Ten years ago. It’s hard to believe it’s
\nbeen that long since the season that it seems we all most fondly remember. It
\nwasn’t the best as far as on-track competition. But it had the most dramatic
\noutcome of all the seasons of the 1990s, and the cruel sequel of 1993 made it
\nall the more poignant.<\/p>\n
So on the tenth anniversary of The Season,
\na look back:<\/p>\n
Throughout NASCAR history racers raced to
\nwin races. But for 1992 a noticeable change was in the air. "We’re going to
\nkeep the championship in mind every race this year," Davey Allison said.
\n"You can’t afford to bury yourself in a hole."<\/p>\n
The 1992 season also saw the debut of Gary
\nNelson as Winston Cup’s chief inspector and competition director, and
\ninspections, already becoming more and more complicated, escalated in that
\ndepartment right away. At Daytona all but four teams were cited and several
\nfined for inspection irregularities.<\/p>\n
Ford and GM were gearing up for the season
\nin decidedly different ways. Ford was obsessed with winning the manufacturer
\ntitle, and had seen a marked increase in overall power in 1991 despite a dismal
\nfirst third. Ford was emphasizing depth more and more, and it had a potent
\nlineup of drivers and teams – Yates Racing and Davey Allison (the early
\nfavorites for the title), Bill Elliott and Sterling Marlin with Junior Johnson,
\nAlan Kulwicki’s self-owned powerhouse, Geoff Bodine with Bud Moore, and Morgan
\nShepherd in his first year with the Wood Brothers.<\/p>\n
GM, in contrast, looked like walking
\nwounded – it had killed off Buick’s racing effort and cut Oldsmobile to two
\nteams – Harry Gant and Rick Mast – with the effort to be disbanded after 1992. A
\nnew cylinder head was being force-fed to teams despite continued popularity and
\nefficiency with Pontiac’s Brodix-made heads. The money went to Hendrick
\nMotorsports and to a lesser extent to RCR and Morgan-McClure, with Pontiac
\ngetting substantially less. Pre-season testing showed the GM camp at a
\nperformance disadvantage.<\/p>\n
A newcomer was with the GM squad –
\nWashington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, fielding Hendrick’s former R&D team
\nwith Interstate Batteries sponsorship and Dale Jarrett as driver. Few thought
\nthe coach was really serious about racing.<\/p>\n
Also in the GM camp was Richard Petty
\nbeginning his final season as a driver. His team had shown some flashes of
\nmuscle in 1991 but the years of struggling to win after 1984 had finally
\nconvinced The King to hang up the helmet.<\/p>\n
Speedweeks promptly showed the GM camp was
\nin trouble. The Clash was a thriller of a race won by Geoff Bodine. The 125s, in
\ncontrast, were unremarkable affairs – the first saw several crashes; Alan
\nKulwicki was involved in a big crash early on, and after the 125s fired one of
\nhis crewmen, a former Modified driver named Ray Evernham. Sterling Marlin won
\nthe 500 pole but was taken out by Earnhardt in the first race. "Earnhardt
\nhit me in the quarter panel. I don’t know why he has to drive like that."<\/p>\n
With Ford showing more muscle than GM, the
\n500 became a dull affair, except for a 14-car melee when Elliott and Marlin got
\nside by side and Ernie Irvan passed them both, but didn’t clear Marlin and all
\nthree squeezed together. Jarrett was among those with wrecked cars after the
\n125s and the 500 and Joe Gibbs ripped his driver: "My guys won $36,000 each
\nfor winning the Super Bowl; you cost me that much in one race." Davey
\nAllison cruised to the win; Alan Kulwicki from a provisional finished fourth.<\/p>\n
The Carolina 500 at Rockingham was next,
\nand Bill Elliott slaughtered the field for his first win with Junior Johnson. He
\ndid it again at Richmond, but had to sweat out a stunning race-ending challenge
\nby Kulwicki, who kept falling back due to pit stops – "That was mainly
\nbecause I’m so slow changing rear tires," crew chief Paul Andrews confessed
\n– but made a race of it at the end, coming up inches short at the stripe.<\/p>\n
At the Atlanta 500 Davey Allison led the
\nmost laps, but when Kulwicki short-pitted for fresh tires, everyone else
\n-"Alan set the stage," Larry McReynolds said: "When he pitted, we
\nall had to; we couldn’t stand around and let him gain (on new tires)" –
\nexcept Elliott did the same, and it paid off big when Mike Wallace spun and the
\nyellow trapped everyone but Elliott a lap down. "Boy, they just gave this
\none to us," Elliott confessed afterward.<\/p>\n
Elliott’s win streak hit four at
\nDarlington, but his Daytona crash left him so far down in points that he was not
\nthe point leader, trailing Allison by 48.<\/p>\n
Kulwicki’s engine cooked at Darlington,
\nbut at Bristol he led 282 laps and engaged in a stirring late-race shootout with
\nDale Jarrett, giving Joe Gibbs his first top ten finish as a car owner.
