#84 - The Southern 500 ~ The Granddaddy of Them All - Part 5 of 6
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06/14/2018 Matt McLaughlin |
(Editor’s Note) In 1997
- 1998, Matt McLaughlin penned a special Anthology of historical pieces in
honor of the 50th Anniversary of NASCAR entitled "50 Years of NASCAR
Racing." Matt has entrusted the entire collection, minus one or two that
were misfiled back then and cannot be salvaged, to my tender, loving care.
As NASCAR turns 70, the
Anthology itself will celebrate a 20th anniversary through 2018, and will run
again here on Race Fans Forever. As before, there is no record of which pieces
came first, so it will appear in the sequence presented earlier. Please, sit
back and enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and
perhaps relive a memory or two.
As always, many thanks
to Matt, and God bless you my friend. ~PattyKay
The 1979 Southern 500 gave one driver some sweet
vindication, but left another one cursing himself for being so foolish. The
brutally hot weather took its toll that day, particularly on older drivers, and
both Richard Petty and Bobby Allison had to call for relief drivers. In an odd
game of musical chairs, Neil Bonnett and Donnie Allison both wound up driving
both Richard's and Bobby's cars. Petty was credited with ninth and Bobby
Allison tenth in the final rundown. Darrell Waltrip seemed to have matters well
in hand that day and it appeared he would finally have the Southern 500 win
that had eluded him. But Darrell suffered from a bit of "brain fade"
and lost concentration while passing a lapped car, tagged the wall while leading,
and spun himself out. The spin only dropped him to second, right behind David
Pearson, but within a few laps of the restart Darrell did it again, putting
himself into the wall and spinning out yet again. The second incident dropped
him from contention. David Pearson inherited the lead. Pearson had been
released from the Wood Brothers team after a pit road miscue at the spring race
in Darlington that year, saw him take off down pit road with no lug nuts on the
left side of his car. That day he was driving the Rod Osterlund
Chevy, in place of rookie Dale Earnhardt who had been injured at Pocono that
July. There must have been a certain grim satisfaction for Pearson, having the
Wood Brothers watch him take the win when their driver, Neil Bonnett, wound up
32nd after a crash. In second place, albeit two laps down, was Bill Elliott in
his family's Ford, serving final notice he was for real, in one of the
strongest runs by an independent in years. Terry Labonte was credited with
third place.
The ending of the 1980 Southern 500 was one of the
strangest ever, and a miscue by NASCAR in being slow to throw the caution flag
bought back memories of the 1963 event. Pre-race favorites Darrell Waltrip,
Bill Elliott and Cale Yarborough were all sidelined by mechanical failures that
day. Perennial favorite David Pearson, Dale Earnhardt and Benny Parsons were
putting on a good show for the fans as the laps wound down and it seemed like
it would be a three car shoot-out for the checkers. With two laps to go, Frank
Warren lost an engine in the first turn. NASCAR hesitated before throwing the
caution flag and the three leaders streaked into that turn wide open, running
in close quarters. Pearson hit the oil and slid up the hill into the wall. Dale
and Benny hit the oil as well and went spinning. Terry Labonte was in fourth
place and far enough back to see the trouble developing and weave his way
through the wreck and the oil. Pearson's car was crippled but still moving.
Both he and Labonte knew it was a race back to the flagstand where the white
and yellow flags would fly simultaneously. Pearson gave it his best shot,
diving low off turn four trying to block Labonte's
pass. Terry ducked down even lower, got alongside David and crossed the line
inches ahead of Pearson. After completing the one lap under caution, Terry
Labonte had the first win of his Winston Cup career, and David Pearson had
added yet another second place to his Southern 500 resume.
