Speed, Guts, and Glory

by Joe Garner

  Bobby Allison could be forgiven for the burn. That's just the way he was, and everybody knew it: stubborn, hot-blooded, and fervently dedicated to winning. One didn't rack up eighty-four victories—third on NASCAR's all-time list—by letting a little thing like genes muck up a hard charge to the checkered flag. Even Bobby's sibling and fellow driver Donnie, no pushover himself, had been victimized more than once by his brother's “love taps.”

  Long before they'd moved from Miami to Alabama and exploded onto the Grand National scene in the mid-1960s, the cantankerous Allison brothers had earned a reputation as gritty small-track competitors who rumbled as well as they raced. And boy, could they race. Donnie, who won NASCAR Rookie of the Year honors in 1967, repeated the feat at the Indianapolis 500 just three years later.

  But it was Bobby, 1983's NASCAR Cup champion, who put the Allison stamp on NASCAR. His 336 top five finishes over a twenty-five-year career were second only to his archrivals, Richard Petty and David Pearson. And unlike those easygoing aces, Bobby became as famous for his nasty temper as for his talent on the track.

  “Bobby was combative,” said Humpy Wheeler, president of Lowe's Speedway. “He was a tremendous, tremendous competitor. There was nothing hidden about it.”

  It certainly wasn't hidden during Bobby and Donnie's bloody televised brawl with Cale Yarborough on the Daytona infield in 1979. After Cale and Donnie wrecked while bumping hard for the lead in the 500, brotherly Bobby pulled on the scene to settle the beef. “I got out,” he recalled poetically, “and old Cale went to beating on my fist with his nose.”

  Davey Allison hadn't inherited Bobby's tough-guy bravado, but no doubt he had his daddy's racing blood. After winning Rookie of the Year in 1987, he went on to post nineteen victories over the next six seasons. The thirty-three-year-old was being touted as NASCAR's next superstar when a helicopter crash ended his life in 1993.

  Bobby Allison gives advice to his brother Donnie.

  For Bobby, still semi-incapacitated by the career-ending 1988 wreck that left him with crushed legs, a shattered skull, and permanent memory loss, Davey's death only compounded his overwhelming grief—he'd lost his younger son Clifford just eleven months earlier in a Busch Series crash.

  1988 Daytona 500 winner Bobby Allison pours beer on son Davey during celebrations.

  But if tragedy seemed to follow the Allison's “Alabama Gang”—a mere seven months after Davey, fellow member Neil Bonnett would also die in a crash—their triumphs on the track over more than three decades elevated them to racing immortality. Together, the Allison family ran 862 races (notching an astonishing 653 top ten finishes) and graced Victory Lane 144 times, making them, behind the Pettys, the winningest clan in NASCAR history.

  The Woods: NASCAR's Oldest Team

  To say that Glen and Leonard Wood knew how to run a race team is a little like saying Picasso knew how to paint—it doesn't do justice to the scope of their talent. Truth is, during the first thirty-odd years of NASCAR's existence, these two brothers from the sleepy boondocks of Stuart, Virginia, not only put more top-flight drivers behind the wheel than anyone else, they completely revolutionized the way races were run.

  “Leonard and Glen were among the first to attack things scientifically,” said driver Dan Gurney, who drove for the Woods in the mid-1960s. “They practiced everything, looking for efficiency and every little advantage. But they downplayed their abilities, like quiet hillbilly types.”

  It was precisely that fusion of technical wizardry and their humble, homespun approach—they preferred doing business with a handshake—that brought the likes of Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly, Junior Johnson, Marvin Panch, A. J. Foyt, Cale Yarborough, and David Pearson to their doorstep. Seventeen of NASCAR's 50 Great Drivers had raced for the Woods (including Glen himself, from 1953 to 1964).

  But driving talent counts for little if a crew can't deliver, and here the Woods, who pitted every race themselves, decimated the competition. During the early 1960s, the idea of changing four tires and pumping 22 gallons of fuel in 20 seconds seemed absurd. The Woods did it regularly. They developed fuel flow modifications, invented faster lug-nut threading techniques, improved pneumatic air wrenches, and choreographed their movements, anything to get an edge.

