RIP to NASCAR’s Bobby Allison, and Thank You for the Memories

There have been many since—hundreds, really—but Bobby Allison was my first. My First Official NASCAR Star Sighting. It would be a long time before I saw NASCAR stars at an actual NASCAR race, which came maybe 25 years later in 1989, covering the season finale in Atlanta. But Bobby Allison was a racer, and racers want to race, meaning that when he wasn’t at a NASCAR race, he was probably on the road to some short track within, say, 250 miles of his home in Hueytown, Alabama.

That included the long-defunct Lakeland Raceway, a paved short track near Memphis. As a race-obsessed child, I was blessed with three things: Lakeland, Riverside Speedway in West Memphis, Arkansas, and a father who took me to races, not so much because he wanted to go, but because I did. Every weekend. When he was otherwise occupied, I’d hitch a ride to the Riverside dirt track with Tommy Terrell’s dad, in his ’68 Chevy El Camino. Tommy, Danny Langston, and I rode in the bed, which is likely to horrify anyone under the age of 40. But we survived. The only time I was remotely scared was while crossing the bridge over the Mississippi River. That was a looong way down.

Anyway, Allison’s appearance—in a modified, or a sprint car, I don’t remember—was big news at the little track, and as I recall, he won, stealing money from our hungry local drivers, some thought. But I was kind of star-struck. I was too shy to ask for an autograph in the pits afterward, but after all these years, I remember Bobby Allison.

Allison died over the weekend. He was preceded in death by his wife, Judy, in 2015, and his sons Davey (killed when he was trying to land his new helicopter in the Talladega infield, in 1992) and Clifford (killed in a crash at Michigan International Speedway, in 1993). Davey was 32, Clifford just 27.

If that wasn’t enough tragedy for one man, Allison crashed at Pocono Raceway in 1988, on the first lap of the race. It wasn’t that bad until journeyman driver Jocko Maggiacomo hit Allison’s car on the driver’s side. Allison was briefly declared dead at the hospital, but he survived, subsequently enduring months of rehabilitation to repair his body and his brain. The crash cost Allison some of his most valued memories: He had no recollection of the Daytona 500 that he won, with Davey finishing a close second. Allison won the Daytona 500 three times, won 85 races in all—only three drivers have won more (Richard Petty, David Pearson and Jeff Gordon), and he notched a startling 447 top-10s.

Often irascible as a driver, Allison mellowed after his crash. In his later years was downright humble and often very funny. While he couldn’t remember everything, he recalled a lot, and his stories just sang.

Hagerty writer Grace Houghton profiled Gary Nelson, Allison’s crew chief for his championship-winning 1983 season, last September, and it’s too interesting not to include here. In it, Nelson talked at length about working with Allison. Nelson is my age, and he was also in awe. Here’s Grace’s account:

“In 1982, DiGard signed Bobby Allison, a 44-year-old driver from Miami who had a reputation for being hard to get along with. “One of the things that followed Bobby around,” said Nelson, “was that he had raced for 21 years and he had raced for 21 different teams.” In nearly two decades of racing in the Cup series, Allison had never won a championship.

At first, Nelson was star-struck—Allison was one of his heroes, someone he had read about in the magazines as a teenager on the other side of the United States.

As he got to know Allison, Nelson realized that “everybody’s just the same—they just want to win races, everybody at that level. That’s contagious.” He discovered a driver who was ready to settle in longer term with a team. The pair won their very first race together—the 1982 Daytona 500. In 1983, at the age of 45, Allison won the NASCAR Cup championship that had eluded him for so long.

What made Allison so special? His ability to feel the tires, says Nelson. “I mean, even the mid-pack guys or the back-of-the-pack guys are very good at that, but Bobby just seemed to excel in it. He could get more out of his tires, I believe, more speed for longer time than most other drivers. And it was just fun to watch him do that. I could sit there and take credit for all the wins, but it’s really the driver.”

Like so many relationships, success came from trust. “A lot of times you get two guys who know exactly how they want to do something and they’re trying their best to convince the other person to sell their idea. And our magic really was that I could make a suggestion, but I wasn’t trying to sell it, and Bobby would make a suggestion, and he wasn’t trying to sell it. And together we built our ideas into, ‘That makes the most sense, let’s go that way.’ And that means conversations were just like steps going up to perform better.”

That trust, says Nelson, is fragile. DiGard couldn’t keep the momentum that Nelson and Allison had found. In 1984, Allison started 30 races but won only twice, and DiGard finished sixth in the standings. As suddenly as their success had arrived, “as with everything, it kind of went away.” In 1985, the team added a second driver but DNF’d more than twice as often as it had in ’84. DiGard didn’t win a race in ’85 and slipped to 12th in the championship.”

Bobby Allison, 86, will be missed.