\nKulwicki’s win was his fourth career. Bill Elliott got tagged by Kyle Petty –
\nthis after his teammate Sterling Marlin crashed and stopped in Richard Petty’s
\npath – and later crashed with Ted Musgrave, but despite finishing 20th he gained
\na surprising amount on Davey Allison, penalized a lap after a pit infraction –
\nwhich caused a shouting match between NASCAR officials and Robert Yates and
\nLarry McReynolds that almost got Allison’s car parked – and who crashed after an
\noil fitting snapped; his ribs needed to be X-rayed.<\/p>\n
Allison won at North Wilkesboro, bruised
\nhis ribs again after a crash at Martinsville, and overcame that to win handily
\nat Talladega, and his point lead stood at 67 over Bill Elliott. He was the
\ndefending champion of The Winston, a race now being run on Saturday night (to
\nthe detriment of area short tracks) and which now had three segments ending in a
\nten-lap sprint. He dominated the race’s first segment and worked his way through
\nthe inverted second segment to position in the shootout. Earnhardt jumped the
\nstart of the final segment and held a slim lead, but on the final lap he threw a
\nmonster block on Kyle and got tagged into a spin; Davey roared alongside and
\nbeat Kyle by four feet, but was snagged at the stripe and socked the quad-oval
\nwall. He was knocked unconscious for several minutes. "I knew I’d beaten
\nKyle and I remember getting turned around. Then the lights went out," Davey
\nsaid after he was released from the hospital.<\/p>\n
Despite his injuries Allison ran in the
\nWorld 600 and finished fourth, won the Michigan 400, and after the Firecracker
\n400 at Daytona (where he led three laps but drifted back to finish tenth) his
\nlead was only 46 points over Elliott; Alan Kulwicki won at Pocono in June
\ndespite getting waylaid by James Hylton late in the race, but in the Firecracker
\nhe was eliminated in a seven-car melee and fell to 134 points behind, but
\nsolidly in third in the chase.<\/p>\n
Allison looked like he would lead the
\npoints wire to wire, but it all disappeared at the Summer 500 at Pocono. Davey
\nled 115 of the first 139 laps but fell to mid-pack after a long stop. He was
\nthree-wide underneath traffic off the Tunnel Turn when Darrell Waltrip tried to
\nsqueeze underneath with no room. Waltrip hooked Allison and Davey shot off the
\nground and tumbled violently to the third turn. Elliott took the point lead
\ndespite finishing 13th in the Summer 500 and Kulwicki finished third in the race
\n– a sure win disappeared in fuel mileage from Waltrip and Harry Gant.<\/p>\n
At Allison’s home track Talladega, Darrell
\nWaltrip got an appropriate reception – the worst booing the sport had seen in
\nmaybe decades. Bobby Hillin Jr. became Allison’s relief driver, and after a
\nquick sprinkle of rain after the start Hillin got into the Yates #28, rocketed
\nfrom the back, and led 26 laps in mid-race, ultimately finishing third. Elliott
\nfinished fifth and Allison retook the point lead by one marker. Kulwicki
\nfinished 25th and was 120 points down.<\/p>\n
The next race, at Watkins Glen, Dorsey
\nSchroeder relieved Allison but the tandem managed only 20th, while Elliott
\nfinished 14th and Kulwicki seventh, so Elliott retook the point lead by 17 over
\nAllison while Kulwicki was now within 94 of the lead. The race winner at The
\nGlen was Kyle Petty – several weeks earlier the SABCO Pontiac team hit on an
\naero rake job on the nose, widening it enough that the car’s balance improved by
\na startling measure, and with the win Kyle began to creep into the point race.<\/p>\n
Allison’s painful season got still worse
\nat Michigan, as his brother Clifford was killed in a head-on crash during Grand
\nNational practice. Michigan had been the last major track to phase in radial
\ntires, and the result was a substantial increase in crashes – Michael Waltrip
\nbroke his nose in June. In the Yankee 400 Allison put aside his grief enough to
\nfinish fifth while Harry Gant conserved fuel enough to steal what would be his
\nfinal win; that he won on fuel mileage caused other drivers to growl, "Yep,
\nthe strokers won again (Marlin)" and "It burns me up…the fans
\ndeserve to see a good race (Petty)."<\/p>\n
Elliott led the most laps at Michigan and
\nfinished third; he held the point lead by 37, and as the season wore on it
\nappeared Elliott was now assured of the title. At the Delaware 500 Elliott led
\n261 laps and escaped numerous crashes – in one Dick Trickle was blasted into
\ntraffic: "(Someone) knocked the hell out of me. I don’t know who it was but
\nhe drove a black car with a number 3 on it," while in another Rusty Wallace
\nfoolishly tried a three-wide move and wiped out himself, Brett Bodine, Ernie
\nIrvan, and the aforementioned number 3: "I don’t know what Rusty was
\nthinking," Brett said, "He must have fallen out of a tree or
\nsomething." Alan Kulwicki won the pole and led one lap, but at Lap 93 he
\nwas sent head-on into the wall by Chad Little. "He just ran into me.
\nRealistically this probably finishes us off in the championship deal." On
\nElliott’s final pit stop Junior Johnson overruled Tim Brewer and mandated a
\nfour-tire change, while Ricky Rudd got gas only. Elliott made up a seven-second
\ngap but ran out of laps. "(Elliott’s guys) gave that one away,"
\nthird-place Kyle Petty said.<\/p>\n
Elliott now led Allison by 158 points
\nwhile Kulwicki was in fourth place, 278 points down. But at Martinsville Elliott
\nlasted only 158 laps and blew up. Alan Kulwicki led three laps and pounded out a
\nfifth place finish. Kyle Petty led 135 laps from the pole, ran out of gas, lost
\na lap in a scuffle with Geoff Bodine, got swept into a spin by Davey Allison and
\nRusty Wallace, and was two laps down as late as Lap 400, but with an epidemic of
\ncrashes Kyle erased the gap and salvaged fourth place. Geoff Bodine won the race
\nwhen it was over, while Kulwicki was now 191 points out.<\/p>\n
At North Wilkesboro Kulwicki won the pole
\nand led the first 34 laps, but drifted to 12th while Bodine routed everyone in a
\ncaution-free event. Kyle took third, Davey 11th, and Elliott squandered more
\npoints by finishing 26th. His freefall accelerated at Charlotte when he broke a
\nsway bar late and finished 30th; he now led Davey Allison by only 39 points
\nwhile Mark Martin won the race over Alan Kulwicki and Kyle Petty, and all three
\nwere now within 114 points of the lead. But Allison looked finished, getting
\nlapped four times and finishing only 19th at Charlotte. At Rockingham
\ncommunications broke down and the team got into a dispute with Allison
\nafterward. Kyle Petty, meanwhile, led all but eight laps – this despite getting
\nshoved onto the first turn apron after the first yellow by Earnhardt – en route
\nto an absurdly easy win, while Elliott finished fourth. He now led Kulwicki by
\n85 points. "If we can do this two more times we’ll be spraying champagne
\nand catching roses," Tim Brewer said.<\/p>\n
But it all turned upside down at Phoenix.
\nRusty Wallace won the pole and completely dominated before the battery suddenly
\ndied. Elliott fought engine problems almost start to finish, while Davey Allison
\ncaught a fortunate late yellow: "That caution was such a big break it put
\nus in shock," Allison said. He won the race while Kulwicki finished fourth.
\nDavey now led the points by 30 over Kulwicki, and all he needed to do was finish
\nin the top five and the title was his. He was one of six drivers within less
\nthan 100 points of the lead with one race to go.<\/p>\n
The point race was one half of the magic
\nentering the Dixie 500 at Atlanta. Richard Petty had spent 1992 on the Fan
\nAppreciation Tour, and it was a huge success as far as his interaction with
\nfans. The final race of his driving career was the other half of the
\nunprecedented hype wrapping up the 1992 season. Rick Mast won the pole in
\nOldsmobile’s final start as a Winston Cup player, as the Atlanta track cracked
\n180 for the first time in NASCAR competition. Allison timed 17th, Elliott 11th,
\nKulwicki 14th, Petty 20th, Harry Gant 29th, and Mark Martin fourth.<\/p>\n
With a squad of Apache gun ships flying in
\nformation over the field on its parade laps, the energy of the day exploded on
\nthe start. Brett Bodine led the opening lap, then in Turn One of Lap Two
\nEarnhardt punted Bodine into Rick Mast; Bodine and Mast hit the wall, then
\nBodine slid into Hut Stricklin’s path on the apron. Stricklin T-boned through
\nBodine’s Ford full-throttle; it was pure luck that Bodine wasn’t hit closer to
\nthe driver area, as the impact would have been fatal.<\/p>\n
The point contenders did what they had to
\ndo – Elliott and Kulwicki raced for the win, at times going door to door for the
\nlead for multiple laps, while Davey Allison stayed in the top five, a strategy
\nproving more difficult than expected. Another multi-car melee erupted at Lap 94
\nwhen Ken Schrader and Dick Trickle slammed the inside wall at the stripe;
\nRichard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Wally Dallenbach Jr. and Rich Bickle slammed
\ntogether and Petty’s Pontiac erupted in flame. "I think all them
\n(firefighter) cats wanted an autograph because none of them brought a fire
\nextinguisher," Petty cracked afterward.<\/p>\n
The next heart-stopper of the day came at
\nLap 251. Ernie Irvan, running second, spun to the fourth turn apron, then shot
\ninto Davey Allison hard, enough that Irvan was knocked unconscious. "It
\njust wasn’t meant to happen this year," Davey said afterward; he was more
\nconcerned with Ernie, who awoke after about an hour.<\/p>\n
Kulwicki and Paul Andrews kept an obsessive
\ncount over number of laps led, and clocked it down to where they knew when the
\npit for the final time. Kulwicki pitted with 24 to go after leading 103
\nlaps. Bill Elliott led four laps after Alan pitted, then pitted himself.
\nTerry Labonte led a lap before pitting, and that cinched the five bonus points
\nfor most laps led for Kulwicki. He finished eight seconds behind Elliott in the
\nrace, but he kept his ten point lead over Elliott for the championship.<\/p>\n
"The ultimate satisfaction is if you
\ncan win it on your own," Kulwicki said. Paul Andrews, Ron Viccaro, and the
\nteam had maintained that same focus, and it had paid off in the top prize in
\nstock car racing.<\/p>\n
But the epilogue for all three title
\ncontenders would not be a good one. Alan would die in a plane crash in April of
\n1993. Davey Allison went through a tumultuous 1993 season and would himself die
\nin a helicopter crash. The Junior Johnson team was torn asunder when crew chief
\nTim Brewer was fired by Junior Johnson, reportedly after siding with Flossie
\nJohnson in a bitter divorce from Junior; Elliott failed to win in 1993 and won
\njust one more race with Junior, the 1994 Southern 500. He would go through six
\nwinless seasons and almost a seventh before he scored with the crewman Alan
\nKulwicki had fired before the ’92 Daytona 500 – Ray Evernham.<\/p>\n
But on one glorious day, the 1992 season
\ncame together into the sport’s greatest day – ten years ago this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten years ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since the season that it seems we all most fondly remember. It wasn’t the best as far as on-track competition. But it had the most dramatic outcome of all the seasons of the 1990s, and the cruel sequel of 1993 made it all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}