  “People wasn't taking it very serious about pit stops,” recalled Glen. “And we started concentrating on it. We would make a stop and come out a half-lap ahead.”

  That quickness could often mean the difference in a race, something the Woods, discovered early, when their 17-second stops and brilliant fuel management helped Tiny Lund win the 1963 Daytona 500. Lund, leading with ten laps to go, was passed by Fred Lorenzen and Ned Jarrett; both then pitted for fuel. But Lund had enough left to charge on, retaking the lead and sputtering out of gas just seconds after crossing the finish line. And the Woods never once changed the tires!

  By 1985, when Glen turned over ownership of the team to his sons after thirty-five years in business, the Wood Brothers had earned 269 top five finishes and 92 victories with twelve different drivers (fourth on the all-time list), including four Daytona 500s and a record 80 superspeedway wins.

  But the ensuing two decades proved rocky for Wood Brothers Racing, now the oldest continuously operating team in NASCAR. They've visited Victory Lane only five times, and their moderately funded single-car operation has struggled to stay afloat as multicar teams backed by corporate millions have taken over the ranks. But Glen's son, Eddie, has faith they will somehow turn the corner and restore the glory.

  “We've had so many ends of the world,” he said, “but then it always works out.”

  Hendrick: The Empire That Rick Built

  When Rick Hendrick arrived at Daytona International Speedway for his first NASCAR race in 1984, the thirty-six-year-old self-described “redneck car dealer” from Virginia felt like an interloper in the Valley of the Gods. Sure, he'd managed to put together a bare-bones team with the renowned Harry Hyde as crew chief and himself as owner. But he had no major sponsors. He had zero Cup Series experience. And at that moment, he had even less hope.

  “I remember looking down pit road…and seeing Richard Petty and [Cale] Yarborough and Junior Johnson and the Wood Brothers and feeling like, ‘Man, I don't belong here,’” he recalled.

  Today, it's hard to imagine Rick Hendrick belonging anywhere else. Over the past two decades, the racing dream he hatched with a single car in a small North Carolina garage has grown into one of the richest and most dominant operations in NASCAR history. His Cup teams—now totaling four cars—have amassed 140 overall wins (second on NASCAR's all-time owners list), earned nearly $180 million, and captured five NASCAR Cup championships, including an amazing four in a row (1995–98) by Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte.

  (Above): Hendrick Motorsports driver Jimmie Johnson (center) poses with the winners trophy with co-owners Rick Hendrick and Jeff Gordon in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Winston Clup Series NAPA Auto Parts 500 at the California Speedway in Fontana, California on April 28, 2002.

  Then again, Hendrick has always had a habit of surviving—and thriving—despite the odds. When he spent his last dime to buy a dinky car dealership in 1977, people questioned his sanity; he turned around and built a coast-to-coast empire worth $2 billion a year. When he was told multicar Cup teams were owner suicide, he expanded his operation and quickly set a new standard for mutlicar chemistry and competitiveness, all while overcoming both leukemia and a stint of house arrest for mail fraud (he was pardoned in 2000).

  But nothing has defined Hendrick's resilience and dedication to racing more than his harrowing 2004 season. What had begun as a yearlong celebration of his twentieth anniversary in NASCAR became a personal and organizational catastrophe when a plane carrying his brother John (the team president), his son Ricky, his two nieces, and his team's general manager and chief engine builder crashed into a foggy hillside in southern Virginia. There were no survivors.

  “I love this sport,” an emotional Hendrick told the press les
s than a week after the tragedy. “To honor all of those people on that plane, I am more committed to this sport than I ever have been.”

  Two days later, Hendrick's four cars rolled up to the starting line at Atlanta Motor Speedway, each bearing pictures of the crash victims. In a fitting tribute, Hendrick driver Jimmie Johnson took the checkered flag in front of 104,000 sympathetic fans.

  Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon would finish the 2004 season second and third, respectively, in the points standings, and by 2005, they would continue to feed off Hendrick's inspiration, finishing fifth and eleventh.

  “We were always a family, but I feel like we have a tighter bond with the family,” Gordon said. “We all came together in a way that we've stepped up to another level because of [the tragedy].”

  “It's incredible how they've been able to survive,” said driver Joe Nemechek. “But look at the kind of organization Rick built…that's why it's been able to be strong and continue and be right there at the top of their game.”

  The Jarretts: A Championship Family

  “People who race cars are either bootleggers or fools,” Homer Jarrett told his son Ned when the teenager floated the idea of turning a few laps at the local track in the early 1950s.

  Dale Jarrett, center, poses with his family after winning the NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship Sunday, November 14, 1999, at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Florida. Jarrett finished fifth in the Pennzoil Race to clinch the championship. From left, father, two-time Winston Cup champion Ned, daughter Karsyn, mother Martha, Jarrett, daughter Natalee, son Zachary, wife Kelley and brother Glenn.

  Well, Ned wasn't a bootlegger. But he had won a half-stake in a race car during a poker game, and despite his parents' notion that a decent boy with a comfortable future in the family's sawmilling operation had no business cavorting with a bunch of hotdogging lowlifes, Ned decided to make a fool of himself.

  Before long he was racing regularly under an assumed name and earning quite a reputation in their corner of North Carolina—until Homer found out.

  Resigned to his son's newfound ambition, he made only one request: if you're going to win, use the family name.

  By the time Ned's own son Dale reached his teenage years in the late '70s, the Jarrett name was legendary. In Ned's brief career—he ran only six complete seasons in NASCAR (1960–65), retiring at age thirty-four to become a broadcaster—“Gentleman Ned” won an astonishing fifty races and two Grand National titles, never finishing worse than fifth in the points standings in full-season competition. For Ned, it was all about focus, intensity, and consistency.

  Dale had none of that. He'd turned down a university golf scholarship because he didn't like homework. When Ned got him a job as groundskeeper at a racetrack, Dale brought in a herd of goats to assume his lawn-mowing duties. But then Dale got behind the wheel of a race car and something clicked. He would make his full-season Cup debut in 1988.

  By 1993's Daytona 500, thirty-six-year-old Dale had won only once. Ned, who was in the booth calling the race for CBS, admitted he had a good feeling about this race, and Dale didn't disappoint. With two laps to go, he made his move on leader Dale Earnhardt, and Ned suddenly found himself cheering his son to victory in front of a national television audience.

  “None of the fifty races that I won…gave me the great feeling that I have right now,” a beaming Ned said after the race. “To have my son win is the ultimate feeling.”

  The victory would mark a turning point for Dale. He would win thirty-races over the next twelve seasons (including two more Daytona 500s), finish top five in points seven times, and capture the 1999 Winston Cup championship, making the Jarretts only the second father-son duo to accomplish that feat. Today, Ned is tenth, Dale nineteenth, on NASCAR's all-time win list.

  Old Homer would've smiled.

  The Flocks: NASCAR's Wild Bunch

  In the annals of motor sports there is only one team that ever employed a monkey as a co-driver on the Grand National circuit, only one whose racer outran Johnny Law in the middle of a race, and only one with a Cadillac-driving homemaker who whipped NASCAR's biggest names at Daytona. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the incomparable Flying Flocks.

  For the first decade of NASCAR's existence, siblings Bob, Fonty, Ethel, and Tim (and occasional simian counterpart Jocko Flocko) provided the burgeoning sport with enough high jinks, political scandal, and good, hard racing to last a lifetime. Between them they ran 381 races, won 63 times, logged 230 top ten finishes, and incurred one lifetime ban. Not bad for a bunch of Alabama bootleggers.

  By the late 1940s the Flocks reigned as one of the fastest whiskey-running clans in the South. The frustrated authorities took to ambushing the brothers at local tracks, once barreling into a race in progress, with sirens blaring, in an attempt to collar Bob, who promptly missed a turn, smashed through a gate, and ran on through downtown Atlanta.

  But with the formation of NASCAR in 1947, the Flocks had a chance to go straight. In 1949, the first full year of competition, Bob, Fonty, and Tim gave the family name marquee status by each finishing in the top ten in points. Even their hard-charging sister Ethel chipped in, besting both Fonty and Bob—along with future Hall of Famers Curtis Turner, Herb Thomas, and Buck Baker—with an eleventh-place finish at that year's Daytona race.

