Some of you may remember that Denny Nyari of South Bend, IN came down quite often to race in Florida. Denny passed away at 8:00 am this past Saturday, October 3, in his residence in South Bend. Denny was born on March 18, 1943 in South Bend and was the owner of D & N Racing. He started racing in 1963 and retired in 1997 as one of the winningest drivers in the country with an estimated 600-plus feature wins. His proudest win was the Redbud 300 ASA race at Anderson (IN) Speedway in 1973. He had multiple track championships at South Bend, Plymouth, New Paris, Mottville and Kalamazoo plus he was a test driver for the Hoosier Tire Co. RIP…
The first photo is from around 1971 at South Bend… the second is one of the cars he raced for owner Marty Jones in Florida taken at DeSoto Speedway circa 1983-84…
Way back, my local raceway was Baer Field (Ft. Wayne,Ind) which ran on Friday nights and a lot of Sunday afternoon shows. The local big dogs back then were Larry Moyer, Larry Zent, Leroy Skyles, Jim Nusbaum, and the Stovall machines.
But once in a while, seen at the back pit gate, were out of towners, from other local raceways on their off day/night. And Denny Nyari was a heavy hitter, along with the likes of Randy Sweet, Jim and/or Bobby Blount, or even Dick Trickle. They would tow from time to time to play with locals, and put on a whale of a show. The crowds went wild.
They would almost always take the purses, but what a treat it was, to see someone else make a visit to us. Denny Nyari was one of those drivers, always in top-rate machinery, super fast, nice looking wedges he always had.
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