From Bumpergate to Labonte’s Crash – Twenty Years Ago
Over NASCAR’s history a number of seasons
boiled down to equally-matched showdowns involving two dominating drivers.
Entering its 55th season, NASCAR enters the twentieth anniversary of one such
showdown year, a season of some of the sport’s greatest races and another round
of perhaps its bitterest rivalry.
1982’s dramas began even as the 1981
season was proceeding. In late June 1981 the defending champion car owner of
Winston Cup, Rod Osterlund, sold his team to Jim Stacy, a mysterious coal mining
magnate whose philosophy was "to coal mine, moon shine, or move on down the
line." Now going by the initials J.D., Stacy promptly fired team manager
Roland Wlodyka, then by the time of the Summer 500 at Pocono fired marketing
chief Joe Whitlock. Driver Dale Earnhardt, crew chief Doug Richert, and six
other crewmen then quit after Talladega and raced the rest of 1981 with Richard
Childress. Without missing a beat, Stacy hired USAC stock car champ Joe Ruttman.
Earnhardt, meanwhile, finished out 1981 with Richard Childress but switched to
Bud Moore’s #15 Ford at season’s end.
Now for 1982, Stacy began branching out –
not only did he field a full-time Winston Cup team with Ruttman, he fielded a
second car for Jim Sauter, and then signed a five-year, $1 million per year
sponsorship deal with Ranier Racing and new driver Benny Parsons. Stacy also
signed as sponsor for Hagan Racing and Terry Labonte, Race Hill Farms Racing and
Ron Bouchard, Donlavey Racing and Jody Ridley, and Dave Marcis.
More silly-season movements kept the sport
intrigued in the 1981-2 interregnum. Darrell Waltrip and Junior Johnson had won
the 1981 title, but for 1982 crew chief Tim Brewer, engineman Harold Elliott,
and fabricator Eddie Thrap were hired – reportedly at $82,000 per man, this atop
driver Cale Yarborough’s quarter-million upfront salary with half the team’s
winnings and endorsement fees from sponsor Valvoline – by M. C. Anderson.
Anderson’s maneuver upset Junior Johnson, who mocked the Anderson team as
"a Junior Johnson team….it’s a back-door, back-stabbing situation."
Cale for his part sided with Anderson, claiming the three crewmen "called
me two weeks before, asking me if the positions had been filled. I told them
they hadn’t and put them in touch with M. C."
Debuting as a team owner was motor parts
magnate Harry Melling, who’d sponsored Benny Parsons and Bill Elliott during the
1981 season; the new Melling Racing team was also among the first to begin
getting help from Ford, as the Dearborn company announced in late 1981 that it
would return to racing in the 1982 season. Pontiac also reentered NASCAR as a
supporting factory and signed Richard and Kyle Petty as their marque team as
well as Cliff Stewart’s #50 team.
But the most pivotal change came from
DiGard Racing. Ricky Rudd had driven DiGard’s #88 racecars and had an impressive
season with three seconds and eleven other top-fives. He hadn’t won, though, and
Bill and Jim Gardner decided to get a veteran driver, this in part to keep their
Gatorade sponsorship.
The Gardners had tried to recruit Bobby
Allison when the team debuted for 1973. Allison sold them some cars from his
Hueytown race shop but declined their offer to drive. They came calling again
after the tumultuous buyout of Darrell Waltrip’s contract at the end of 1980,
but Allison signed with Harry Ranier. Now, after a tumultuous season with
Ranier, Allison entered negotiations with DiGard. A document of 86 pages was
written up, but its shallow wording angered Allison and he prepared to break off
negotiations, but then a new contract was hastily written up and a deal struck.
Allison signed with DiGard for one reason
– to work with engineman Robert Yates and crew chief Gary Nelson. "I knew I
had to compromise my own feelings and principles and everything else,"
Allison wrote in his 1997 biography. "But here were two guys (in Yates and
Nelson) who were really as determined as I was to go against the big engines,
the (illegal) left-side tires, big gas tanks, the lightweight cars (all of the
above of Junior Johnson) and still try to win the championship."
