Alan Kulwicki. Davey Allison. Bill Elliott. Harry Gant. Mark Martin. Kyle Petty. All six of these drivers had a mathematical shot at the 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup championship. Allison entered the final race at Atlanta with an extremely slim thirty point lead over Kulwicki and Elliott. Considering that the point system only has a gap of about four points per position (there are indistinguishably different point gaps in the system on the higher end and lower ends of the field), if any of the main contending drivers (Allison, Kulwicki, Elliott) were to not complete the race then they could potentially be looking at a drop to sixth in the points chase. Even if any of them allowed another of those drivers to get five positions on the track ahead of them, they could probably kiss their championship chances goodbye. It was absolutely that close.
The NASCAR racers would wind their season up at the 328-lap Hooters (Restaurants) 500 (kilometers) race. Almost as an omen, Hooters also was the sponsor for Kulwicki’s self-owned and self-driven #7 team. Kulwicki was an independent, even though many top
Kulwicki (white) vs. Elliott (red)
teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Junior Johnson Racing (the latter being the team Elliott drove for) gladly offered the Wisconsin native a job driving for them. He declined.
Allison, the breakthrough talent of 1987, meanwhile had his feet wet in wins and risking it all for them. He approached the 1992 season in a do-or-die fashion on the track and a relaxed tone off of it. In fact, one of the most memorable crashes in recent time was a Davey Allison wreck at the 1992 Winston special event where he won after a wild pass around Kyle Petty and moments later slamming the wall out of control as a consequence. The car was brought to victory lane on a flatbed tow truck, Davey went immediately to the medical attention center.
Meanwhile, Elliott, the veteran of the three (being a rookie in 1977 and the champion eleven years later), was just having a superb year. He won four races early in the season and led the championship for ten races from August to the penultimate race at Phoenix in October, where Davey Allison snatched up his 30-point lead.
There were more stories surrounding this race, one very minimal and one extremely prominent. The Hooters 500 would be “King” Richard Petty’s final start after a 35-year career in the sport. Amassing a record 200 wins and then-sole-record seven Winston Cup championships (Dale Earnhardt would match the latter acheivement in 1994), there was little doubt that a missing feeling to the grid, no less a void, would exist for the next season. The other story would be the debut of rising talent Jeff Gordon, driving the rainbow-colored #24 Dupont Chevrolet Lumina for the Hendrick Motorsports team. The future has seen Gordon take home the 1995, 1997, and 1998 championships plus over 50 victories (putting him among the top 15 winningest drivers of NASCAR’s top level.)
Starting the race in the #1 position was the #1 car, an Oldsmobile driven by Rick Mast. 1992 was the final prominent year for Oldsmobile on the circuit as the three main teams that used the Cutlass (Mast’s, Gant’s, and Bobby Hamilton’s) all switched to different makes for 1993. Starting in second position was Brett Bodine, and third was the #3 of Dale Earnhardt’s. The start went off with 41 cars roaring down the frontstretch. Brett Bodine ran hard on Mast and managed to slip under Mast coming into the third turn of the oval. Bodine led the first lap but coming into the first turn of the next lap Brett slipped up and sent both cars into the wall. Even though Dale Earnhardt was suspiciously close to Bodine’s back end when Brett began to slide, the true belief is that a phenomenon called an aero push was created and that caused the accident, not a direct bumping. Mast continued with damage but Bodine slid back down into the racing groove and the #41 of Hut Stricklin fatefully hit Bodine hard in the rear. Both Bodine’s and Stricklin’s cars were immediately disabled from the impact.
Dale Earnhardt kept the lead for a spell up until during-racing green flag pit stops began. About half of the top race contenders had pitted during this time when Michael Waltrip in the Pennzoil Pontiac spun down the backstraight. The yellow flags were thrown and the rest of the field got a definite advantage (because the green flag pitters would be sitting at the tail end of the field that were on the lead lap.) Outside-chance championship contender Kyle Petty had his possibilities erased when he was lapped due to the pit fallout, putting him at a severe disadvantage. The rest of the championship contenders remained in good shape.
The rest of the field who hadn’t pitted yet came in during the caution flag for their own stops. Bill Elliott came out on top on the race out of pitroad. He and Alan Kulwicki challenged each other continually from laps 62 to 82 when a bold move by Mark Martin on the inside of the both of them in Turns 3 and 4 put Mark past both of them and into the lead. Martin led until a few laps later when caution flew once again. Davey Allison’s speedy #28 pit crew led by Larry McReynolds took the lead through the race out of the pits.
