down he came home in the NUMBER_TOKENth position nothing really that great he got NUMBER_TOKEN bucks out of it but the next week out of NUMBER_TOKEN cars he'd finish fifth while it's a nice finish it wasn't out of that many cars but you see when racing at pittsburgh he raced against NUMBER_TOKEN competitors and came home third so in his first season he raced three times he finished NUMBER_TOKENth in points didn't get a win but got two top fives out of it his average finish of those three races was NUMBER_TOKEN and he got NUMBER_TOKEN on the year which was not bad for the time but you see NUMBER_TOKEN was the year he decided to go full time after raising an afford in NUMBER_TOKEN rexford switched over to an oldsmobile in NUMBER_TOKEN and this would probably prove to be the big decision that he and his car owner had made that would go on to get him a championship he started slowly see in the first four races he only finished in the top NUMBER_TOKEN once which was ninth and he finished NUMBER_TOKENth or lower in the other three races including losing an engine at langhorne at the third race of the year after leading NUMBER_TOKEN laps but at canfield in the fifth race of the year against NUMBER_TOKEN competitors he led NUMBER_TOKEN laps in route to a win this race would actually be called the poor man's NUMBER_TOKEN and he won the race in front of a crowd of just NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN that is how small nascar was in its early stages see he competed in the first NUMBER_TOKEN races of the year and he ran exceptionally consistent see after his win he finished sixth tenth fifth a NUMBER_TOKENth place finish at charlotte if you're losing an engine and then fourth NUMBER_TOKENth NUMBER_TOKENth NUMBER_TOKENth and NUMBER_TOKENth he was one of the guys that was up front running for a championship because of his consistency the inconsistency of his competitors curtis turner and fireball roberts also helped pave a path for rexford to get the championship and even with him skipping two races he still was up front among one other reason while blowing an engine in the finale at okonichi speedway he still finished ahead of fireball roberts by NUMBER_TOKEN points and ahead of lee petty by NUMBER_TOKEN points nice but you see this is where that other reason the among other things comes into play lee petty actually had scored NUMBER_TOKEN points early on in the year and looked to be the favorite to win the championship because he was doing so well and so consistent but in july he decided to race in another series that wasn't sanctioned by nascar so big bill france decided to penalize him for racing outside of a nascar-sanctioned event and how did he penalize him he literally set him back to zero taking all of his points away from him and basically starting him at zero halfway through the year this destroyed his season when it came to the championship and let me put this in perspective for you he still came up to finish third point he scored NUMBER_TOKEN points and his charge back up front by the season's end so had he not lost NUMBER_TOKEN points he would have actually had NUMBER_TOKEN NUMBER_TOKEN points which was NUMBER_TOKEN more than rexford did for the season meaning that lee petty was robbed basically for a technicality of big bill france wanting to have more control over his drivers so some put an
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