The schedule was altered slightly from
1981. The closing of Ontario Motor Speedway forced a unique third race at
Riverside – an arrangement not seen since Atlanta’s 1961 triple-header on the
Grand National schedule – but for ’82 Les Richter’s road course was back to two
events, but this time inverted from tradition, with the Western 500 now serving
as the season’s closing event. Texas World Speedway ended its association with
Winston Cup once and for all after 1981 and Pocono, which had been working to
acquire a second date since 1976, finally got it, in early June.
Daytona Speedweeks now served as the
season-opening event on the Grand National and the now-reorganized Sportsman
tours. J.D. Stacy drew first blood as Benny Parsons drove the Ranier Racing
Pontiac Lemans to the 500 pole. But the Lemans was not allowed to run the same
size spoiler as the other brands, robbing the car of rear down force. It showed
in the 125s when Parsons was promptly swamped in traffic. Bobby Allison
dominated but on the last lap "I got ganged up on and had no defense
against Cale." The second Twin was won by Buddy Baker in Hoss Ellington’s
Buick and saw Darrell Waltrip slap into Earnhardt and nearly take out the field,
which earned the wrath of Neil Bonnett afterward.
Bobby Allison’s Buick was considered the
500 favorite – and before the 500 NASCAR official Joe Gazaway accosted Gary
Nelson and ordered the rear bumper lowered on the car. Nelson protested, but
Gazaway stuck to his guns – in keeping with a reputation to find the fastest car
(usually unless it was Junior Johnson) and nitpick to force changes. Nelson and
the crew cut the bumper off and reattached it lower on the rear panel – with
deliberately unsecured attachments.
Come the 500 Allison and Cale Yarborough
were dueling within the lead group. Coming off Four "Allison cut me
off," Cale said. "Suddenly his bumper came off. It didn’t take much of
a lick to tear it off." Joe Millikan ran over the bumper, punched the wall,
and collected Lake Speed, Geoff Bodine, and two others. From there Allison
became the race’s dominator, leading 147 laps and surviving some tense racing as
well as Darrell Waltrip’s blown engine in front of him and Joe Ruttman. At the
end Cale and other contenders had to pit for final splashes of gas, but Allison
drafted Ron Bouchard and won the 500 by 23 seconds. But the loss of his bumper
was still the big story; Tim Brewer said, "I wasn’t born this morning. We
tested here in the winter and found the car would run better with the bumper
off." Allison countered, "Actually my car ran looser with it
off," and Nelson rather disingenuously denied he would ever rig a bumper to
fall off.
Allison had won $120,000 in the 500 and
over $300,000, padded by Winner’s Circle money, during Speedweeks – and Bill
Gardner saw to it that Allison saw little of it. "Bill Gardner spent a lot
of my money on his other activities," Allison wrote. "He was
constantly bargaining with me behind the scenes to get my money…..I’ve never
received all the pay I was due when I drove for Bill Gardner."
Next week was the Richmond 400, and during
practice Allison’s throttle stuck open and he smashed through the first-turn
guardrail. Gary Nelson and his team worked until midnight to rebuild the car and
Allison finished eighth. Darrell Waltrip won the pole but it was Benny Parsons
who led the most laps. Past halfway Joe Ruttman assumed control as Waltrip blew
his engine for the second straight week, but at Lap 244 Ruttman’s J.D. Stacy
Buick crashed. The leaders pitted for fuel and tires, except for Dave Marcis,
who could see that ominous black clouds overhead would open up soon. When they
did, the race was stopped at Lap 250 and never restarted, and Marcis had his
fifth career win, first since 1976, and first as an owner-driver.
Rockingham was rained out on two occasions,
so the next event was at Bristol. There Dale Earnhardt led 255 laps in Bud
Moore’s Ford, but was clipped by the spinning Gary Balough and limped home a
distant second to Waltrip. Waltrip pounced when Earnhardt blew up at Atlanta
after leading 155 laps, but Richard Petty took the lead at Lap 274 with rain all
but on top of the track. On Lap 276 Waltrip dove underneath in Three and edged
Petty to the ensuing yellow by a raindrop. The race was called at Lap 287 and
Waltrip had his second win of the year.
Bobby Allison blew up at Atlanta but
salvaged fourth at the rescheduled Carolina 500 at Rockingham, avoiding a
six-car melee when Gary Balough’s water hose erupted and Darrell Waltrip, Terry
Labonte, Buddy Baker, Ron Bouchard, and pole-sitter Benny Parsons crashed in the
ensuing slick. Joe Ruttman, in the primary J.D. Stacy Buick, led 70 laps but
broke his steering, and following the Carolina 500 Ruttman quit the team, taking
over the Rahmoc #75 car at North Wilkesboro.
