Alan & Davey: 25 Years Later, A Tribute

Alan & Davey 25 Years Later, A Tribute

By Brian Cotnoir

          In sports, the greats always seem to be linked to each other.  In Basketball you think Magic Johnson & Larry Bird, in Baseball you think Red Sox vs. Yankees, in Hockey you think Alexander Ovechkin & Sidney Crosby, and auto racing is no exception to that rule.   Over seven decades we’ve seen many great rivalries link drivers together from Richard Petty & David Pearson,  Rusty Wallace & Darrell Waltrip, and Dale Earnhardt Sr. and …well everyone!  These rivalries weren’t necessarily between competitors who hated each other, but just drivers who competed against one another with fierce intensity. When you think of one of those drivers, you immediately think of the other.            

        

     Probably the greatest linking of drivers had nothing to do with a rivalry, but rather a series of personal tragedies that spanned one somber season in 1993, that saw both drivers careers tragically cut short.  I of course am talking about drivers Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison, both taken from their family, friends, and fans too soon.  It seems like every 5 years or so, their names come up a lot in the NASCAR community as rising stars gone too soon and to ponder the what-if’s.  Both of these drivers are forever linked, and now with the announcement that they will both enter the NASCAR Hall of Fame together next year, we are all left to reflect on (possibly) the Last Great Bond that links these two drivers together forever.                                    '

     Today I will pay homage to both of these drivers and their legacy’s and express what they’ve meant to me.

Alan

 

Champion Alan Kulwicki

I was born in 1989 and grew up in a middle class, suburban family.  My father was a huge fan of NASCAR, and passed his enjoyment of the sport on to me.  I remember so many Sundays watching races with my dad in the living room.  He’d also take me to Monster Truck Rally’s, and the local short track to watch racing.  My bedroom as a child was covered with posters and pictures of NASCAR drivers, but there was one drivers picture in my room I didn’t know.  It was a picture of man in a white racing suit, and I had no idea how he is.   I don’t remember what I exactly said, but when I was probably 5 or 6, I asked my parents who that was a picture of in my room.  My told me about Alan Kulwicki, he told me he was a race car driver who died in a plane crash.  I asked my father a bunch more questions about it him, and I remember him telling me about how he used to drive in NASCAR a few years ago—I unfortunately was too young to recall ever watching him race—and how Geoff Bodine bought his old race team and that’s why he races car #7.  But being a curious kid, I wanted to know more.                                                                                           
     Somehow or another my mother found a VHS tape about Alan’s life, It was called “Alan Kulwicki: Champion of Dreams”, and I finally got to see Alan race.  I was way too young to understand the video, but I remember being happy that I got to see Alan Kulwicki in his race car.              
        As I got older, I began to learn more about Alan Kulwicki; a driver from Wisconsin who decided to chase his own NASCAR dreams.  He had an engineering degree and started up his own team.  Against all odds, he and his underdog team—in a Ford appropriately nicknamed the “Underbird”—overcame a massive points deficit to win the 1992 Winston Cup Championships at the Season Finale in Atlanta.  Alan was the last “True” Owner/Driver to win a Championship (I’m not counting Tony Stewart, because he wasn’t the Full Owner and purchased a stake in a crappy cup team, and helped turn them around, he didn’t build that team himself).   However, he would never get the chance to defend his title.   A few months later he perished in a plane crash near Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.  It’s difficult to say whether or not he would’ve competed to defend his title, he did have three Top 10’s in 1993 before his untimely death, but I think it would’ve been difficult for him to repeat his success.   Had he lived, I think Kulwicki would’ve still been contending for wins throughout the decade, but I think eventually he would’ve struggled to compete in the 2000’s against the Young Guns of the sport, and ultimately I think he probably would’ve either ended up selling his team or shutting down entirely.

Davey

Davey Allison, Daytona 500 Champ, 1992

My first favorite driver in NASCAR was Ernie Irvan.  The first NASCAR toy I remember having as a kid was a 1:24 scale Texaco Havoline Ford that I used to play with all the time.  It’s funny how you remember so many random and insignificant things, but as I got a little older and learned to read, I noticed one day that on my favorite toy that it didn’t say Ernie Irvan’s name on it, it had someone else’s name written on it. Like with the Alan Kulwicki picture in my room, I asked my dad whose name it was on my favorite toy, and he told me about Davey Allison.  He told me that he used to drive the Texaco car before Ernie Irvan, and he died in a helicopter crash, and that’s why I never saw him in any NASCAR races.         
My dad was able to tell me a lot more about Davey Allison than he could about Alan Kulwicki.  He told me that his dad, Bobby, was another famous race car driver, and that Davey was one of the best drivers in racing.  Davey was a real popular driver with fans, and he won a lot of big races like the Daytona 500, the All-Star Race, the Coca Cola 600, and the Winston 500 at his home track in Talladega.  He also told me that he was also involved in some pretty bad accidents too.   He had 19 wins in his career and almost won the Championship in 1992, and was in the Top 5 in points in the 1993, before his untimely death.            
           I think had Davey lived he would’ve been a champion driver.  I think he an Robert Yates would’ve one at least one championship together, hell he probably could’ve managed to keep Dale Sr. from reaching 7 championships, he might have even held off Jeff Gordon and kept him from his early success.  I think Davey Allison easily could’ve surpassed 50+ wins in his career, and I bet you his son Robbie would’ve followed in his footsteps and would’ve raced against with him in NASCAR too. 

                                                                                      

25 Years Later

          It’s really sad to think it’s been 25 years since we lost both of these amazing drivers.   Sometimes, it feels like a real kick in the gut, because once people start talking about and remember Alan Kulwicki, you just know that a few months later those some people will be talking about Davey Allison. I wish I would’ve had memories of watching them race on TV as a kid (I was only 3 years-old when they both passed away). I think about how different the sport could’ve been.  I probably would’ve wound up a Davey Allison fan because of that toy Texaco Ford, and would’ve seen him win lots of races.                         

        As an adult, I think about their families.  A while back when NASCAR Race Hub did their “Chasing Davey” short film about Robbie Allison trying to start his own racing career, I got a little choked up.  I thought about how his kids were not much younger than me when they lost their dad and how they had to create memories of him from events told in old stories and film footage of him.                                                    

        I also think about their legacies.   I think about when Jeff Gordon retired, and he was the last guy who raced against both of them competitively, and how all the other people who worked with them and raced against them—Larry McReynolds, Dale Jarret, Rusty Wallace, and a bunch of others—are now NASCAR commentators.  I think it’s important that we keep the legacies of these two great men alive.   I’m so happy that both of them are going into the NASCAR Hall of Fame together, and about how younger generations of fans will still be able to learn and know about the great drivers Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison.   

Rusty Wallace (2) and Dale Sr. (3) Pay Tribute to their fallen friends