1978 Dixie 500: King, Donnie, King, Donnie - Confusion reigneth!

With two races to go and a third consecutive championship in the hip pocket of Cale Yarborough and his #11 Junior Johnson team, the Cup fellas headed for Atlanta for the Dixie 500. Source: Motor Racing Programme Covers

Headed into the race, fans continued to follow the story of Richard Petty's losing streak. Having gone winless since the Firecracker 400 on July 4, 1977, the King had only 2 more chances to avoid going 0'fer in 1978.

Cale Yarborough won the pole but the story seemed to take a back seat to many Silly Season stories, rumors and gossip. Involved in the mix were DW, Buddy Baker, Lennie Pond, Dave Marcis, and rookie Dale Earnhardt. What else is new these days? Source: Sumter Daily Item

King Richard kept a close eye on his competitors during qualifying. The Dispatch 's sports editor did not keep a close eye on photo captions and apparently overlooked the fact that the LA Times 500 at ONTARIO was the final race of the season - not Atlanta.

Several future stars raced in the 1978 Dixie 500.

• Dale Earnhardt - His 2nd start at Atlanta ended with far better results than his first race there two years earlier in Johnny Ray's car. It was also his first start with Rod Osterland's team as a teammate to Dave Marcis. The rest as they say is history as Earnhardt became Marcis' successor in the 2 car in 1979. ( JC Hayes )

• Terry Labonte who had taken over the Billy Hagan ride from Skip Manning races Dave Marcis in the primary Osterland car. Atlanta was the last of 5 races Terry raced in1978 so he could protect his rookie status for 1979 when he'd end up in a class of rookies including Earnhardt, Joe Millikan and Harry Gant. ( JC Hayes )

• Bill Elliott made the last of his 10 starts in 1978 in his familiar #9 ... but in an OLDSMOBILE. As a driver who'd driven Fords and Mercurys throughout the heyday of his career, its puzzling as to why he raced an Olds. I'm not enough of an Elliott historian to know if there is a back story. If so, I hope someone will add a comment about it. ( Craig Bontrager )

Starting 6th, Buddy Baker was the rabbit of the day. He led 151 of the race's 328 laps. But as seemed to happen so often in his career - enough to almost be cruel - his M.C. Anderson Chevy lost an engine. He was done with about 17 laps to go and finished 21st.

Petty was lively in his Monte Carlo and paced the field for 67 laps, and Cale led for 61 laps of his own. Dave Marcis got in the mix too as the laps wound down. One car the drivers up front really had no reason to pay attention to was Donnie Allison in the Hawaiian Tropic Chevy. Allison seemed to be a lap down and no threat for the win.

Donnie Allison being serviced by Hoss Ellington's Runt Pittman led crew ( Robert Turner )

With only a handful of laps to go, a late race, 5-car crash set the stage for a crazy finish.

The green flew again with 3 to go. Marcis and Petty were going door to door. As the checkers flew, all eyes were on the finish that would bring Petty's 1-1/2 season losing streak to an end. (From TMC Productions)

But as Petty pulled into victory lane as the crowd roared with approval, Donnie said "not so fast my friends". He argued he had made up his lap and was actually ahead of both Petty and Marcis. He claimed HE was the winner - not Petty.

The initial decision was then reversed - and Donnie was allowed to go to victory lane. But then the decision was made to review the scoring cards, and then no one was certain who the winner was.

Petty met with NASCAR's scoring officials. Its still amazing that as recently as 1978 fans went home not knowing who'd won the race. Source: Atlanta Motor Speedway

I'm not sure if King was thinking "this really can't be happening" or "why did I decide to wear THIS shirt today?" (TMC archives)

Ultimately, Donnie got the hardware and the King's streak continued to the next race - and then on to the 1979 season. (Although he did win the 1978 Phoenix Winston West race for a good team morale boost.) Petty was credited with 2nd, Marcis third, and Earnhardt 4th as he notched his 1st career top 5.

