by Joe Garner
Mark Martin's Lap Lapse at Bristol 1994
If NASCAR drivers were in a race for “Most Embarrassing Moment,” Mark Martin's unbelievable mental lapse in the 1994 Busch Series race at Bristol would finish five laps ahead of the pack.
Except for that improbable event, it had been a terrific season for Martin. That year, he was barking up Dale Earnhardt's tailpipe for the Cup championship and would eventually finish second to the Intimidator. He started thirty-one Cup races and won a pair. He started fifteen Busch Series races and won three. After the season Martin would bank over $1.6 million in combined winnings.
For reasons only Martin himself can explain, he steered the Winn-Dixie Ford out of Turn 4, intending to motor into Victory Lane. The problem was the race wasn't over. Martin had pulled off the track a lap short.
Former national go-kart champion David Green was having a pretty great year as well. Driving in the Busch Series for his friend and mentor Bobby Labonte, Green finished in the top five ten times, won the BGN championship, and pulled in a career-high $218,664 in prize money. After finishing second to Jeff Gordon in the 1991 Rookie of the Year competition, Green was proving he was a big-league pilot to be reckoned with.
Also to be reckoned with was the Bristol International Raceway track. At just over a half-mile long, it's one of NASCAR's shortest tracks, and the 36-degree-banked turns are the circuit's steepest. Those factors make the races terrific to watch for the fans and a serious challenge for the racers on the concrete. David Green has said that driving there is like “flying a fighter jet in a gymnasium,” and in fact, Bristol bills itself as the “World's Fastest Half-Mile.”
But the racers were nowhere near that tempo on April 9, 1994; they were in fact coasting under a yellow caution flag on Lap 249 of 250. Mark Martin was leading, a certain winner with nothing more complicated to do than follow the pace car around the track and collect $22,000.
For reasons only Martin himself can explain, he steered the Winn-Dixie Ford out of Turn 4, intending to motor into Victory Lane. The problem was the race wasn't over. Martin had pulled off the track a lap short.
David Green cruised across the finish line in his Slim Jim Chevy, scoring his only win of 1994. Martin ended up finishing eleventh, done in by a mental mistake that cost him a win and over $18,000 in prize money.
Jeremy Mayfield Ends His Four-Year Winless Streak
In 2004, hoping to amp up the excitement of their premier series, NASCAR instituted a new method to determine the Cup winner. In the new Chase for the Championship only the top ten points leaders after the first twenty-six races are eligible to compete for the Cup. Each qualifier enters the ten-race Chase separated by just five points per position; the first-place driver starts with 5,050 points, the second-place driver with 5,045 points, and so on down the line. Being separated by so few points gives every top ten driver a good shot at the title.
The new plan proved to be an effective one. On September 12, 2004, when the last race of the regular season was run at Richmond, seven of the ten Chase for the Championship spots were filled. Eight drivers had a mathematical shot at the three remaining slots, guaranteeing that the competition would be fierce and the fans would witness a great race.
Among the eight hopefuls was thirty-five-year-old Jeremy Mayfield. The 1993 ARCA Rookie of the Year was in fourteenth place and needed an amazing race, a top finish, and a bunch of luck (something he'd been very short on) to make the Chase. The fact that Jeremy hadn't visited Victory Lane in over four years—143 races—made him the darkest of dark horses.
With so much at stake, some of the drivers really pushed it to the limit. One of those was Casey Mears. Jimmie Johnson, the series points leader, said Mears did something on the track to infuriate Jimmy Spencer, and Spencer was determined to make him pay. “[Spencer] was chasing [Mears] from the bottom of the racetrack all the way up to the marbles trying to wreck him. …[It was] desperate guys doing desperate things.” On Lap 180, Spencer finally tagged Mears and the result was a massive ten-car pileup that took Johnson and several others out of the race.
Brushing his bad luck and the desperate drivers aside, Jeremy Mayfield led for 151 laps, driving hard, staying away from trouble, and, most importantly, stopping for fuel on the right schedule. With eight laps to go Kurt Busch was leading the race, but his team had miscalculated the fuel load. He ran out of gas and handed the lead to a shocked Mayfield.
