Richard Ernest Evans (July 23, 1941 – October 24, 1985), was an American racing driver who won nine NASCAR National Modified Championships, including eight in a row from 1978 to 1985. The International Motorsports Hall of Fame lists this achievement as "one of the supreme accomplishments in motorsports". Evans won virtually every major race for asphalt modifieds, most of them more than once, including winning the Race of Champions three times. Evans was elected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame on June 14, 2011. As one of the Class of 2012, Evans is one of the Hall's first 15 inductees, and is the first Hall of Famer from outside the now NASCAR Cup Series. Early career Evans left his family's farm in Westernville, New York at age 16 to work at a local garage in Rome, New York. After he found early success in street racing, then became a winner in drag racing, an associate suggested he try building a car to race at the nearby Utica-Rome Speedway. He ran his first oval-track car, a 1954 Ford Hobby Stock numbered PT-109 (after John F. Kennedy's torpedo boat in World War II), in 1962. He advanced to the Modifieds, the premier division, in 1965, winning his first feature in the season's final night. National championships In 1973, Evans became the NASCAR National Modified Champion. In 1978, the "Rapid Roman" won a second title and did not relinquish his crown during the next seven years. Evans took over four hundred feature race wins at racetracks from Quebec to Florida before he was killed in a crash at Martinsville Speedway while practicing for the Winn-Dixie 500 tripleheader in late 1985 (three races in one day—a 200-lap Modified race, a 200-lap Busch Series race, and a 100-lap Late Model race). Before his fatal crash, Evans had clinched NASCAR's inaugural Winston Modified Tour (now known as Whelen Modified Tour) championship. Regional championships In 1982, NASCAR created the Whelen All-American Series, then known as the Winston Racing Series, to reward successful short-track racers and to provide incentives for them to support their local weekly short tracks, known now as NASCAR Home Tracks. A region-based series when Evans competed (now an international series, based on individual state and provincial champions), Evans won the Northeast Region championship all four years that he competed in it, from 1982 through 1985, but did not win the national championship. Fatal crash