by Joe Garner
The problem seems to have been an almost imperceptible bump in Daytona's Turn 4. Both Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip blamed it for wiping them out the year before—Cale in the middle of what would have been Daytona's first 200-plus mph qualifying run, and Darrell during the 500.
Ricky Rudd's accident happened during the 50-mile Busch Clash (now the Budweiser Shootout), the inaugural race of the season, held the week before the Daytona 500. Though not a points race, it is still a hotly contested event.
During the 1984 edition, Rudd was running in a string of cars when he suddenly lost control at that infamous spot in Turn 4. The car headed up the track, then appeared to kiss the wall before it swerved down the track. Out of control at nearly 190 mph, the number 15 Wrangler Ford beelined for the wall ringing the infield. Just before it smashed into the low concrete barrier, air got under the car and, blessedly for Rudd, launched the racer airborne.
Bobby Allison's car becomes airborne during a wreck in a race at Talladega, Alabama in 1987.
“All of a sudden it got real quiet,” Ricky remembers. “I was glad it got airborne because it allowed me to hop over that wall, but then it came down the first time…and [I heard] the air go out of me. Like those game films in the NFL when a guy gets hit and all the air rushes out of his body. That ‘ugh.’ I heard that.”
Rudd bounced and banged, his window net gone and his left arm flailing outside the window as the car twisted and turned seven times, throwing off sheet metal as it went. When the car finally came to rest, Rudd was a mess. His pupils were blood red, and he'd sustained torn cartilage in his rib cage, as well as body bruising. “I pretty much came loose inside the car [because] the seat broke in half. It wasn't much of a seat. …That allowed me to have a lot of slack in the belts and I bounced around and got beat up pretty badly.”
Unbelievably, Ricky, his face black and blue and swollen like a boxer's, was back in the driver's seat for the Daytona 500 the following week, keeping his streak alive. On race day, the swelling around his eyes was so bad, he had to duct-tape his eyes open to see! Rudd finished the race seventh, and won the next week at Richmond. That is an Iron Man.
Bristol 2002: Harmon's Close Call
On August 23, 2002, race fans in general, and one driver in particular, experienced a heavy dose of déjà vu. That day, Mike Harmon, during a Busch Series practice session at Bristol Motor Speedway, smashed into the same steel crossing gate Michael Waltrip had hit a dozen years earlier. The results were horrifyingly familiar—a race car ripped to ribbons, and a driver a miracle away from meeting his maker.
Harmon was the last person thinking about repeating Waltrip's spectacular stunt. “I told [Michael] I was sitting at home watching when it happened to him, and I couldn't believe what I'd seen,” he said. “His car is down at Talladega, at the museum. To go by and look at it, you can't believe he lived through it. In a million years, I'd have never thought I'd get in a situation like that.”
Actually, it may have been an even bigger miracle that Harmon survived his crash. Inexplicably, the six steel poles that reinforce the gate during racing were not in place. When Mike hit, the iron gate opened and directed his number 44 Chevrolet smack into the end of the concrete retaining wall, which proceeded to peel off the right side of his BGN racer like it was skinning a fish.
As it was happening, Mike remembers thinking it wouldn't be that serious. “I hit the wall and I thought it was going to be a normal deal,” he said. “And suddenly I realized I was getting real close to the wall with my body.”
To make matters even more deadly, the demolished car came off the wall and ground to a stop in the middle of the track. An instant later, the car was T-boned by Johnny Sauter. With a split second to react and Harmon sitting helpless right in front of him, Sauter literally had the other driver's life in his hands.
“I just tried not to hit the driver's door,” Sauter remembers. “That was the main thing. I think I kind of drove right through the car. It happened so fast. …I'm just glad I didn't hit him or even kill him.”
Mike Harmon made it through the accident with little more damage than body bruises, but the voices of the drivers were loud and angry. They demanded to know why the steel poles weren't in place and why that gate was still there since Bristol now had a tunnel to move people and vehicles in and out of the infield. The answer was “human error,” an inexcusable mistake that cost one racing team a very expensive piece of machinery, and almost cost Mike Harmon his life.