Parsons was now rumored to be on thin ice
at Ranier Racing, and at the Rebel 500 he made a determined bid but was stopped
by a cut tire, finishing fourth. Finishing a lap down in fifth was J.D. Stacy’s
new driver, Tim Richmond; Richmond lost the lap after passing a car under yellow
and getting black flagged. Earnhardt finally broke through to victory, edging
Cale by six feet, while Waltrip crashed and Bobby Allison blew up.
Waltrip won again at North Wilkesboro
while Allison and Terry Labonte tangled while racing for second with three to
go; Labonte crashed and Allison spun, and after a two-hour recheck Labonte was
elevated to second at the finish. "The same thing happened at Richmond. I’m
getting fed up with it," Labonte growled. Finishing 15th was rookie Geoff
Bodine, making his debut in Cliff Stewart’s Pontiac. Benny Parsons finished
fourth and was second to Labonte in the points by 69 – that neither driver had
yet won a race during the year was a strange fact, and would become a
controversy as the year went on.
Also in the top ten in points was Harry
Gant, in his second season with Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham. Gant had finished
fifth at Atlanta and had four other top tens so far in 1982, but the most
discussed stat was that he’d finished second three times in 1980 and seven times
in 1981 – and hadn’t won yet. That changed as he lapped the field at
Martinsville in April. "We just had some good luck today," Gant
commented, a fitting summation of his career to that point.
Bobby Allison blew another engine, and the
frustration was apparent. "Usually the cars handled and drove exceptionally
well, but the engines left something to be desired," Allison wrote.
"Nobody could really put their finger on what was making them break."
The answer may have been a developing parts shortage within GM’s racing
pipeline, a shortage that would become a more serious issue in subsequent
seasons.
Tim Richmond broke his oil pump at
Martinsville, and around that time six shop employees of his team were fired by
Stacy – a sign of greater problems to come.
Talladega was the next of NASCAR’s big
four prestige races, and for the Winston 500 Benny Parsons was favored for the
pole. "Our goal," wrote Waddell Wilson in 1992, "was to break 200
MPH qualifying. No one had ever done it before. When we tested at Talladega, we
were able to do that," and Parsons cracked 200 on his qualifying lap.
Waltrip timed second and Bobby Allison timed 13th. The Winston 500 itself was a
rip-roaring affair; Parsons and Waltrip drag-raced the entire first lap and were
still door to door when Ricky Rudd blew past them both on Lap Two. David Simko’s
Lap Five crash slowed things down, then Parsons worked his way into the lead
before Jody Ridley blew his engine. In ensuing stops Bobby Allison slapped into
Bill Elliott and his front bumper was dislodged; in the subsequent stop the
DiGard crew pop-riveted the bumper back into place, added 200-mph tape, and sent
him on his way.
Waltrip and Parsons dueled on and off over
the next several dozen laps and were eventually joined by Dale Earnhardt and
Harry Gant; approaching halfway the fight got white-hot as Allison shot into the
lead and Earnhardt squeezed through lapped traffic to race Allison door to door,
but Harry Gant and Kyle Petty blew them both off; Kyle got radically out of
shape in the tri-oval at one point but saved it without cracking the throttle
and stayed in contention. Earnhardt was finally eliminated when he and Buddy
Baker came upon Jimmy Means and both slapped the wall off Four trying to avoid.
Allison was eliminated from contention when his damaged fender flapped open and
he lost six laps getting that and other problems fixed.
The final yellow of the day flew with
eleven to go. Parsons pitted and got four tires, and after the ensuing restart
rocketed into second. But with three to go he took the lead. "I didn’t
discuss it with him on the radio," Waddell Wilson wrote, "because I
knew we were being monitored by the other crews. I was letting him do what he
wanted to do." Watching him and the team was J.D. Stacy, wanting one of his
two sponsored cars (Parsons or Labonte) to win; his primary car was a lap down
but Tim Richmond raced hard all the way. On the last lap Parsons swerved low on
the backstretch to prevent a slingshot move, but Waltrip, Terry Labonte, and
Kyle Petty drafted past up high; Parsons edged out Kyle for third but Waltrip
edged Labonte for the win. "I never saw Benny so hysterical in my whole
life," Waddell Wilson wrote. "I felt sorry for Benny, because it was a big
letdown, it really bothered him. He realized he should have stayed in
front."
