This may have been posted previously, but if so I didn't see it. I just found on YouTube a wonderful hour-long video of a 1983 film commissioned by DiGard Racing and Miller Brewing celebrating Bobby Allison's 1983 NASCAR Winston Cup Series Championship.
You don't have to be a Bobby Allison fan (I am... and it was tough when he and Richard were beating and banging in the 70s) to appreciate this turning back of the racing clock some 31 years.
I first saw Bobby in the 60s when he and brother, Donnie came up from Alabama and stayed with the late Mr. Wilkinson to race modifieds at Richmond's Southside Speedway. I was at Beltsville, Maryland in July 1966 the first time Bobby drove the little #2 Chevelle... hadn't been painted yet.
The true enjoyment, though, is seeing in this film how the cars used to look and race when NASCAR was on its meteoric attendance and popularity rise in the early 80s.
More enjoyment comes from the film being shot at places we no longer race... Riverside, North Wilkesboro, the old Richmond half-mile. It is amazing to look back at some of the venues where we still race and realize how much they've changed since 1983, even little Martinsville. The poor Rockingham track is shown both spring and fall suffering through the inclement weather which just killed it on so many occasions.
This film is really special to me because I was down in the pits and garage at every one of these races. It was my final year as Manager of Wrangler NASCAR Special Events and the last year I worked with Dale Earnhardt and beloved car owner, Bud Moore.
I see so many faces in this film that I know and had forgotten. If you watch through the entire film, you'll see several RR members. I won't tell you who. That would be cheating.
In the opening sequences at Daytona in February, that's the voice of the late and much missed Winston Cup Series Director, Dick Beaty you hear on the garage P.A. urging teams to get through inspection for qualifying.
The inspector placing the templates on Bobby's DiGard car in the Daytona inspection station is Walter Wallace, a former Nashville track champion and respiratory therapist at Nashville's Baptist Hospital. Thanks to Russ Thompson for supplying the correct info on Walter. See his post below.
Remember, this film and the 1983 Championship came before Bobby's horrible career ending crash at Pocono. Bobby and Judy are constantly smiling throughout this Championship run as the elder and cagey Allison clinched the title in the season's final event at Riverside from the brash, young Darrell Waltrip. Unexpected to most, will be a shot near the end of Waltrip driving up to Bobby as he comes off the Riverside track that cold and soon rainy November afternoon to congratulate him. I've never seen that footage before.
Nothing in this film even hints at the dark days to come involving Clifford at Michigan and Davey at Talladega. These were happy times.
Just before the half-way point of this great film, the action shifts to the old Richmond half-mile where Bobby and DW always ran strong, even though Richard Petty is still the track's all-time winner. I was sponsoring that race. It was the old Wrangler SanforSet 400 and you'll notice a lot of blue and yellow around the old, worn out Fairgrounds oval.
During the Richmond September 1983 race coverage there is a real treat for our newer race fans who've never heard the late master of racetrack public address announcing, Ray Melton. At around the 23:31 mark on the video, you'll hear Ray Melton over the Richmond track's Carolina Sound System speakers erected by Harlan Hoover introducing both Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip. This clip is one of the few places I know outside of the movie, Thunder in Carolina where Ray can be heard.
I especially enjoyed the footage from the fall Atlanta race at the old Atlanta oval, a track I just loved. You could stand on the raised pit road at Atlanta and see all the way across the depressed infield to the backstretch. Of course, when it rained on RR's Tim Leeming in that infield, things could get very tricky navigating a motor home in that red Georgia clay.
At the beginning of the Atlanta race, Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America is shown singing the National Anthem. She had been brought to Atlanta by Gillette Atra razors. They had no place to "house" her during the race, so she stayed in my Wrangler V.I.P. Suite in turn 1, much to the enjoyment of my Wrangler guests.
I love seeing the Atlanta track when all the pine trees still surrounded the turns outside of the walls. I, along with my assistant Wrangler program manager, used to string large Wrangler banners between those trees at dawn on race day morning where they became free billboards during the events there.
I remember that just as Bobby clinched his Championship at Riverside in the final event of 1983, the sky opened up with a hard, cold rain and the Riverside desert turned to gumbo mud. All the racers looked like wet cats when we got back to the Riverside Holiday Inn awaiting a red eye or Monday morning flight back to Atlanta.
You'll get to see, also, a little glimpse of how glamorous the NASCAR Winston Cup Awards Banquet was when we used to hold it in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. You'll note, too, that Rob Griggs had yet to change the name of Grand National Scene newspaper to Winston Cup Scene.
Anyway, get comfortable, allow yourself some time, and enjoy NASCAR racing the way it used to be when it was fun. Tally up all the RR members you think you see. That'll be fun.
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM
