Racing’s Royal Family – Part 7

A fundamental change in the sport occurred
at the end of 1991, and it was more than just Gary Nelson’s hiring by NASCAR as
its competition director. There was also General Motors’ approach to the sport.
The individual divisions ran their own programs, and through this Pontiac worked
with the Brodix company and in 1988 fielded cylinder heads with 25 more HP than
others and which quickly dominated the NASCAR engine market. But that came to an
end in the cylinder head war of 1991 and the subsequent merger of GM’s racing
divisions under the leadership of the GM Motorsports Technology Group, basically
a Chevrolet division overseeing all of GM’s racing. Chevy forced on its teams a
new 18-degree Bowtie head that performed poorly for much of 1992 but which was
now mandatory. GM also eliminated Buick and cut Oldsmobile to two teams before
disbanding their effort for 1993.

The results were quite graphic by November
1992 – Ford won the manufacturer title for the first time since 1969, GM lost
the manufacturer title for the first time since Dodge won in 1975, and some
two-thirds of a typical Winston Cup starting field now ran Fords, a huge
sea-change not seen in the sport since the early 1970s when GM marques began to
dominate starting fields.

That 1993 was going to be radically
different from 1992 became clear with January testing. Humiliated by Ford, GM
went to work with a vengeance not seen in many years. Engines were improved, air dams
improved (most notably on the GM10-body Pontiacs, which had run for five seasons
with a "gapped" air dam), and January testing showed GM’s now-truncated
squadron was much stronger than the previous season.

Leading the speed chart was Kyle Petty.
Preseason picks had him as a favorite for the Daytona 500 and the championship.
It was a huge change for Kyle, as he’d usually had weak momentum at the end of a
season and had to spend the first part of a subsequent season getting it back.

Kyle also had a teammate, rookie Kenny
Wallace. The change at SABCO to a multi-car concept caused some concern, as
multicar teams had been top heavy and less competitive than single car outfits
in the past. The immediate harbinger of the 1993 season, however, was not the
change to two cars, but a highway crash during January testing that injured four
members of the #42 team – including the gasman.

Despite that, Speedweeks rolled into view,
and Kyle bagged the Daytona 500 pole. As an extra incentive, Felix Sabates
offered a $1 million bonus and a new luxury car if he won the 500.

For Petty Enterprises, the building
process continued. New driver Rick Wilson timed 27th on pole day, but in the
125-mile qualifier he clawed his way to finish eighth while Kyle took third.
Chevrolets won both Twins as the 500 field contained only 13 Chevys and five
Pontiacs to 23 Fords; this disparity in performance caused controversy –
"We’ve been dealt a bad hand by the rule changes," charged Geoff
Bodine. "The GM cars narrowed their noses, we had to widen ours out."

Despite all that, the 500 proved to be one
for the ages. Rookie sensation Jeff Gordon bumped Kyle on the backstretch and
Kyle fell to 14th, but he rocketed into the lead in a burst of power on Lap 18
and the fight was on. The lead changed hands 25 times by Lap 100 and by Lap 120
Kyle had a half-second lead on Earnhardt. But during stops 20 laps earlier the
new #42 gasman fell over the wall and damaged a gas can; as a result, Kyle had
to pit at Lap 125 for gas and tires, and Alan Kulwicki’s gasman took over the
duty, Kulwicki out of contention with a dead cylinder.

Rick Wilson, meanwhile, led a lap – the
first lap the STP Pontiac had led in the Daytona 500 since 1987 – but got behind
on a bad first pit stop. He was running about 18th when he clipped Bobby
Hamilton in clearing him and both pasted the wall on the backstretch of Lap 137.

Kyle was still on the lead lap, but on a
crowded restart after Lap 150 Earnhardt hooked Al Unser, Jr. and he shot into
Bobby Hillin. Hillin, despite losing his brakes, tried to swing the car back
onto the track, lost control again, and shot into a surprised Kyle’s path.
Livid, Kyle growled at the perennial back marker, and the two nearly came to
blows on pitroad.

Kyle was surprisingly criticized for
getting in Hillin’s face, and got a moral vindication two months later at
Bristol when Hillin put Dale Jarrett into the wall and Jarrett threw his helmet
at Hillin’s car on the track.

But Daytona was a bad beginning. It got
worse at Rockingham the next race – Kyle’s clutch gave out early on and he fell
59 laps down – he made up three laps but could only finish 32nd. Kyle’s
quasi-teammate Rick Wilson had a better day – he finished 17th; he was involved
in a scrape in Turn Four when Geoff Bodine tagged Ted Musgrave, Dale Jarrett
slowed and Wilson drop-kicked him.

From then on it was frustration for Kyle.
He led 180 laps at Richmond but faded to fifth. After back to back sevenths,
Kyle entered Bristol – but it was a nightmare for the sport when Alan Kulwicki
was killed in a plane crash on his way to Knoxville, TN for an autograph
session.

Rusty Wallace dominated the race at Kyle
rallied to third. Rusty then waved a #7 flag and did a clockwise victory lap in
Alan’s memory – Kyle would make Alan a major subject of his speech at the
season-ending banquet.

The STP Pontiac, meanwhile, was
struggling, but at Talladega Wilson timed fourth. In the Winston 500 he ran with
the leaders but got shuffled, lost the draft during pit stops, and fell a lap
down. He did stay with the leaders and tried hard to get his lap back, but it
would not come out. Ultimately Wilson finished 16th, not a good finish but the
run itself was encouraging.

It also marked something of a turnaround
for Petty Enterprises. Wilson hammered out an eighth place at Sears Point, a
race where Kyle finished fifth after escaping a three-car melee on the final
lap. Wilson then timed ninth for the World 600 and recovered from a Darrell
Waltrip-instigated spin to move into the top ten; ultimately he fell out with
engine failure; Kyle qualified a poor 35th and had worked into the top fifteen
when he cut a tire.

The trend continued at Dover. Wilson timed
in the top ten and ultimately finished 11th, while Kyle was eliminated in one of
many crashes that day. The Pettys’ best day of the year so far then came at
Pocono – Kyle overhauled the field, led 148 laps, and won handily, while Wilson
ran steady and finished 12th. After another DNF at Michigan Wilson timed ninth,
ran with the leaders all day, and finished 11th at the Firecracker 400.

But following the inaugural New Hampshire
300, Davey Allison was killed in a helicopter crash at Talladega. At Pocono the
next weekend, Kyle had a #28 flag in his car. He rallied from midfield to lead,
and battled Dale Earnhardt and Dale Jarrett hard in midrace. But during green
flag stops the clutch broke on Kyle’s Pontiac, and he gave the #28 flag to Rusty
Wallace. It was Earnhardt who won the race, and the #28 flag Kyle had intended
to fly was instead flown by Earnhardt in a ceremonial clockwise victory lap –
one of NASCAR’s most poignant moments.

Talladega was the next stop, and the
tragedy of two weeks earlier was followed by an even crueler sequel – Stanley
Smith was badly injured in a huge melee where Jimmy Horton tumbled out of the
track, and Neil Bonnett, returning to the track for the first time since 1990,
tumbled and tore open a five-foot hole in the tri-oval catchfence. Amid the
chaos Rick Wilson ran with the leaders but was hit by a spinning Michael
Waltrip. Kyle rallied from mid pack, led 40 laps, and on the final lap passed
Earnhardt for the lead, but was swamped by two lines of cars and fell to fourth
as Earnhardt edged Ernie Irvan in a photo finish.

Then came Watkins Glen. Mark Martin
completely dominated, but cut a tire and fell to last. He nonetheless rallied
forward as Kyle took over and looked ready to snatch the win. But with less than
ten to go Kyle spun and was collected by Dale Earnhardt; thus ended yet another
victory bid. Rick Wilson rallied into the top ten, spun once, worked back to the
top ten, but fell out with transmission trouble.

Now 1993’s momentum was lost. Wilson timed
sixth at Bristol and was running fifth when he was punted into the first turn
wall by rookie Jeff Gordon. Kyle led 30 laps but crashed later that night.
Ultimately Kyle would garner enough top tens to finish fifth in 1993 points.

By Dover, Wilson’s says with the STP team
were numbered. "In terms of (team chemistry) things were great,"
Richard wrote, "but we simply weren’t going anywhere…..it wasn’t (Rick
Wilson’s) fault totally, although the driver always becomes the team’s first
scapegoat. Still, we needed to get the program moving." Having said all
that, though, one should remember that Wilson helped get the team in the right
direction from where it had been – he took a team that could hardly run in the
top twenty and helped make consistent top-fifteen finishers out of it.

So the Petty team began looking for a new
driver. They chose outgoing Roush driver Wally Dallenbach Jr., whose dad Wally
Sr. won several races in Indy cars for STP in the 1970s. "We thought with
some extensive testing, he would fit into our program."

But three curves were then thrown to the
team. In 1990 NASCAR began limiting teams to seven test sessions during the
March to November period of the season, with the November to March section open
season for testing. For 1994, however, NASCAR extended the seven-test limit to
cover the entire season, with testing banned entirely November-December. It
would take awhile for the sport to realize what a gigantic mistake the rule
would turn out to be, but it had immediate effects on the Petty team.

The second curve was a massive cutback of
engineering help to Pontiac by General Motors. John Erickson, Pontiac’s chief
NASCAR engineer, was fired. Rusty Wallace and Roger Penske, winners of ten races
in 1993, had seen the cutbacks coming and bolted to Ford in a very public and
rather messy divorce from GM – a divorce replicated with Ricky Rudd, who went to
Ford for his own Alan Kulwicki-inspired independent team; both Rudd and Wallace
made a point of belittling GM’s favoritist and tightwad approach during the 1994
Winston Cup Preview, which led to a tense exchange of press releases.

The third curve was the return of Hoosier
Tire. Geoff Bodine, now owner of Alan Kulwicki’s old team, signed with Hoosier
and it helped get him Exide Batteries sponsorship. Rookies Ward and Jeff Burton
and Joe Nemechek, and veteran Greg Sacks with car owner D.K. Ulrich also had
Hooisers. Darrell Waltrip began the year with Hoosiers but surprisingly switched
back to Goodyear. Harry Gant and Rick Mast, driving cars owned by Richard and
Leo Jackson, switched around during the year. The new tire war took a toll on
teams but ultimately proved beneficial to the competition.

All of this combined for a disastrous year
for the #43 team. Dallenbach failed to qualify for three of the first eight
races – at Atlanta he offered to quit the team until Kyle drove the car in
practice and said it was impossible to drive. Things seemed to turn around in
the Winston 500 at Talladega – Dallenbach timed 35th but stormed through the
field into fifth and was still in contention when Jimmy Spencer hooked Terry
Labonte and a huge crash ensued. Wally then hammered home a solid fourth at
Sears Point.

For Charlotte NASCAR decreed the Pontiacs
could lengthen their noses and rear decks for added down force. It didn’t help
much as none of the Pontiacs could keep up. Pontiac team owners then got
together and agreed to start sharing information with each other to help develop
the car and improve themselves better.

After a last-lap crash at Pocono in June
three straight DNQs ensued for Dallenbach – failing to qualify for the
Firecracker 400 on the tenth anniversary of Richard’s 200th win was especially
bitter – and only a strong eighth place finish at Talladega in July salved the
team’s wounded pride and effort.

The bottom finally fell out in an ugly
spat between Dallenbach and crew chief Robbie Loomis immediately after the
Brickyard 400. "The radios quit working," Richard explained.
"Robbie was trying to make some changes to try to get the radio to work.
They didn’t communicate in doing that. Then they both blowed up and Robbie just
blowed up too much."

Dallenbach agreed to drive at Watkins Glen
and then he was gone from the team. At the Glen he fought hard for a top five
finish but spun late after a scuffle with Rusty Wallace.

For the return trip to Michigan Petty
decided to take a chance on a NASCAR rookie, John Andretti. John had driven
Billy Hagan’s unsponsored Chevy and had acquitted himself reasonably well. The
team folded after Watkins Glen and John found himself in the STP Pontiac. He
promptly timed second at Michigan, and suddenly the team’s confidence began to
rise. After two more races John began to contend for the top ten with a strong
effort at Richmond. A competitive effort at Martinsville was followed by a very
strong effort at Charlotte – John led 30 laps. He survived a rather vicious
crash at Phoenix where a portion of the third turn wall was blown out, then led
ten laps at Atlanta in the season finale.

Unfortunately John decided to take his
chances with a new team, Michael Kranefuss-Carl Haas Racing and crew chief Tim
Brewer. The separation left some scars with the Petty Enterprises team that
would take time to heal.

For Kyle Petty, 1994 was no less
forgettable. He was swept into a major crash at Daytona; after coming to a stop
he was blindsided by Bobby Hillin after he’d tried to plow full-throttle through
the wreck scene. "That blind boy came into the scene," Kyle said
afterward. It began a bad season – two top fives in the first half of the year
and only eight laps led for the total season. Felix Sabates now began
interfering more and more with the team – he unceremoniously axed engine builder
John Wilson and crew chief Robin Pemberton; he’d already closed down the pit
crew exercise program that had worked so well in 1992; his tirades to the team
became more raucous and less productive. He then surprisingly axed sponsor Mello
Yello for Coors Light, and new crew chief Barry Dodson and engine builder Keith
Simmons had their work cut out for them.

He also injured Pontiac’s program. General
Motors had a new W-body coming out, with Chevrolet’s new Monte Carlo being the
first version. Pontiac submitted blueprints to SABCO around October of 1994 for
a prototype of its W-body Grand Prix to be built for 1995 test sessions.
Sabates, however, sat on the blueprints for seven months, and the time lost cost
Pontiac greatly once a prototype finally was built, by Bahari Racing.

Sabates also dumped his second team, which
Bobby Hamilton had driven for during the 1994 season. Petty Enterprises picked
up Hamilton, who Robbie Loomis saw as having the same temperament as Richard
Petty himself. It proved an inspired choice. Hamilton hammered out a ninth at
Richmond, a ninth at a very crash-torn Rebel 400 at Darlington, and a
spectacular fourth at Bristol.

After ninth at Charlotte the team hit a
surprising slump – at Pocono Bobby timed third and led early, fell back, and
then clawed back into the top five, but whacked the Tunnel Turn wall late and
finished 15th. At the Brickyard Bobby timed second but the car was skittish in
traffic and he finished 11th. He got back into the top ten at Michigan then was
penalized five laps after two scuffles with Brett Bodine at Bristol, which led
to a lengthy argument involving Richard Petty and a NASCAR official; Bobby later
was eliminated in a seven-car melee.

Also shaking things up was Kyle. After a
respectable 12th at Daytona Kyle struggled, then ran strong at Darlington before
spinning out of eighth and getting his nose wiped – clean off – by Bill Elliott.
Kyle’s comment was immortal: "They ought to fill this place up with water
to the outside retaining wall, dump bass in it and have pro bass tournaments and
they can watch them fish all day long. But I’ll tell you this – as bad as this
place is, you could stock this place with a million fish and nobody’d catch
one."

Kyle timed third at Bristol and stormed
into the lead for some 40 laps. He fell back but clawed forward to seventh when
John Andretti spun and Kyle was caught up in the wreck. "This place ain’t
good enough for bass, they ought to put carp in this place."

But at North Wilkesboro Kyle worked his
way to third but began falling ill. Exhaustion took over and Kyle begged for a
relief driver. However, none was available. Kyle kept pushing onward and getting
weaker, but finally with about fifty to go he gave out and parked it, pale as
death and totally exhausted.