Jeremy Mayfield (19) passes Dale Earnhardt Jr. (8) in turn 4 at Richmond International Raceway in Richmond, Virginia, Saturday, September 11, 2004. Mayfield won the NASCAR Chevy Rock & Roll 400 and moved into the top 10 in points.
“I couldn't believe it,” Jeremy said after the race. “The way my luck's been I thought there's no way in hell [Busch] is going to run out of gas…all of a sudden he ran out, and I was like, ‘This can't be true. Now it's my turn to either cut a tire or hit the wall or something.’”
But this time Jeremy's luck held, ending his four-year drought, vaulting him from number fourteen to number nine in the standings and supplying the appropriate first big moment for the inaugural Chase for the Championship.
The Little Black Taxi That Could
In the history of NASCAR, Johnny Mantz's ride in the 1950 Darlington 500 is the odds-on favorite to win as Unlikeliest Race Car Ever to Finish First. In fact, in the days leading up to the event, Mantz's entry wasn't a race car at all. It was NASCAR founder Bill France's “Little Black Taxi,” a boxy stock, six-cylinder, 97-horsepower Plymouth business coupe he and other race promoters bought to run errands around Darlington. It remained the Little Black Taxi until Mantz, lacking a ride, begged France to let him borrow the car for the race and slapped a set of numbers on it.
The 1950 Darlington 500 was notable for more than Mantz's unlikely victory. It was NASCAR's first 500-mile race, and the very first event held on a paved circuit. All previous races had been held on dirt tracks.
Johnny Mantz, whose nickname was “Madman Mantz,” proved himself the opposite. He was a crafty competitor who had finished thirteenth and seventh in the two previous Indianapolis 500s. He had raced 500 miles on pavement and understood exactly what he'd need to do: run cautiously, conserving the little Plymouth, his fuel, and his tires. The heavy V-8 Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, driving 80–90 mph on the banked oval, burned through and blew out tires at a startling rate. In fact, some teams actually ran out of tires during the race and were forced to beg, borrow, and buy tires off fans parked in the infield.
Johnny Mantz's unlikely winner.
After starting forty-third—he was the slowest qualifier of the seventy-five starters—Mantz circled the track on the apron, cruising at about 75 mph, the Plymouth sipping gas and tiptoeing on its tires, the tortoise to seventy-four hares. Now, about those tires. Legend has it Mantz was running truck tires—extra-hard rubber that lasted a lot longer than his competition's.
The heavy V-8 Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, driving 80-90 mph on the banked oval, burned through and blew out tires at a startling rate. In fact, some teams actually ran out of tires during the race and were forced to beg, borrow and buy tires off fans parked in the infield.
Richard Petty says they were actually racing tires. “At that point…I didn't even know that there was such an animal as a race tire,” he remembers. “Mantz had them shipped down from his buddies in Akron, Ohio. They were the old five-rib Firestones that had been used on a couple cars at Indy. …They had been built to stand high speeds, so they were probably better than the Sears Allstates that we had. …Johnny was the only one that had anything that even resembled a real racing tire.”
The race took an unbelievable 6 hours and 39 minutes to complete, during which Johnny Mantz and the Little Black Taxi rolled up a nine-lap lead on second-place Fireball Roberts. When NASCAR's first-ever 500 was in the books, it included two records that have yet to beaten: Mantz's starting position, forty-third, is the farthest back anyone has begun a 500-mile race and won, and 351 is the most laps anyone has ever led a 500-mile race
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NASCAR's Newly Minted “Million-Dollar Bill”
In 1985, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, in an effort to get the most out of their investment in NASCAR, offered a $1 million bonus to any driver who won three of NASCAR's four “grand slam” events: Daytona, Talladega, Charlotte, and Darlington. This seemingly impossible task (no one had done it before) for (then) impossible money was called the “Winston Million,” and Reynolds's gamble paid off handsomely.
Going into the Southern 500, Bill Elliott had already visited Victory Lane nine times that season, including a win at Daytona and an amazing come-from-behind victory at Talladega. Suddenly, that unattainable million seemed within reach. But at Charlotte, Elliott's brakes failed and he finished a disappointing eighteenth. This made the fourth event, at Darlington, do or die, and the media was all over it.
According to NASCAR president Mike Helton, “A lot of eyes and ears were on Darlington for that race. It was one of this sport's milestones.” The media coverage was unprecedented. Sports Illustrated, which had seemingly always looked down its nose at stock car racing, made “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” their cover story, the first NASCAR driver so honored. Happily for everyone, the competition lived up to the hype.
Bill Elliott drove a conservative but masterful race. He ducked around accidents dead in front of him, maneuvered through fourteen cautions, and outlasted front-runners Dale Earnhardt and Harry Gant, who were knocked out by engine problems. As the race wound down, there was one driver who could scuttle Elliott's designs on the bonus: five-time Southern 500 winner Cale Yarborough. Elliott said, “I knew if I made one mistake, Cale would be right there to take advantage of it.” It was a battle to the finish, but in the end, Yarborough was done in by a five-buck part. Late in the race his power steering belt let go and that was enough for Bill to beat him to the line by a razor slim six-tenths of a second.
Ironically, while the Winston Million helped make NASCAR and Bill Elliott household names, he ended up with a whole lot less than that. Team owner Harry Melling took the lion's share of the cash and the pit crew was amply rewarded. After the IRS extracted its cut, the newly christened “Million-Dollar Bill” pocketed only about $75,000.
But that was okay with Elliott. “It changed the way people look at the sport and the respect they had for it,” he explained. “But I don't think it changed my life. …I wasn't racing for a million dollars, I was racing to win, same as always.” Perhaps just as important to easygoing Bill Elliott was the Most Popular Driver award he won that year.
Tiny's Big Win at 1963 Daytona 500
There was absolutely nothing tiny about DeWayne Lund. This six-foot-six, 300-pound hulk of an Iowan had one of the biggest smiles, the biggest personalities, and the biggest hearts in racing. Back in 1963, those attributes plus his hard-charging driving earned Tiny Lund the biggest win of his long career.
The story actually begins ten days before the 500 during Speedweeks. Marvin Panch, who'd already qualified the famed number 21 Wood Brothers Galaxie, was testing an experimental Ford-powered Maserati at Daytona, trying to win the $10,000 Bill France had put up for the first driver to run 180 mph. Panch was rocketing down the backstretch when the Maserati suddenly went airborne, crunched down on its side, and skidded to a stop upside down. With fire engulfing the engine compartment, Panch was trapped.
Fortunately, Tiny Lund and four other men were just coming out of a nearby tunnel and sprinted to the accident. As they tried to lift the burning Maserati off Panch, the fuel tank burst into flames, driving everyone back. They tried again. As the other four lifted the car, Tiny pulled Panch from the wreckage, saving his life and earning himself the Carnegie Medal for Heroism. At the hospital, doctors determined that Panch would survive his burns, but he certainly wouldn't drive in the 500. After a hospital-room conference, Marvin and the Woods graciously offered Tiny, who'd come to Daytona without a ride, the chance to drive the number 21.
The 1963 Daytona 500 was won on gas and tire strategy and there was nobody better at that than the Wood Brothers. As the field narrowed, the competition for the lead came down to Fred Lorenzen, Ned Jarrett, and Lund. Lorenzen and Jarrett helped each other conserve fuel by drafting together. Tiny helped himself save gas by slowing down in front of Jarrett and letting Jarrett's car “push” him around the track.
Incredibly, Lund's Ford ran the entire 500 miles on one set of tires. Glen Wood remembers, “Back then, tires had tread on them and…would stick better as a slick. As they got worn down, they were better than they were with full tread on them…so, we just kept checking them.” They also kept an extremely close watch on their fuel consumption. The strategy gave them the confidence to pit just four times, one less than the others. After Jarrett and Lorenzen both ran out of gas in the final laps, Tiny still had fuel to burn.
While legend has it that Lund coasted under the checkered flag, his engine sputtering on fumes, Glen Wood disagrees. “He just imagined it, I guess. When we loaded the car onto the truck it still had fuel in it. It could have sputtered on the final turn and maybe he thought he was out of gas. But it hadn't sputtered all day.”
Tiny Lund's career, and his life, ended tragically at Talladega in 1975. But his legend and his Cinderella victory at the 1963 Daytona 500 live on, a life lived extra large.
Jeff Gordon's Bittersweet Win at Martinsville 2005
If Jeff Gordon has proved anything since starting his NASCAR career in 1992, it is that you should never, ever count him out. As long as his spark plugs are firing and his car has four tires, he's going to be a contender. Gordon hammered that point home at Martinsville in 2005. Still, it was one of the most unlikely wins of his career.
Returning to Martinsville in April 2005 couldn't have been easy for Jeff and the rest of the Hendrick Motorsports team. Barely six months before, on October 24, 2004, ten team and family members were killed when the company plane, heading for Martinsville, went down in heavy fog. The victims included owner Rick Hendrick's son, his twin nieces, and his brother. This certainly wasn't the way one of the sport's most successful teams wanted to mark their twentieth year in racing.
Jeff Gordon started the next season on a high note, taking the checkers at the Daytona 500. But after that big win, his luck was mixed; engine troubles and an accident dropped him from first to twelfth in the Cup standings. So Martinsville was important to him for a lot of reasons.
The race was the kind of competition that track is famous for. This half-mile, paper-clip-shaped flat track has a single groove. Passing is an invitation to trouble and there is usually lots of banging and bumping and major tire trouble. During that April 10, 2005, race, every single one of the forty-three cars that started the race had some kind of damage.
Pole sitter Scott Riggs didn't even make it through Lap 1, and the race was marred by sixteen yellow flags, most caused by flat tires. On Lap 48, a loose wheel forced Jeff Gordon to pit, and by the time he reentered the race he was three laps down. It looked like he'd have to settle for a back-of-the-pack finish. But Gordon had another goal in mind and 400-plus laps to achieve it.
Demonstrating the talent that made him a four-time NASCAR champ, Jeff steadily clawed his way back, passing every car on the track, once, twice, then three times. On Lap 466, the number 24 DuPont Chevy grabbed the lead from Sterling Marlin and never surrendered it. This extraordinary come-from-behind win catapulted Jeff back into the top ten, from number twelve to number six, and gave him one of his most satisfying and heartfelt victories.
After the race, Gordon dedicated the bittersweet win to his missing comrades. “There is something special about this place,” he said. “We lost so many incredible people out of this organization and racing community [the previous fall]. I think it is only fitting for us to get this victory. I know how much it means to Rick Hendrick and his family and all those other families. It means a lot to this race team.”
Jeff Gorden makes his presence known.
Reversal of Fortune: The 1989 All-Star Challenge at Charlotte
/> The 1989 All-Star Challenge at Lowe's Motor Speedway (then the Charlotte Motor Speedway) turned two big careers upside down. In a split second a longtime villain was turned into an instant hero and a relatively unknown up-and-comer became one of NASCAR's most talked-about drivers.
The villain was Darrell Waltrip, a guy everyone loved to hate. Breaking in, Waltrip had the nerve to brag to one and all that he was going to whip everyone's heroes. Neither the fans nor the drivers appreciated that disrespectful attitude.
The villain was Darrell Waltrip, a guy everyone loved to hate. Breaking in, Waltrip had the nerve to brag to one and all that he was going to whip everyone's heroes. Neither the fans nor the drivers appreciated that disrespectful attitude. Then when Waltrip actually went out and did it, the fans despised him all the more.
Several factors in the 1989 season helped DW reverse his bad-guy image. The fans became more receptive when he and his wife, Stevie, had their first child, and, after seventeen years of trying, he finally won the Daytona 500. The stage was set for Darrell's image change—all it would take was a push in the right direction. Russell “Rusty” Wallace, eager to make a name for himself, was more than happy to supply it. Literally.
“I was pretty much still an unknown, just one of the younger drivers who sort of blended into the crowd,” Rusty explains. “I was just a short-track hotshot who'd…paid my dues and was starting to win races in the big league.”
The race itself was nothing out of the ordinary, the most tense moment being Kyle Petty's nasty crash. With two laps to go, it looked certain that Darrell Waltrip's Tide-sponsored Chevrolet was in position to take home the $200,000 first-place prize. But Rusty Wallace wouldn't let Waltrip pocket the cash without one last shot.
“I finally caught him and…I stuck my nose under his left rear quarter panel and it started to push a little bit,” Rusty remembers. “I was like, ‘Man, don't lift. If you lift, you're screwed.’ I never lifted and he started sliding and— bam!—went the quarter panel, and all hell broke loose.”