Rescue workers ruch to the aid of BUSCH Series driver Mike Harmon, red helmet, after hitting the wall coming out of Turn 4 during practice for the Food City 250 at Bristol Motor Speedway Thursday, August 22, 2002, in Bristol, Tennesee.
Darlington 1965: Cale's Moon Shot
I fall you looked at were Cale Yarborough's amazing career statistics, you'd understand why he is enshrined in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, and why in 1998 he was named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers. But that's not the whole story. Called by one sportswriter “a mixed package of physical skill, nerve and intellect,” Cale was one of motor racing's toughest competitors, an aggressive driver whose larger-than-life presence helped NASCAR establish itself as a legitimate sport.
One of the events that helped launch stock car racing and Cale Yarborough was coverage of the 1965 Southern 500 by ABC's Wide World of Sports. That day their television cameras captured one of the most spectacular crashes in NASCAR history, and for years they included the footage in their famous opening credits.
If there was anyone who knew Darlington, it was Yarborough. He grew up nearby and used to sneak into the track to watch the races. Still, competing on that track was one of his greatest challenges. Even Cale, who won the race five times, admits the tire-shredding oval is “one of the toughest places anybody ever raced on.” Veteran driver Kyle Petty is not quite as diplomatic about NASCAR's oldest circuit. “I can't stand this track,” he's said. “I think they should just fill this place up to the retaining wall with water and hold bass fishing tournaments here.”
Back in 1965 the track didn't have retaining walls, just door-handle-high guardrails—the source of “Darlington Stripes”—a souvenir race cars got from scraping the metal barriers. Cale didn't get stripes that year, but he did get wings. His number 27 Banjo Matthews Ford was trailing race leader Sam McQuagg's number 24 Betty Lilly Ford. When Cale tried to force his way past, the two collided, sending McQuagg into the guardrail. Yarborough, however, sailed over the guardrail, which was set atop a forty-foot embankment.
Cale has a vivid memory of that moment. “When you get in trouble on a racetrack, it gets kind of quiet because your wheels are off the asphalt,” he said. “I saw some grass as I was going over, and I knew there wasn't any grass on the track, so I knew it was going to be a hard hit.”
Yarborough's prediction was accurate. With ABC's camera tracking him, his Galaxy flew into the grassy parking lot two stories below, flipped violently several times, and came to rest against a light pole. It looked like Yarborough's aggressive style might have finally cost him his life. To everyone's amazement, Cale walked away from the car with little more than a scratch under his eye.
Later, when interviewed by ABC's Chris Economaki, Yarborough joked about his unscheduled space flight. “The astronauts got nothing on me.” That was just the kind of colorful comment that helped make Cale Yarborough one of the true legends of NASCAR.
Cale Yarborough sets sail over the second turn guard rail in the 1965 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Giving him a push is Sam McQuagg.
Chapter Five
THE RECORD BREAKERS
At the season's end, Jeff Gordon was not chasing the Cup, he was in a high-octane race with history—in the last four weeks of the season Gordon drove his way right into the record books, parking there in the spot next to the King himself, Richard Petty.
Jeff Gordon's Season to Remember
In racing, it's not how you start but how you finish that counts. Just compare the f
irst four races of Jeff Gordon's 1998 season to the last four: he started the season by finishing a disappointing sixteenth at the Daytona 500 after dropping a cylinder, and after a win at Rockingham in the second week, he plunged again, to seventeenth and nineteenth in Las Vegas and Atlanta over the next two weeks, and he was just seventh in the standings.
Gordon had never in his career started off so badly. He'd won Rookie of the Year in 1993 with seven top five finishes, then proved hè could take the next step in 1994 with two wins and an eighth-place finish in the Cup standings; in 1995 he'd made the leap from budding star to superstar with seven wins and seventeen top five finishes, capturing his first crown; in 1996 he'd finished second on the season just thirty points behind the more consistent Terry Labonte despite outshining Labonte with ten wins and twenty-one top five placements. But Gordon came back with another stellar year in 1997, winning ten times and landing in the top five twenty-two times. In that year, he'd kicked off in high gear, winning both Daytona and Rockingham, then finishing fourth at Richmond in the third week.
After a third-place finish in Michigan and a second-place in the Pocono 500, Gordon went on a historic run, one that nearly matched the best of Richard Petty and David Pearson in the 1960s and 1970s.
But the slow start proved irrelevant. At the season's end, Gordon was not chasing the Cup, he was in a high-octane race with history—in the last four weeks of the season he drove his way right into the record books, parking there in the spot next to the King himself, Richard Petty.
This was no gradual turnaround—Gordon would only finish out of the top ten twice more in the final twenty-nine races, and twenty-five of those twenty-seven strong endings would be in the top five. By his second win, six weeks into the season, he'd moved up to third place, and he'd briefly move into first in the Winston Cup race in late May. Still, it wasn't until midway through the season that it became apparent that this season would be a truly special one for Gordon.
After a third-place finish in Michigan and a second-place in the Pocono 500, Gordon went on a historic run, one that nearly matched the best of Richard Petty and David Pearson in the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning with a win at Sonoma in the Save Mart 350, Gordon reeled off seven wins in his next nine races. In the middle of that stretch he tied the modern record with four straight wins at the Pennsylvania 500, the Brickyard 400, the Bud at the Glen, and the Pepsi 400.
A “down” week by Gordon's standards left him in fifth at the Goody's 500, but he won the CMT 300 the following week with a dynamite comeback to edge Mark Martin, who by then trailed him by just 67 points in the Cup standings. Jack Roush, who headed Martin's team, accused Rick Hendrick, DuPont, and number 24 of cheating. Gordon's team was cleared and then set the record straight in the very next race.
(Overleaf) Driver Jeff Gordon #24 leads Mark Martin #6 by a car's length going into the last lap during the Pepsi 400 at the Michigan Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan. Gordon went on to win the event.Jeff Gordon celebrates following the NASCAR Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana.
At age 27, Gordon is the youngest driver to win three Winston Cup championships. He's tied Richard Petty's modern record of 13 victories in a season, which had stood alone for more than two decades.
Gordon made history on Labor Day weekend—and earned a million-dollar bonus in the process—by capturing his fourth straight Southern 500. Although Jeff Burton led for 273 of the 367 laps, Gordon finished an impressive 3.631 seconds in front of him at Darlington. Suddenly, Gordon also had a 199-point lead over Martin for the Cup.
Still, if there was one knock remaining against Gordon it was that he had never been a strong season finisher: in 1995 he hadn't managed a win in the last six races and finished twentieth or below in three of those as Dale Earnhardt whittled his lead from 275 points down to 34 before time ran out on the season; in 1996 Gordon had led Labonte by 111 points with four races to go before losing by 30 thanks to two dismal runs in those final weeks; and in 1997 he hadn't won, or even finished in the top three, over his last seven races, as his 139-point lead nearly evaporated, leaving him a mere 14 points ahead of hard-charging Dale Jarrett. (It was the fourth-closest finish in history.)
So for Gordon to truly live up to his billing in 1998 he wanted to finish strong. After the Southern 500 he ran into a “slump” of sorts, failing to win in his next five tries. Still, he finished second in four of those and fifth once, expanding his lead over Martin to 288 points.
He had matched his career high with ten wins and had his third title wrapped up, but Gordon did not coast through the final month. He slammed on the accelerator and left every driver short of Petty in the dust.
At Daytona on October 17, Gordon picked up his first win in six weeks in the Pepsi 400, which had been postponed from its usual July Fourth date because of dangerous wildfires. It was the first time he had ever won a race in October. After a seventh-place finish the following week it seemed like any chance of tying Petty was gone since Gordon needed to win both of the remaining races and he'd never won a race in November.
Gordon, however, was unstoppable. At the ACDelco 400 at Rockingham, Dale Jarrett and Rusty Wallace dominated, leading for 347 of 393 laps between them, but Gordon came on strong to win by just a half-second over Jarrett, officially clinching the Cup crown.
