November 15, 1992: Atlanta

London, Ontario (November 15, 2007) -

I must say it feels a little bit strange for a Canadian open wheel fan like me to be talking about stock car racers from Wisconsin on two consecutive days, but I feel compelled to mention that today marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most riveting and dramatic races ever run, in any motorsports discipline.

It was the finale of the 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup season at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. In many years, the final race of the NASCAR season has proven to be rather anticlimactic, despite recent efforts by the NASCAR brass to make it more interesting with their "Chase" playoff format and such. 1992 was no ordinary NASCAR season, however.

Going into the race, 6 drivers had a mathematical shot at the title: Davey Allison was the leader, with Alan Kulwicki 30 points behind, Bill Elliott 40 points behind, and Harry Gant, Kyle Petty, and Mark Martin further back, but still within reach. This was, to that point in time, the closest championship chase ever in NASCAR, and still is to this day if you discount the contrived Chase format now in place, which artificially bunches the field for the last 10 races of the season. Elliott and Allison, two legitimate superstars of the sport - Elliott already a champion, and Allison, son of legendary Bobby, widely regarded as a champion in waiting - were being hyped in the media as the pre-race favourites, but Kulwicki was in the thick of it as well, having fought his way back into contention after being 278 points behind with 6 races left in the season.

The race was also going to be significant for some other reasons too; It was to be Richard Petty's last race. After 35 years, 7 NASCAR titles (at that time a record, which he now shares with the late Dale Earnhardt), and 201 career wins (96 more than any other driver), The King was finally ready to hang 'em up. At the same time, although nobody knew it at the time, NASCAR's next great star was making his debut - Jeff Gordon, after blazing an unprecedented trail through the USAC midget, sprint, and Silver Crown divisions and running well enough, although not spectacularly, in the Busch series for 2 seasons, was noticed by Rick Hendrick and signed on to drive for a brand new team for Hendrick. Both Petty's finale and Gordon's debut were rather ignominious - Gordon crashed after 164 laps and was credited with 31st, and Petty literally went out with a bang, as his car caught fire after being involved in an accident. Those who saw it on tv will remember it well, as Petty was heard yelling "Get the bleepin' fire extinguisher", thanks to ESPN's in-car camera.

The math said that if Davey Allison could finish 5th or better, he could win the championship, no matter what the other contenders did, but his race came to a premature end when he was caught up in somebody else's accident. This left Elliott and Kulwicki to duel for the title. Alan and his crew knew that if they claimed the 5 bonus points for leading the most laps, and finished in 2nd place, Elliott could not win the title, even if he won the race. In the end, everything played out to perfection for Alan and his team, as he got the lead and managed to keep it long enough to guarantee that he would lead the most laps before pitting for fuel. Elliott went on to win the race, with Kulwicki in 2nd. Kulwicki led 103 laps, Elliott led 102. As the owner as well as the driver of his race team, Kulwicki accomplished something few would have thought possible. To this day the only other driver who also owned his own team to have won the title since 1961 is Richard Petty.

Kulwicki was set to defend his title in 1993, but his season did not get off to the best of starts as obligations to sponsors took up much of his time, and then the unthinkable happened - on April 1st, 1993 while Kulwicki and 3 others were about to land at an airstrip near the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, their small jet crashed. There were no survivors. Less than 3 months later, Davey Allison was also killed, in a helicopter crash at Talladega Speedway in Alabama.

Today, Kulwicki's legacy is evident in many facets of NASCAR; many of his employees and crew members went on to have long and very successful careers working for other teams, and his scientific and analytical approach was ahead of its time in the NASCAR world, but is now accepted as the norm. A seat-of-the-pants approach to car setup and hard-nosed tough guy driving tactics had reigned supreme for years, but that was about the change, thanks in part to Alan.

Alan was not cut out of the same mold as most drivers of his day. He was a college educated engineering graduate. He was an individualist, and a perfectionist, and had a reputation for being hard to get along with. It would be easy to look back on things with rose coloured glasses and say he was a genius, but he was not, though that is not to say he wasn't intelligent. He was simply hardworking, determined, and made the most of the limited resources he had available to him.

It's hard to imagine what today's NASCAR would be like if Allison and Kulwicki were still with us. Alan had made his way South from the short tracks of Wisconsin and the ASA series with next to nothing in the mid-80's, and risen to the top of his profession in a very short amount of time. He eschewed most of the conventional wisdom in the NASCAR garage area, and had turned down offers to drive for other very well established, championship-calibre teams owned by legends such as Bud Moore and Junior Johnson. Owner/drivers are even more rare now than they were in Kulwicki's era, and it is debatable whether he could have hung on, or whether he would have eventually joined another team, but many fans believe that if anybody could have done it and been successful, it would have been Alan.

A few weeks ago, during ABC's pre-race broadcast of the Nextel Cup event at Atlanta, a short segment aired about Kulwicki. It can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uERcwUEyLIU