Career
Born April 20, 1944 in Warren, Michigan, Anderson first drove in racing competition at Flat Rock Speedway in 1965, winning the Michigan Figure 8 racing championship in 1967. He was the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) Rookie-of-the-Year in 1968.
During the late 1960s and 1970s Anderson was successful in competition, winning a number of track championships, along with several ARCA and American Speed Association races. He moved up to United States Auto Club (USAC) sprint car and midget car racing in 1977, and ran his first NASCAR race, in the modified series, at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the fall of that year, winning the pole for the event.
In 1979 he made his first NASCAR Winston Cup Series start, scoring a fifth-place finish in his first race, at Michigan International Speedway. He ran the majority of the 1980 season for a number of teams, scoring two top-10 finishes; torwards the end of the year he was hired by John Rebham to drive for his team; in 1981, driving an Oldsmobile, he was involved in a spectacular accident during the UNO Twin 125 qualifying races for the Daytona 500. Shortly afterwards Rebham, impatient for results and under pressure from his sponsors, fired Anderson, replacing him with Donnie Allison. Anderson would only run a few additional races in the Winston Cup Series and Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series before retiring.
Anderson won over 200 races of various types during his racing career. He was killed in a crash in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 5, 1986, being survived by his wife Mary Ann and two children. He was inducted into the Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.
Read more about this topic: John Anderson (racing Driver)
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