version of Jackie Robinson in the segregated 1950s. Some speedways refused to let him race. "Go home, nigger," spectators yelled. And after a bigoted promoter refused to pay him, Scott appealed directly to the sport’s founder, NASCAR czar Bill France Sr. France made a promise Scott would never forget — that NASCAR would never treat him with prejudice.

For the next two decades, Scott chased a dream whose fulfillment depended on France backing up that promise. Persevering through crashes, health problems, and money troubles, Scott remained convinced he had the talent to become one of NASCAR’s best. Hard Driving

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Darlington Raceway officials banned Scott
for more than three years. *

documents a previously untold chapter in the history of integration, politics, and sports in America. It reveals how France, founder of the multibillion-dollar NASCAR empire, reneged on his pledge and allowed repeated discrimination against Scott by racing officials and other powerful figures.

It details France’s alliances with leading segregationist politicians, such as George Wallace; the reluctance of auto executives, such as Lee Iacocca, to sponsor a black driver; and the inspiring support Scott received from white drivers, such as NASCAR champions Ned Jarrett and Richard Petty, who admired his skill and tenacity.

Brian Donovan, a former Newsday investigative reporter, has won more than forty journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and Columbia University’s Paul Tobenkin Award for reporting on racial and ethnic intolerance. Driving on the EMRA Vanderbilt Cup circuit, he has won a season championship, as well as a track championship at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway and dozens of races from Canada to West Virginia. He gained exclusive access to Wendell Scott over the last fourteen months of his life and interviewed more than two hundred individuals to capture this epic, previously untold American story. He lives on Long Island.

Scott's family watched his races with pride and worries. **

"Finally a NASCAR book that doesn’t leave the reader feeling like a redneck hillbilly. Donovan’s Hard Driving is an American history book that uses stock car racing to educate about the segregationist South. Driver Wendell Scott overcame more hardship than any ten white NASCAR drivers combined. Donovan has done an amazing investigative reporting job ferreting out the stories and details that give this story life."
-- Tom Cotter, Road & Track contributing editor and author of The Cobra in the Barn

"Brian Donovan has written a surprisingly moving and powerful account of Wendell Scott’s utterly American odyssey. It offers a window into a world not that far removed from our own."
-- Ken Burns, filmmaker

Prejudiced drivers sometimes wrecked Scott deliberately. **

"In Hard Driving, Brian Donovan has given us a beautifully insightful look at Wendell Scott — a vital NASCAR pioneer — that’s exceedingly well written, and researched with the kind of zeal and expertise necessary for a tale that covers so rocky a road. Talk about a necessary sports biography. Hard Driving is unquestionably a winner."
-- Robert Edelstein, TV Guide motor sports writer and author of Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of NASCAR Legend Curtis Turner

"As a long-time admirer of Scott, it’s my hope that this book, splendidly researched and written, brings him the widespread recognition that he has long deserved."
-- Jerry Bledsoe, author of The World’s Number-One, Flat-Out, All-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book

"Wendell Scott was to NASCAR what Jackie Robinson was to baseball. The difference was that Robinson played in liberal Brooklyn and had the backing of Branch Rickey, and Scott raced in the segregated South and had . . . nobody."
-- Peter Golenbock, author of Miracle: Bobby Allison and the Saga of the Alabama Gang