It wound up being the final straw for
Harry Ranier. Though Parsons continued to drive the Ranier Pontiacs, his future
with the team was essentially over now. And the finishes got worse – he crashed
at Nashville, broke his ignition at Dover, and went out at Charlotte with
steering failure. Waltrip cleaned house at Nashville, but at Dover the DiGard
team came out firing. "We were embarrassed, downright embarrassed, last
week at Nashville," Allison said after the Dover race; it obviously showed
as Allison led 487 laps, put the field three laps down, and won with power
steering; "It’s easier for the driver because it requires less effort.
That’s a definite advantage here at Dover."
Allison was now beginning a roll. He led
88 laps at the World 600 but finished a lap down in third while his protégé
Neil Bonnett took what turned out to be his last win with the Wood Brothers.
Finishing second was Bill Elliott, his third top five of the year and his career
best finish to date. Dale Earnhardt led some over 100 laps but blew his engine.
Terry Labonte blew up but maintained a 66-point lead. Waltrip blew and when he
coasted to the garage the Charlotte crowd cheered loudly, which prompted Waltrip
to challenge the fans "to meet me in the Big K parking lot and we’ll duke
it out." We don’t know how many fans took him up on the offer.
J.D. Stacy’s Buick crashed after 44 laps –
ironically, Richmond was involved with the Rahmoc #75 of Stacy’s former driver
Joe Ruttman – and now the bottom began to collapse. Stacy was ordered by court
to pay $4,500 to crew chief Harry Hyde and $69,000 to driver Ferrel Harris.
Bobby Allison’s roll continued at the
inaugural Van Scoy Diamond-sponsored 500-miler at Pocono. Rain washed out
qualifying so the field lined up on points. Allison lined up third behind Terry
Labonte and Waltrip. The first nine laps were run under yellow to dry the track
and then Waltrip burst into the lead, but the one on the move was Richard Petty,
who’d struggled much of 1982 but today was the strongest car on the track. Petty
took the lead early and battled Dale Earnhardt, who spun in Turn One trying to
get underneath Petty. Petty fought all day with Bobby Allison and Benny Parsons
– at times the lead changed twice a lap between Petty and Allison with Parsons
in hot pursuit; the lead changed 44 times total. But Petty ran out of gas while
leading with 45 to go and lost two laps; he got a push from Kyle to the pits.
A few laps later raindrops forced a
yellow, and Allison ran out of gas. Dave Marcis pushed Allison to the pits and
Bobby came out second behind Tim Richmond. Allison took the lead with 30 to go
with Richard Petty towing him in the draft trying to make up his laps. Allison
won the race, Richmond finished second, Parsons third, and Petty seventh.
Marcis’ good Samaritan act with Allison
angered J.D. Stacy’s team manager Robert Harrington. "Why would he do
that?" Harrington asked. "He cost us a win." A week later Lee
Figgins, Executive VP of J.D. Stacy Enterprises, gave Marcis a letter announcing
that Stacy was terminating his sponsorship of Marcis. "Mr. Stacy never told
me that (Tim) Richmond and I were teammates," Marcis said.
Point leader Terry Labonte was also axed
from Stacy’s sponsorship deal, Stacy objecting to Billy Hagan’s use of his
personal business, Stratagraph, on Labonte’s uniform and quarter panels of the
cars. Hagan retorted that Stacy was several weeks late in contractual payments,
and Texas Jeans replaced Stacy on the sides of the #44.
But at Riverside’s Golden State 400 Stacy
broke through to his first win as a car owner since Ontario in 1977. Terry
Labonte led 64 laps but Tim Richmond stormed past with six to go and won by
almost four seconds. "I’m high on this win," Richmond said. "Now
I want to go out and win the next one." He only finished 25th in the next
one, the Michigan 400, while Cale Yarborough beat Darrell Waltrip for the win –
literally; on the last lap Waltrip squeezed ahead entering Three but Cale
pinched him enough that Darrell got loose and lost by three lengths. Darrell
rammed Cale on the cool-down lap and spun into the infield mud. "I reckon
I’ll have to go meet him in the Big K parking lot," Cale chirped. Bobby
Allison finished fourth while Labonte blew up and saw his point lead shrink to
63 over Allison, with Waltrip 119 back in third.
Benny Parsons broke at Riverside and was
fired by Harry Ranier; Buddy Baker quit Hoss Ellington’s team and returned for a
lame-duck rest of the season in the Ranier #28. Benny drove the Ellington car at
Michigan and he and Baker broke within 12 laps of each other.
Allison romped in a spirited Firecracker
400 at Daytona. Rookie Geoff Bodine won his first pole in Cliff Stewart’s
Pontiac but it was Allison holding sway for 112 laps. Five crashes slowed things
down during the day, and the biggest of all erupted at Lap 136; Tim Richmond
tagged Harry Gant as the lead pack diced with Allison off Four. Gant slammed the
crossover gate off Four, climbed to the fence, and landed on four wheels.
"I thought I was going into the grandstands," Gant said. Behind him
Richard Petty slowed but "Geoff Bodine tried to kick our Pontiac for a
field goal." With Terry Labonte out with engine failure Allison took the
point lead.
He lost it at Nashville as Waltrip routed
the field, Labonte finished a distant second, and Allison limped home 19th after
numerous unscheduled stops. Terry led by 29 with Waltrip 136 back in third. The
Summer 500 at Pocono now beckoned and proved to be perhaps the most exciting
event of the year. The day was glorious sunshine and Cale won the pole, but the
racing was a rip-roaring affair with Richard Petty making his strongest effort
of the season. Allison and Waltrip clawed into the lead with Harry Gant, and
they all raced three wide at times with Earnhardt a lap down and Richmond in
contention for the win. At Lap 136 the wildest crash of the year erupted;
Earnhardt tagged Richmond, both punched the first turn boilerplate, it tore
open, and Earnhardt landed on his roof toward the Long Pond Straight with a
broken left kneecap. "I thought he’d gone out of the racetrack,"
Richmond said.
The lengthy cleanup pushed the restart to
Lap 160 and the wildest combat for the lead all year ensued between Waltrip,
Gant, Allison, Ron Bouchard, and Petty. Gant’s engine exploded right in front of
Petty in Turn Three and he, Allison, and Waltrip stayed in a close draft; at one
point they swapped the lead on four separate passes. But Petty began running out
of gas at Lap 194, lost the lead, and had to pit with four to go. Allison took
the lead and Waltrip closed on him, but ran out off One on the final lap. The
win was Bobby’s fifth of the season, and he closed to 14 points of Terry
Labonte.
At Talladega the DiGard team raced a
Pontiac Lemans, but the smaller spoiler led to handling problems; Allison led 23
laps but finished tenth while Waltrip edged Buddy Baker for the win. Bobby got
back in the groove by leading 120 laps at Michigan and sweating out a furious
Richard Petty charge in the final fifteen laps to win by two lengths. Waltrip
then bounced back, winning at Bristol despite a pit stop snafu after Terry
Labonte pitted, cut into Dave Marcis’ path – "He just didn’t blend in like
he was supposed to," Marcis said – and got punted; under the ensuing yellow
Waltrip pitted too early and apparently lost a lap, but the pace car picked up
the wrong leader and Waltrip was permitted to pass it to unlap himself.
The three point leaders then had problems
at the Southern 500 – Labonte and Waltrip blew engines, Allison led 88 laps and
crashed, while Cale Yarborough edged Richard Petty in a tense shootout for the
win. Allison bounced back at Richmond in a romp, and held the point lead by 147
over Waltrip and still-winless Labonte now faltering out of the point chase.
Before Cale’s Darlington win, team owner
M. C. Anderson informed the team that they would run the full schedule in 1983
and cale would go for the championship. He offered $330,000 to Cale to agree to
run for the title and set September 16 as a date to get an answer. But on the
17th, Cale shocked Anderson by turning the offer down. Anderson was an owner who
couldn’t settle for just race wins, and with Cale’s rejection of his offer, he
announced that he would sell the team after 1982 and leave the sport. "It’s
the biggest disappointment in the world for me," Anderson said.
"Following the Atlanta race (in November) I’m quitting." Drag racer
Raymond Beadle purchased the team after the season ended.
The title chase for 1982 continued, and
got tighter with Waltrip’s close win over Kyle Petty at the Delaware 500;
Allison’s 500-mile water leak relegated him to tenth and shaved 46 points from
his gap. Martinsville was rained out and rescheduled for mid-October, and at
North Wilkesboro Allison led 70 laps but blew another engine, and Waltrip romped
to another win, a win that closed him to fifteen points of the lead.
At the National 500 Allison was in total
control while Dale Earnhardt hooked Richard Petty into traffic on Lap 238,
wiping out ten cars; Earnhardt claimed Petty cut him off, but Richard growled
back, "See how far I was by him? Look at that and you can see for yourself
whose fault that was," pointing to Earnhardt’s Wrangler yellow paint on his
quarter panel. The crash involved Waltrip, but with ten to go Allison’s engine
erupted and Harry Gant took the win while Waltrip lost only 22 points.
He then took the point lead by winning at
Martinsville after Allison led 98 laps and blew up yet again. "What do we
do know?" Allison wondered. His engine finally lasted the distance at
Rockingham, but "we had the best car, the best engine, the best everything,
then I spun off pit road (at Lap 451) and lost the race." Waltrip led by
only 37 points, as Allison led the most laps and finished second and with bonus
points for leading most laps tied race-winner Waltrip in awarded points, which
brought a sharp response from Waltrip: "There needs to be a bonus for
winning a race. There is not enough emphasis on winning."
Waltrip’s team, meanwhile, acquired an
investor – California industrialist Warner Hodgedon. Hodgedon had already
purchased into the Richmond, Rockingham, Bristol, North Wilkesboro, and
Nashville tracks and had sponsored Neil Bonnett for the past two seasons with
the Wood Brothers. Now he purchased into Rahmoc Racing and intended to slot Neil
Bonnett in their cars for 1983, then switch Bonnett to a second Junior Johnson
car in 1984. "We had been talking about six months," Junior explained.
"We completed the deal and Warner now owns half of Junior Johnson &
Associates."
The sport’s other magnate, J.D. Stacy,
meanwhile, was seeing the slow disintegration of his racing empire. Ranier
Racing ended its deal with Stacy, Harry Ranier noting Stacy was $145,000 in
arrears on sponsorship payments. Jack Beebe followed off the Stacy plan two
weeks later, and by season’s end Junie Donlavey also quit Stacy’s deal, all owed
big in sponsorship monies by the coal magnate.
The point race got tighter at the Dixie
500 at Atlanta. Cale blew his engine and spun into Dale Earnhardt. Rookie Geoff
Bodine, all but locked up as the season’s top rookie, turned in a winning effort
that was thwarted by a cut tire under green. Allison and Waltrip went to the
front and battled Richard Petty and pole-sitter Morgan Shepherd before Shepherd
broke and Petty crashed in another blown engine with two other cars with fifteen
to go. Allison pinched Waltrip behind Travis Tiller to take the lead, then beat
him out of final stops to win by a half-second over Harry Gant. "Points are
on our mind," Waltrip admitted afterward, intending to go to Riverside to
finish, not to win the race, not with only 22 points separating him and Allison.
But the points showdown at Riverside
disintegrated as Allison cut two tires and finally blew yet another engine with
seven to go; he limped home 16th and Waltrip finished third despite losing third
gear on Lap 45. Tim Richmond dominated the race, but with the collapse of
Stacy’s empire, quit his team and went to the new Raymond Beadle outfit for
1983.
The Riverside finale was overshadowed by a
brutal crash at Lap 94. Terry Labonte smashed the tire barrier shielding the
butt end of the Turn Nine concrete and the Hagan Buick landed in the infield.
Labonte was taken to Riverside Community Hospital and underwent facial surgery
to treat severe lacerations. Terry would recover through the off-season and
return to Daytona in February.
With the close of the 1982 season, Waltrip
was champion by 72 points over Allison and 278 over Labonte. Harry Gant finished
fourth and Richard Petty took fifth in points.
The Allison-Waltrip rivalry had dominated
the 1981 season, and did so again in 1982; the two accounted for 37 of 61 races
in that span and Waltrip had won two titles over Allison by a combined margin of
125 points. The racing during 1982 had been exceptional – the season seeing some
750 lead changes – and Allison’s determination to get that championship ensured
the rivalry would remain hot in 1983.
So ended an exciting season, twenty years
ago.