  While Bob and Ethel rarely raced in the coming years and Fonty (known for his peculiar habit of driving in knee socks, shorts, and wingtips) retired in 1957 after an admirable 19-win career, it was youngest brother Tim who would set the racing world reeling, winning 40 times in 189 attempts between 1949 and 1961 (still NASCAR's highest winning percentage), capturing two Grand National (Cup Series) titles, and running eight laughable races with his vine-swinging compatriot Jocko as copilot.

  Tim, Ethel and Fonty Flock, Daytona Beach 1952.

  NASCAR honcho Bill France could look past Flock's monkey business, but the two rough-hewn men locked horns over nearly everything else. When Flock, ignoring a Big Bill ultimatum, raced for extra cash at an “outlaw” track, France stripped him of hundreds of points, a move Flock claimed cost him the 1950 championship. And in 1954, Flock sat out most of the year in protest after France disallowed his early-season Daytona victory for alleged cheating.

  The final straw came in 1961 when France banned Flock and Curtis Turner for life for attempting to unionize NASCAR drivers with the backing of the Teamsters. Flock was reinstated five years later, but with his salad days behind him, the forty-year-old legend decided to stay put. He never raced again.

  In 1998 Tim Flock was honored as one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers. And along with Bob, Fonty, and Ethel, he still holds the curious distinction of being one of a record-setting four siblings to compete against each other in a top-level NASCAR race.

  Richard Childress: NASCAR's Most Intimidating Team Owner

  In 1981 NASCAR driver Richard Childress took the biggest gamble of his life. After twelve winless seasons on the Cup circuit, the thirty-five-year-old also-ran decided to pack it in and hire someone else to race for him.

  “It was the toughest thing I ever had to do,” Childress said of that roll of the dice, which put 1980 Cup champion Dale Earnhardt behind the wheel. “I'd say it worked out, wouldn't you?”

  In less than 14 years, Childress and Earnhardt became the most successful owner-driver partnership in the history of NASCAR, capturing a record six Cup championships between 1986 and 1994.

  In less than fourteen years, Childress and Earnhardt would become the most successful owner-driver partnership in the history of NASCAR, capturing a record six Cup championships between 1986 and 1994. By 2000, they had run up sixty-seven victories and earned more than $40 millon, and their tear-your-head-off, Pittsburgh Steelers–style approach to winning had made Richard Childress Racing one of the most intimidating operations in all of NASCAR.

  Like Junior Johnson before him, Childress took a hands-on, dirty-fingernail approach to ownership. As a driver, he'd built his own cars from scratch. As top dog
he was just as likely to be found soaking up grease under the hood of the number 3 Chevy as behind a desk haggling with sponsors. His skill at both tasks and his dedication inspired the rest of the team.

  “I admire Richard because he started with nothing and built this thing to where it is today,” said RCR crew chief Kevin Hamlin. “He understands this deal from the bottom up because he's a racer. He's not just some businessman who doesn't understand why everything doesn't go right all the time.”

  And sometimes things could go disastrously wrong. On February 18, 2001, the forty-nine-year-old Earnhardt, considered by many to be the greatest driver of all time, slammed head-on into the wall on the last lap of the Daytona 500. He died instantly.

  Car owner Richard Childress, center, and Dale Earnhardt wave to the crowd after winning the championship at Atlanta Raceway.

  The devastated Childress thought about calling it quits. But he recalled, “Dale and I had a pact between us. Whatever happened, we needed to keep on racing.” So like all great competitors, he climbed back on the horse.

  Just three weeks later, Childress and his twenty-five-year-old rookie driver Kevin Harvick, who would go on to win Rookie of the Year honors, won the Cracker Barrel 500 in Atlanta, racing Earnhardt's repainted and renumbered Chevy—with a little help from Dale.

  “When we got the lead, I just looked up in the sky and said, ‘We need your help, buddy,’” Childress said after the tough race. “And he was there.”

  But living up to Earnhardt's legacy is a tough gambit. Although Childress has since gone on to notch two championships in NASCAR's Busch Series, making RCR the first operation to win titles at three levels (NASCAR Cup, Busch, and Craftsman Truck, in 1995), the tenacious three-car owner is still searching for the combination that will bring home his next Cup.

  “I just want drivers that want it as bad as I want it,” he said in 2004. “I want drivers with that fire and desire.”