The fates threw another obstacle in Gordon's way for the final race, the NAPA 500 in Atlanta. This was, of course, the site of one of his worst performances of the year back in March. This time around, rain played havoc with the race, turning it into a marathon yet also shortening the 325-lap race down to 221. But this one saw Gordon in command—he'd led for more than half the race when it was ended prematurely, so there was no doubt that he had truly and fully earned win number thirteen, which tied him with Petty for the most in the modern era.
Gordon had a total of twenty-six top five performances to win the Cup by 364 points, the third highest margin of victory over the previous two decades. In celebrating its fiftieth anniversary NASCAR had hoped for a memorable season. Jeff Gordon made it happen.
Handsome Harry's Amazing Streak
Harry Gant was an old man in a young man's game. It had always been that way—after all, he didn't make his Winston Cup debut until he was thirty-nine, and that was back in 1979. He didn't win his first NASCAR Cup series race until his 107th start, when he was forty-two. But in 1991, during his September to remember, Gant seemed to be fueling up at the fountain of youth.
He began what became known as “The Streak” on September 1, by winning the Heinz Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Every race Gant won set a new record for “the oldest driver ever to win.”
“Handsome Harry” was busy—and productive the next weekend at Richmond International Raceway. He won the 200-lap Busch Grand National race on September 6, then going twice the distance in the Miller Genuine Draft 400 NASCAR Cup race the next day, prevailing even after he had to slam on the brakes and spin 360 degrees to avoid an out-of-control car. At Dover Downs six days later Gant again doubled down, winning a 200-lapper and the Peak Antifreeze 500. In just over two weeks he had won five races on three challenging tracks. On September 22 in the Goody's 500, Gant would try tying the modern record of four straight Cup wins—but unlike Cale Yarborough (1976), Darrell Waltrip (1981), and Dale Earnhardt (1987), he would be going for his sixth straight win in that span.
This race would be the toughest of all. All the attention paid to The Streak—which overshadowed Dale Earnhardt and Ricky Rudd's battle for the Cup Series—meant everyone would be gunning for Gant and they'd be doing it on the tightest of tracks, the little half-mile oval at Virginia's Martinsville Speedway.
Gant was dominating—out front for almost 200 laps—when his great run was nearly derailed. On the 376th lap, Rusty Wallace, overly eager to pass the leader, took Turn 3 way too hard for such a tight track. He started spinning and struck Gant's car, spinning him out, causing Derrike Cope to plow into him.
Gant's crew did a supe
rb job of getting him back on track, but the driver was so angry at Wallace's tactics—he believed Wallace had to know he couldn't make that turn and would hit him—that it took him nearly ten laps to calm down. (Wallace was unrepentant afterwards, though he apologized to Gant the next week.)
Harry Gant holds the winning trophy after the 1991 Goody's 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
But he soon refocused. Having restarted in twelfth place with 120 laps to go, he climbed to fifth by the 425th lap, to third ten laps later, and back into first with more than fifty laps remaining. But Brett Bodine—who bumped Gant when he went by—was coming on strong too and briefly passed him on lap 449. Gant was having none of it. He pulled even, and then in the 453rd lap he regained the lead for good. He'd finish first by 1.1 seconds over Bodine. “Maybe they figured the only way anybody could beat me was to rough me up,” Gant said afterwards before rubbing it in. “It makes ’em feel bad that I can pass ’em clean after they've hit me. It lets ’em know they're not as good as they think they are.”
On September 29, Gant became the oldest person ever to start from the pole position and nearly win his fifth straight Cup race in the Tyson Holly Farms 400 at the North Wilkesboro Speedway, leading most of the way before brake troubles hit. With nine laps left, Earnhardt passed him, winning by 1.2 seconds to preserve his share of the record.
Still, it had been a remarkable month. From then on, Gant was no longer just “Handsome Harry” or “the old man.” He was “Mr. September.”
Bobby Isaac celebrates in victory lane after winning the 1969 Greenville/Pickens event.
Bobby Isaac's Twenty Poles in '69
Bobby Isaac was racing's ultimate outsider, but nothing could stop him from getting to the inside: despite being ostracized by his fellow NASCAR drivers in 1969, he claimed a single-season mark of twenty pole positions. (The season that year was fifty-four races, far longer than the modern circuit.)