The next caution was perhaps a disheartening one for many fans. A seven-car wreck on lap 94 on the frontstraightaway ended up having Richard Petty come out of it with a fireball coming from the engine. ESPN’s incar camera captured Petty declaring “Where’s my [bleep]ing fire extinguisher?!” live on the air. (Guess the word and win a pretzel.*) Meanwhile, Petty’s son Kyle managed to get his lap back and his own championship chances weren’t as ruined as before. On a side note, rookie Wally Dallenbach went into the crash at full steam and drove over the hood of another car.
More racing and then another round of greenflag pitstops. Ernie Irvan stayed out to collect the Gillette Halfway Leader Bonus which was then a prize to the leader midway in the race. Laps later, Mark Martin fell off the pace and went to the garage with a busted engine, ending his chances for the championship.
Irvan pitted soon after, handing the lead to Bill Elliott once again on lap 166. Alan Kulwicki once again went on the charge and took the lead away from Elliott in racing conditions on lap 210, taking it three laps after the fifth green-flag restart of the day. Kulwicki would go on to lead the following 100 laps, keeping the lead during two caution flag periods as well.
Many laps later, Dale Earnhardt unluckily found the wall in Turns 3 and 4, scrunching the Goodwrench Chevrolet solidly from the rear. This is perhaps could describe Earnhardt's unwieldly 1992 season, the first since 1979 that he did not finish in the top ten in points at the end of the year. Interestingly enough, Earnhardt was the 1990 and 1991 NASCAR champion, both titles he fought hard for.
Caution came out and Bill Elliott took command of the race again. A final round of pit stops happened around lap 315, or less than ten laps to go. Elliott wound up on top but Kulwicki, who had been leading since lap 210, was knocking on his back door. Both drivers had nearly indentical pit stop times.
Davey Allison had his chances swept up in a freak accident involving Ernie Irvan. Rusty Wallace had tapped Irvan coming onto the frontstretch and Irvan swerved one way and then back directly into the path of the 28. Both cars took a hard hit from each other and it isn’t sure which took the worst damage. What was definite though was that Davey’s left front tire was bent outward, nulllifying any steering abilities. Allison’s day was done, a championship utterly stolen from him -- all he needed was a top six finish and he would have enough points over the field to have taken the championship trophy. It was a stunning turn of events to everyone watching across the world.
With Allison out of the race, it was becoming a race of numbers: You get five laps for leading a lap but that increases to ten points if you also lead the most laps. Both Kulwicki and Elliott had gained the five points for leading laps so it all came down to where they finished and who had led the most laps of the day. If Kulwicki, who entered the race ten points ahead of Elliott, came second to him without the five extra bonus points for leading the most laps, Elliott would gain five points for finishing a position higher than Kulwicki and grab the five extra points for leading the most laps, thus tying the two drivers in the points, to which Elliott would win on the basis of most wins. If Kulwicki got the five bonus points for leading the most laps and had came second to Bill, he would earn the same amount of points as Elliott did in the end and the championship would be his.
The laps until the finish spiraled downward with both drivers clocking up laps in the leading position. In the end, it was Bill Elliott who won the grueling and tense race. However, Kulwicki was the real winner. Coming out of the woodwork was the scary fact that Elliott lost the championship by one lap of not being in first place. One single lap was the determining factor that decided the championship. The five extra bonus points went to Kulwicki because he had led the most laps at 102 versus Elliott's 101, and thus the #7 driver was declared champ. Elliott and Kulwicki actually both earned the same amount of race points due to Kulwicki’s 5 extra points, obliterating any advantage from the five-point gap between finishing first and second. Kulwicki’s mere ten point lead over Elliott before the race remained the same, making it the closest points finish in NASCAR history.
Before he was immediately hounded by the press when he got out of his car, Kulwicki took a savoring, self-described “Polish victory lap” -- going backwards around the track. Kulwicki had done his first "Polish victory lap" when he won his first race at Phoenix in 1988. The fans loved it.
Kulwicki would declare his championship win a “Storybook finish”.
The final championship standings were as following: Alan Kulwicki · 4078
Bill Elliott · 4068
Davey Allison · 4015
Harry Gant · 3955
Kyle Petty · 3945
Mark Martin · 3887
Rest of the field · 3750 points or less
Sadly, two of those names would not be in the final race of 1993 to defend their top-5-in-points honors. Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash before the spring Bristol race. Davey Allison, one of the many members of the “Alabama Gang” that have died or nearly died either on the track or off it, was killed while landing a helicopter for a race weekend at Talladega Superspeedway. Their deaths caused an mournful uproar that many people new to the sport just wouldn’t know about, nor fully comprehend, how big the losses of Allison and Kulwicki, both assumed to be fierce competitors for years to come, were to the sport.
Hear Petty yell!
