It was likely a regional thing Gary. In Central Illinois the tracks are all 1/4 mile or even 1/5 mile; high banked clay ovals. That meant there was a lot of "persuasion" that went on back in the day. When so many cars showed up on Friday, Saturday and Sunday Nights, half of which were pretty evenly matched and were capable of winning, sometimes the difference was indeed how much nuanced nudging, blocking, shoving and scraping you did. Guys like Rett will tell you that these old cars were not delicate and they were made for tight quarters and trading paint with other cars!
By the way, one of the beauties of Peoria Speedway was that everything was inverted in all the heats, consi's and semi's/ standing start and three abreast. They even started the feature with the fast nine cars (hot heat cars) inverted until sometime in the mid-70's. Then they went to two abreast rolling starts (still inverted) and started drawing peas for the feature. The fast time driver would draw 1 of 10 peas and whatever number that was, that was how many they inverted. I liked it a lot as it made the fast guys work to get up front and also allowed for many different winners.