How about this jewel of "revisionist history" courtesy of AMS's website :

Young Brian France Determines 1978 Dixie 500 Winner

The 1978 Dixie 500 ended in controversy and fans were left to wonder who actually won the race until an unexpected player, 16-year-old Brian France , stepped forward to settle the matter.

Richard Petty appeared to edge Dave Marcis to the finish line by a fender in an Atlanta photo finish to claim the win in the 1978 Dixie 500. However, before Petty was able to pull into Victory Lane, the track's Public Address announcer proclaimed Donnie Allison the winner.

Allison had blown past Petty and Marcis with only seven laps remaining, but after being two circuits down earlier in the race, the race leaders and most fans assumed Allison was still one lap down. However, the NASCAR veteran had in fact previously reemerged on the lead lap and overtook Petty and Marcis to claim the race lead.

But just after Allison had conducted his winner's interview in Victory Lane, Atlanta International Raceway officials announced Petty was the winner, further confusing the matter.

When continued conversation between track officials, scorers and drivers failed to definitively confirm the winner, France emerged from the Scorer's Booth to confidently verify Allison was the winner. The victory marked Allison's 10th and final NASCAR win and his only victory in Atlanta. The win also completed an Allison brother sweep of Atlanta's 1978 races, as older brother Bobby won the 1978 Atlanta 500 in March.

Race reports.

From Sumter Daily Item

And from the Daytona Beach Morning Journal . And what's that? Cynicism and sarcasm from Donnie Allison?? WOW, that almost never happened during his career. Ha ha.

We were at the race, motor home, turn four. While I was pretty good at keeping up with how the cars were running, and especially The King, we had a guy with us who always was right with weather predictions no matter what the official weather forecast was, and was amazing with anything involving numbers. In later years I learned he was/is what is often called an "idiot savant", very highly functioning and in every other way a totally normal guy. You would never want to play cards with him because he could count cards and almost know what everyone was holding in their hands. When NASCAR first reversed Petty's win, my friend said it was absolutely impossible that Allison was ahead of Petty. Even years after the fact, Robbie would explain an almost lap-by-lap run down of that race and repeat over and over that Petty won that race.

Now, as I sit here and read that it was a 16 year old Brian Z. that claims to have verified Allison's win all I can say is "no wonder the race was screwed". Honestly? Brian Z. France at 16 expected to have any intelligence at all to verify whether it was even day or night and he came up with the Allison verification. That would make be bust a guy laughing if it wasn't so sad.

Chase, I'd be interested, too, to see if Cody Dinsmore, Jay Coker, or any other student of the Elliott dynasty can shed some light on the Bill Elliott / Geogre Elliott Oldsmobile entry for the 1978 Dixie 500.

Looks to me like Bill Elliott is in a Benny Parsons / Dewitt Olds.

Also, since I've seen Chase use these in other stories and I have them, thought I'd add the ticket brochure and my well-worn race ticket. Not sure the reason for the poor condition of the ticket. I usually tried to keep them in good shape.

And two photos from the SCR story covering the race.

Coming to the checkered. Only it wasn't for the win as everyone thought.

You may be right. Benny and Cale both had First National City Travelers Checks as a sponsor, and the cars looked similar. But I'd never studied them that closely until now.

Benny's car was painted blue along the bottom, and Cale's was yellow/gold - almost a carryover from Holly Farms color. And Elliott's car has the blue along the bottom of the sides of the car. L.G. DeWitt owned the car AND the track. A possible promoter's option to get the Dawsonville kid into the show?

Benny's 1978 colors ( John Betts ):

Cale's 1978 colors ( David Staten ):

In his book and the biography Al Thomy wrote about him circa 1987, it was stated the car was a one race rental from Mr. DeWitt and Benny's team. Looking at Bill's record from 1978, he only ran one race after Darlington, and that was at Charlotte in the National 500, where he blew up with a handful of laps to go. Not sure of anything beyond that- if they had issues getting the Mercury ready for Atlanta or what.

Great post, Russ. Thank you.

Thanks, jay.

Ironically, 1978 was the last year the L.G. DeWitt team won a race, as mentioned in the 1980 AP story below carried in the Daytona paper: