Cody Dinsmore did an excellent job last week of relating the details of that last race in 1992 which allowed Alan Kulwicki to win the championship by finishing second to Bill Elliott and to have managed to lead the ONE necessary lap to give him the extra points for most laps led which accounted for the championship. It was a very carefully calculated gamble by Paul Andrews who was Alan’s crew chief at the time. I won’t attempt to recap what Cody has already so brilliantly stated, but I will point out that, with six races to go in the 1992 season, Alan was 278 points out of first place. He had written himself out of the chase although he was mathematically capable, with the right breaks, of winning.
A few interesting facts about Alan Kulwicki perhaps not as well known as the Polish Victory Lap. I “met” Alan once, maybe twice, if you could actually say you ever met Alan Kulwicki. I actually have no recollection that we ever exchanged words and that is not to say Alan was rude, only that he is one person I distinctly recall as suffering from the most acute case of “tunnel vision” probably ever going without official diagnosis. He was concentrated on one thing and that was racing and winning. There are books of NASCAR history and about Alan Kulwicki in which you can read the details and Wickipedia has a good write up about what he accomplished and how he accomplished it. There are stories that Ray Evernhamn lasted only six weeks working for Alan because of the perfectionist Alan was and I don’t think there are many among us who would question Evernham’s intensity.
There is the story that when Xerex Antifreeze signed on as Alan’s first major sponsor, the deal was he got a tractor-trailer load of antifreeze he had to sell and could use the money from the sale for his race car. Alan literally poured his heart and soul and everything he was into that race team. He was a racer. He was not a business man. He was not the one who shined up to do tv commercials, he worked on the race car, he had grease under his nails, and if Paul Andrews was under the car, so likely was Alan Kulwicki. Alan WAS an owner-driver. Again, taking nothing from Tony, to equate Tony as the same type owner-driver as was Alan is unfair to both. Alan was an engineer with a degree which allowed him to build, with his own hands, the cars he drove to victory and to that championship. As to Tony, he is a driver with multi-million dollar corporate sponsors and while he is talented behind the wheel, and, I am told, capable of working on the cars, it is unfair to equate having your engines and chassis supplied by Rick Hendrick Motor Sports, put into NASCAR mandated manufactured bodies, and maintained by a couple hundred employees. That is quite a difference in the meaning of an owner-driver between these two. While NASCAR wants to get the absolute most mileage it can from the tight race and the fact that, for the first time in six years we have a champion NOT named Johnson, I think it is grossly unfair to compare what Alan accomplished with this “little team that could” and what Tony accomplished with Rick Hendrick backing, although unofficially. I also compared the pictures of Tony’s winning car and all the sponsor and associate sponsor logos on that car to pay the bills. That is a good thing but looking at Alan’s sponsor, do you realize he was sponsored by a restaurant chain that couldn’t pay their servers sufficient salaries to afford decent clothes to wear!!! Seriously, Alan accomplished what he did because he was Alan Kulwicki. He moved south with a borrowed truck after his truck burned as he was getting ready to move. He worked alone or with little help until Paul Andrews came into the picture and even then it was a closed society between he and Andrews and apparently Alan calculated and controlled every move made by the team. It was Andrews, however, who took that calculated chance keeping Alan out that one extra lap in Atlanta that historic Sunday afternoon in 1992 in earn the points that would enable the Championship.
Just for kicks, I went back in the records and from all I can determine, the last to win as owner-driver prior to Alan was Lee Petty in 1959. I am imagining that Alan was much like Lee Petty in the hands on control he demanded in every regard. That made him a champion. On April 1, 1993, Alan was lost in a plane crash in Tennessee. Would he have repeated as champion? Would he have been a multiple champion or was that 1992 title a one shot deal. Personally, I would like to think that he would have won at least one more, if not two, because I like to believe that back in those days the work ethic in the sport outweighted the money beginning to be spent in pursuit of winning at all costs. The sport surely changed that November day in 1992 with Alan winning the championship, The King retiring, and a young man appearing not yet ready to graduate high school beginning his career. Changes were coming, but, in fact, had already started. Most of us here tonight miss what was, yet most of us are learning, albeit it in small doses, to accept what is here and what it yet to come. Yeah, I know it’s not easy for us oldtimers but whatever you’re being fed by the talking heads on tv this week and this weekend, please do NOT allow the comparisions between Tony and Alan diminish what Alan accomplished almost 20 years ago or what Tony did last week. Times are different, circumstances are different. But let us not give up on what all of our heroes have worked so hard to accomplish.
I remember when the 1969 season ended for the series in which I raced, we pulled the car home from the last race, rolled it off the trailer into the garage, locked the door to the garage, delivered the borrowed trailer back to Mr. Corley, and pretty much went through October, November and December without much ado about the race car. Oh, I would unlock the garage from time to time to go in, sit in the car and anticipate the coming 1970 season. We would start to work on the car in earnest in January to be ready when the season started in April but that would all be fun for us. We loved it. It was racing. We made enough each week to race the next race and sometimes to eat at McDonalds, driver-owner’s treat, but mostly it was the wonder of being a part of something so special for all of us then. Wonder if Tony feels that now? Somehow I doubt he feels that. I’m sure it feels good to be a champion but it also feels good to be right here, right now, with the finest folks in the world listening to what I have had to say! Congratulations Tony. To all you media type, when you mention Alan Kulwicki this week, mention him in the reverence in which a true hero and icon should be mentioned. He IS the last owner-driver to win the championship and no disrespect to Tony whatsoever. That’s just the way it is.
Tim Leeming
legendtim83@yahoo.com
