AN UNBELIEVABLE DAY

By: DAVID CARAVIELLO Of The Charleston Post and Courier Staff

Originally Published on: 11/15/02

Ten years ago, NASCAR's past, present and future converged

HOMESTEAD, FLA. - Tom Roberts reaches into a drawer and pulls out a thin booklet, the pages typewritten and the white cover slightly yellowed with age. It is the last press packet he ever prepared for former Winston Cup driver Alan Kulwicki, who 10 years ago capped one of NASCAR's most memorable seasons by becoming its most unlikely modern champion.

It is dated March 31, 1993. The release advances that weekend's Winston Cup event at Bristol Motor Speedway, where Kulwicki was defending champion. It never went out - the next day, Kulwicki and three others were killed when their twin-engine airplane crashed on approach to an airport in eastern Tennessee.

But the booklet represents a time before that tragedy, when Kulwicki had risen from humble roots to become champion of America's most popular motorsports series. On the front cover is a photo of the driver, his hands raised in celebration after clinching the title in the 1992 finale at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The day was Nov. 15, 1992, and it was as momentous and unforgettable an afternoon as racing has ever produced.

"The way that day rolled off, all that we accomplished ... I'll hold that near and dear to my heart forever," said Roberts, a veteran NASCAR public relations man who now represents Rusty Wallace. "That gave him a taste of what it was going to take for the miracle to happen. And the miracle did happen."

It happened on a day that saw NASCAR's past, present and future converge at what was then a true 1.5-mile oval in Hampton, Ga. Richard Petty, the sport's most successful driver, started the last race of his 35-year career. A future four-time champion named Jeff Gordon, then a little-known hotshot from the Busch series, made his first Winston Cup start. And Kulwicki outdueled Bill Elliott and Davey Allison to win the closest title race of all time.

Time and tragedy have combined to magnify the significance of that day. It was a final hurrah for small driver-owners like Kulwicki, competing in a sport that was being overrun by multi-car operations. It was the culmination of a season that was decided by a mere 10 points. And hovering above it all is heartbreak - just three months after Kulwicki's fatal crash, Allison was killed when his helicopter went down in the infield of Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

"I guess there was a part of me, after all we had been through ... that asked, why did we not win this championship?" said Larry McReynolds, Allison's former crew chief, whose team went into that final race with the points lead but wound up third. "On April 1, five months later, I felt like I kind of got my answer when Alan was killed. But three months later, on July 13, it became a little more puzzling again."

PAST AND FUTURE KINGS

Six drivers went into that final race of 1992 with a mathematical chance at the championship, but in reality the title came down to three men. It had been a hard season for Allison, who had weathered the death of his grandfather, the loss of his brother Clifford in a fatal crash at Michigan, and a pair of hard accidents. He was so beat up by the time the series reached Talladega in October that his team used Velcro to attach his hand to the gearshift.

But exiting the penultimate event at Phoenix, Allison held a 30-point lead over Kulwicki and a 40-point lead over Elliott. As close as the points race was, the big story heading into that final weekend was Petty, who was making his final Winston Cup start. Kyle Petty had an outside shot at the title, a fact that paled in comparison to his father's last race.

"More that weekend than anything else, it was his last race," the part-time Isle of Palms resident said. "Because he had been running since 1958 or '59, to make it through four different decades, with everything he had done, it was all about Richard Petty that weekend. I don't remember much from my perspective."

There were statues dedicated to the King, streets renamed after the King, and a huge party thrown for the King in the Georgia Dome the night before the race. "I remember my wife asking me if I wanted to go to it," said McReynolds, now an analyst for Fox television. "I would have loved to have gone, but I wanted to stay in my hotel room and stay very focused on what we had to go out and do the next day."

Virtually unnoticed amid the hubbub was Gordon, a 21-year-old who had won three races in the Busch series and was making his Winston Cup debut for Hendrick Motorsports. That weekend he would finish 31st, four spots ahead of Richard Petty - an inauspicious start to what has become one of NASCAR's greatest careers.

"I felt confident in what I could do," said Gordon, who has won 61 races in 327 starts since then. "At the time, I just wanted to build a team that would gain experience and consistency. I didn't even know if I had what it took to win races in Winston Cup. When you get to this level, you know you're surrounded by the best. You know these guys are so good. You just don't know if you're good enough to be here, let alone win."

To the teams involved in the championship race, Petty and Gordon were minor players in what was shaping up as NASCAR's closest finish ever. Kulwicki was on the brink of a title despite having just 16 full-time employees, including his secretary and himself. He thrived on being the underdog; he took to wearing a small Mighty Mouse patch on his firesuit, and his crew removed the first two letters of the Thunderbird decal from his car's front end. That weekend, he drove an Underbird.

"Alan kept us so focused," said Cal Lawson, Kulwicki's former team manager. "We worked so hard with Alan. He was so demanding of us. We worked so much and were so focused, in all honesty, it was just a matter of going to the next week and running another race. ... We just sort of went through our normal routines, and certainly didn't anticipate it coming down like it did."

Not everyone could work with Kulwicki, who drove his employees as hard as he drove himself. Ray Evernham lasted a few weeks, Bill Ingle a few months. Kulwicki may have driven the race car, but he saw himself as an owner first, and oversaw every aspect of his race team.

"Whenever you asked him to compare himself to somebody, he didn't rattle off drivers. He rattled off owners," Lawson said. "If you went to him and said, 'Are we working Monday? It's Labor Day.' He'd say, 'Well, why don't you call and see if Richard Childress has his guys working?' I never heard him compare himself to other drivers. He was very confident in his own ability."

ALMOST LIKE FATE

Ten years ago today, that ability carried Kulwicki to a championship. Late in that Atlanta race, Allison was running sixth - good enough to win the title - when he was caught up in an accident that started when Ernie Irvan cut a tire. Kulwicki finished second and gathered enough bonus points to win the title by 10 points over Elliott, who won the race. It is still the closest margin ever between a Winston Cup champion and runner-up.

"It was almost as if fate intervened to make it happen," Roberts said, "because of what would happen in the future."

The deaths of Kulwicki and Allison cast a pall over the sport, and left lingering questions over what the future might have held for the drivers had the separate crashes not occurred.

Allison was a charismatic 31-year-old with the powerful Robert Yates Racing organization behind him, and a potential that seemed limitless.

"I definitely think about Davey a lot. I just think he would have been a champion several times over," said McReynolds, author of a new book entitled "The Big Picture: My Life from the Pits to the Broadcast Booth."

"I don't want to take anything away from anybody, but I don't think Jeff Gordon would have four championships. I don't mean to be overconfident by that, but I just knew how good Davey was and how good our team was and how close-knit we were. I just think it was endless as to how many races we were going to win and how many championships we could have won."

Kulwicki won his championship at a time when multi-car teams were taking over NASCAR, which would likely have made it hard for him to continue as a driver-owner for very much longer. Roberts wonders if Kulwicki would have eventually teamed up with his friend and car owner Felix Sabates. But he admits that Kulwicki's independent nature would have made it difficult for him to work for anyone else.

"I have the biggest respect for Ricky Rudd and what he was able to do as an independent," said Roberts, referring to the driver who owned his own team for six years before going to work for Yates in 2000.

"Whenever he won a race, I'd either FedEx him a note or send him a fax or call him to say congratulations. I felt like he was the guy who was carrying on Alan's dream after Alan. But when Ricky couldn't do it anymore, I felt there would have been a parallel there. That would have been the ultimate ending point for Alan, too.

"If anybody could have carried on, it only would have been for a couple of more years."

Kulwicki had no shortage of offers, Lawson said.

There was one opportunity to drive for Junior Johnson, another at Hendrick, and another with the Wood Brothers. The former team manager thinks Kulwicki might have formed an alliance with a larger operation, giving him the ability to draw more resources without relinquishing total control.

"I'm not saying Alan would have ever been part of a real big organization," Lawson said, "... but I think he saw the benefits of expanding and having more resources to pull from.

"Alan was never going to give up control."

The final race of that 1992 season offered a glimpse into the NASCAR of today, one where the garages are full and the media spotlight is bright and the drivers are celebrities.

It marked the end of the sport's most successful career, and the end of the era where small teams could realistically compete for a title.

As a championship chase, it stands as the benchmark by which all others are measured. As a moment, it stands alone.

"Even today, with as tight a points championship as we've had, everybody references back to the 1992 championship," McReynolds said. "Every newspaper I pick up, even in years when the championship is a runaway, people still refer to the '92 championship."

"There were so many things that went into it," Roberts added. "It was just an unbelievable day."