Alan Kulwicki

The Lie You Believe: In 1992, during the Hooters 500, on the last pit stop while leading, Bill Elliott’s crew chief lost track of Alan Kulwicki. Believing Kulwicki to have pitted, Elliott was brought in for a pit stop. This allowed Kulwicki to stay out and lead an extra lap that resulted in Kulwicki receiving the five points for leading the most laps. If Elliott had stayed out and led that lap, he would have gotten the bonus points and would have won the championship via tiebreaker. Because of this, his crew chief, Tim Brewer was fired on the spot.

The Truth: In truth, Kulwicki actually pitted the lap before Elliott. Elliott was waiting for Kulwicki to make the move to pit road first, and once Kulwicki came down, Elliott came in the very next lap. Elliott’s crew did believe everyone else had pitted, but they had lost track of TERRY LABONTE. Labonte led one lap before handing the lead back to Elliott. This did cost Bill Elliott five bonus points for leading the most laps. Kulwicki got the bonus points by leading 103 laps to Elliott’s 102. If Elliott had led that lap instead of Terry Labonte, both drivers would have led 103 laps and BOTH would have received the 5 bonus points. But those bonus points would not have mattered, as it would have only cut Kulwicki’s lead to 5 points instead of the 10 points he actually won by. That lap that Terry Labonte led did not matter in the end. What really cost Elliott the championship was the run-in to Atlanta. In 4 of the 5 races before Atlanta, these were the results: Martinsville he finished 30th due to a blown motor, missed the setup at North Wilkesboro and finished 26th, Charlotte finished 30th due to a broken sway bar, and Phoenix overheating problems caused him to be 52 laps down and finish 31st. In the process, he gave up a lead of 278 to Kulwicki, to be nipped at the line by 10 points. Elliott’s crew had let him down with their setups several times over the previous weeks, and so the cumulative failure of the last month and a half led to Tim Brewer, the crew chief, being fired.

I hope you enjoyed this, I’m thinking about making this a little Reddit series as I deep dive in NASCAR history. So let me know what you think.

With the release of Oppenheimer this weekend, I was wondering what NASCAR story would best suite his directing style. Here I suggest the story of the Underbird himself Alan Kulwicki. He wanted to do everything his way from owning his own team, acquiring his own sponsors, and having a near perfect work ethic. I feel like Nolan's direction would provide a great backdrop for this story because at its roots it's a deeply personal story and plays into his more stylized style of directing. My question for you today is if you would agree or what other NASCAR story would you want Nolan to direct?

We all know who Alan Kulwicki was and his phenomenonal story to the top. But lost is when Hooters dropped their sponsorship of the team. When Alan died, Felix Sabates was appointed the one to oversee AKR. Alan said if something should happen to him, he wanted Jimmy Hensley to drive. The team did that and Hooters immediately pulled their sponsorship. The 1st race back for AKR was North Wilkesboro but without Hooters. Instead, on the similar painted car, Bojangles was the sponsor. is a pic of the car at some point during the year. is an article about it.

Remembering Alan Kulwicki – Against All Odds - By Angela Campbell

Kulwicki Atlanta Championship3 | Photo by ISC Archives via Getty Images

I was born just four months before he won his championship and my memory from back then is a little bit fuzzy, (I guess concussions?). I’m curious at JUST how good he was. ex. of questions: did he have more championships in him, where does he rank compared to some of the other top drivers etc. I might do more of these to start a discussion about drivers that I’m curious about because I didn’t really start watching until around 2006, but am fascinated with history.