He got a respite and hammered home a top
ten at Martinsville, but it was at Dover that everything changed. He timed a
dismal 37th and escaped a huge crash on the second lap. From 20th he then began
annihilating the field, leading 275 laps and holding off a strong last-lap
effort by Bobby Labonte, Ted Musgrave, and a rejuvenated Hut Stricklin. Worn out
from 500 miles at Dover, Kyle had to sit down and be draped with wet towels for
victory interviews. For crew chief Barry Dodson, the win was a gift from God –
Barry had lost his children Tia and Trey in a highway accident the previous
winter, and the day before the Mason-Dixon 500 he said a silent prayer for a
good day.

Kyle then hammered home a stellar seventh
at the Firecracker 400 – but the news wasn’t the run. Kyle’s health had become
an issue after his exhaustion at North Wilkesboro and Dover, but the big rumor
about it actually began at Daytona – the claim from an anonymous ARCA crew chief
that Kyle had AIDS soon mutated into a full-blown rumor, and on a radio talk
show a nurse phoned Kyle and asked about his health. Kyle addressed the AIDS
rumor head on and made clear it was untrue. He struggled the next two races and
then hammered home a stellar sixth after starting 40th at Talladega. A few weeks
later Kyle was back at Talladega putting the much-delayed W-body Pontiac through
the testing motions.

After a hard-earned fifth at Richmond in
September, Bobby Hamilton timed 32nd at Dover. He then went to work, and by
halfway he’d taken the lead and held it for 80 laps. He ultimately finished
second and now the sport took strong notice of a potential winner. Hamilton and
Kyle both had a strong day at Martinsville and Hamilton hammered home fourth.
Neither had much of a day at North Wilkesboro as Hamilton led 37 laps but
surprisingly faltered, and Kyle was tabbed five straight times for speeding on
pit road.

1995 ended on a down note for the two
Pettys, but with the much-delayed W-body Grand Prix coming for 1996 it seemed
there was hope for improvement. 1996 was already destined to be a big year for
Petty Enterprises – STP was celebrating its 25th season with the team and the
Petty shop was entering NASCAR’s new Craftsman Truck Series, signing a deal with
Dodge to run a #43 Ram sponsored by Cummins and Dodge Motorsports, with Rich
Bickle as the driver. The new Dodge Truck team also brought Maurice Petty out of
retirement, as he and his sons Mark, Tim, and Ritchie headed up the team’s
engine shop.

The Truck program struggled the first few
races, then Bickle began winning poles and leading laps on the short tracks that
predominated on the schedule – he led half the race in a stirring shootout with
Ron Hornaday and Mike Skinner at Tucson Raceway Park in May; he clawed into the
shootout for the win late at Mesa Marin in October but was collected by Jack
Sprague off Two. In all, 1996 was a sign of things to come for Petty
Enterprises’ Truck team.

The Daytona 500 wasn’t too kind to the PE
Winston Cup effort or to SABCO, though – Kyle ran sixth in the second half but
fell out of the draft and finished a lap down in 18th, while Hamilton got
lapped, was swept into a late crash, and finished 20th. Then at Rockingham
Hamilton timed well and in the second half stormed into contention. He was
leading with some 60 to go when Jimmy Spencer broke and the yellow flew.

Then came the shootout with Earnhardt. The
lead changed three times between them Laps 340-2. In Turn Four Earnhardt tagged
Hamilton out of the lead and Bobby skated up, slapped the wall, and fell to
sixth. The chassis was damaged and the car finally spun out and crashed.
Earnhardt took the win and Bobby was left wondering what went wrong. His
frustrated tirade to Bill Weber of ESPN became a classic – "It wasn’t
close. I mean, he (Earnhardt) took the air off of me, then he hit me. It wasn’t
close at all. I haven’t won seven championships, I haven’t won my first race, I
haven’t won 84 or 85 races whatever he’s won, but I;m smart enough to know you
don’t do that to start a season, because there’s too many races left."

Hamilton led 129 laps at Richmond the next
week but the car gave out on long runs, and late in the going he found himself
behind John Andretti. He tagged Andretti who skated up half a groove and
ultimately Bobby finished seventh. Following the race Andretti rapped the back
of Hamilton’s Pontiac on the backstretch, and Richard went to his former driver
in his hauler: "I’ll whip your ass if you beat up my racecars. You want to
beat up my driver, fine, but don’t you take it out on my racecars."

For his part Hamilton said, "I think
he wanted to talk about the weather but he went to the garage, I don’t know what
his hurry was."

Both Andretti and Hamilton had strong runs
in the Winston 500 at Talladega, and both hammed it up on TBS about the weather
during a rain delay before the World 600. For Hamilton, though, the season was
getting more frustrating. The wins he now expected and could taste were not
coming, and the car was difficult to balance, primarily on the nose. Not helping
matters at all was GM’s indifferent attitude toward the Pontiacs – GM’s
engineers worked with Chevy teams almost exclusively; this led to a spat between
Dale Inman and GM engineer Terry Laise where Inman growled, "I’m sick of
you lying to me!"

After a hard-earned 11th at Talladega and
5th at Pocono – there Hamilton fell to 25th and passed 20 cars over the final
100 laps of one of Pocono’s most exciting races in many years – Bobby did
something that caught the sport off guard – he won the pole at Michigan; this
with a new Pontiac nosepiece approved by NASCAR (actually a nosepiece Pontiac
had submitted for approval for the start of the season but disallowed). This put
NASCAR in something of a bind, for its Busch-sponsored pole award could not be
given to Petty Enterprises; none of PE’s machines carried beer sponsor logos. As
a result, Hamilton was ineligible for the Busch Clash.

None of that mattered during an ensuing
test at Indianapolis. There Hamilton hammered the third turn wall at full speed.
"Jesus Christ, Murph, he’s dead," a crewman told fellow crewman Doug
Murph. Hamilton survived, intact but quite sore, and it affected his driving the
next couple of races.

At Pocono Jimmy Spencer crashed and
Hamilton was drop-kicked by Andretti, which lead a livid Hamilton to question
John’s eyesight. Bobby then escaped a huge melee at Talladega that seriously
injured Earnhardt, crashed twice during a miserable Brickyard 400 weekend, and
then got even with Andretti at Watkins Glen. Their feud led to a closed-door
meeting with NASCAR brass at Michigan.

As the season wound down Richard openly
wondered, "Why won’t he go to the front?" – much to the displeasure of
Bobby’s wife Debbie. Richard himself was involved in more than racing – he was
running for North Carolina secretary of state, and doing well. However a highway
scuffle with a road hog caused controversy, and Richard ultimately lost the
election.

At Martinsville a few days after the
highway incident, Hamilton won the pole and led 334 laps – he lost the lead when
an air gun jammed on the day’s only green-flag stop, and he worked his way
forward and was locked behind Andretti for third. On the final lap Bobby tagged
John hard and stole third at the stripe. When Debbie asked Richard if it changed
his view of Hamilton’s driving, Richard curtly replied, "Nope." He
nonetheless congratulated Bobby for doing well.

The happy ending finally came at Phoenix.
No matter what, Hamilton was going to take the win, and the place erupted when
he did. It was a special vindication for Hamilton, who’d put up with five years
of doubts about his ability to win. It was 13 years too long between wins for
Petty Enterprises and 12 too long for Richard.

But for Kyle, the next win would have to
wait. 1996 was a poor season, and it effectively ended when Kyle took the lead
at the Brickyard, then blew a tire, hammered the wall off Four, and spun into
Sterling Marlin’s path. Kyle missed the next race and it wasn’t until Dover that
he began to come back forward. There he ran in the top ten all day and finished
eight, but got into a post-race yelling match with Michael Waltrip, got into it
with a NASCAR official, and was fined for it – a fitting ending to a
fight-marred five-hour marathon where the lead officially changed hands 30
times.

Kyle then decided to end his career with
SABCO, and he went to work to form a team. With multicar teams now becoming the
sport’s rage – the result of NASCAR’s testing restrictions – it was a no-brainer
that Kyle’s new outfit, sponsored by Hot Wheels, would be allied to the #43 team
and have Pontiac backing.

TO BE CONTINUED