The Wood Brothers had fallen on hard times in
comparison to their salad days with David Pearson during the seventies. The
team, and driver Neil Bonnett, had not won a race in over a year going into the
1981 Southern 500. A good deal of the problem was the new Ford body style
introduced that year with the advent of the downsized cars. Aerodynamically,
the Ford was at a distinct disadvantage to the fleet Buick Regals
that were dominating the circuit that year. To be honest, the Fords were at an
aerodynamic disadvantage to most chicken coops as well, looking like the box a
pretty car might have come packed in. Still, Bonnett's dogged persistence and
the Wood Brothers' decades of experience at Darlington saw the 21 team dominate
the race that day. Late in the going it looked like they might see defeat
snatched from the jaws (no pun intended) of victory when a late race caution
allowed the hard driving and determined Darrell Waltrip to restart directly on
Neil's rear bumper. It was a fierce battle and Darrell desperately wanted his
first Southern 500 win, but Bonnett was no slouch either and had a fire in his
belly fueled by the season of frustration. Bonnett held on to beat DW by a car
length. In doing so he became the third driver to visit the Southern 500
victory lane in a Wood Brothers owned car, adding his name to the list with
Cale Yarborough and David Pearson, pretty good company indeed.
While their glory days were for the most part behind
them, two seasoned veterans showed the youngsters they weren't quite ready to
roll over and die quite yet during the Southern 500 of 1982. Mechanical woes
slowed pre-race favorites and points contenders Darrell Waltrip and Terry
Labonte in the middle stages of the race. A bit later in the event, points
leader Bobby Allison lost his chance to capitalize on Terry and Darrell's
misfortune when a blown tire put him into the wall and into the showers early.
The race came down to relative newcomer Dale Earnhardt trying to hold off
veterans Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty. Cale showed the youngster how the
slingshot pass was done to take the lead, and Richard then demonstrated how to outbrake and outgut another
driver low in a corner for Dale. With only 11 laps left Petty dove under
Yarborough to take the lead, looking like the King of old. With seven to go
Cale returned the favor and made his Buick as wide as possible to hold off the
King by eight tenths of a second. Earnhardt came home third, no doubt adding
the moves he had seen to his book of tricks, and Bill Elliott came home fourth.
It was Cale Yarborough's record holding fifth Southern 500 victory, and hugely
popular with the Darlington fans who cheered lustily for their home state
native.
Perhaps Bobby Allison felt a bit slighted he hadn't
been invited to join Richard and Cale in showing the newcomers how the racing
game was played in 1982, because Allison was back with a vengeance at the
Southern 500 in 1983. He could have entitled his particular lesson
"Tougher than Barbed Wire 101". It was a brutally hot day, and cars
and drivers were giving out left and right. Forty five years young, Allison
didn't call for a relief driver and drove the entire distance, blowing past
Bill Elliott on lap 341 and stretching out almost a ten second gap by the time
he took the checkered. Elliott, some 17 years Allison's junior had to be
treated for heat prostration after the race in the infield care center, along
with several other drivers, while Bobby celebrated with a cold Miller in
victory lane. It was Allison's fourth Southern 500 victory, each of them with a
different team and a different make of car. The win was also a giant step
towards his 1983 Winston Cup championship.
Tradition was altered in 1984 when the Southern 500
was run on the Sunday prior to Labor Day, rather than on that Monday. In
another break from tradition, the Southern 500 was not a very competitive event.
Harry Gant drove the race of his life and flat out dominated the event as if
everyone else was driving pedal cars. Many early favorites either crashed or
blew up trying to match Gant's torrid pace. Cale Yarborough was trying gamely
to make a race of it when he blew his engine. The resulting oil-down caused a
wreck that eliminated Bill Elliott, Lake Speed, and Joe Ruttman.
Second place, or perhaps better, “Best in Class", went to rising star, Tim
Richmond.
A little luster was added to the 1985 running of the
Southern 500 when it was designated one of the four crown jewel races that
would make up the new Winston Million challenge. Any driver claiming three of
those four events (The Daytona 500 (the most prestigious lucrative race) the
Winston 500 at Talladega (the fastest race) the World 600 (the longest race) or
the Southern 500 (the oldest race)) would get a cool million dollars courtesy
of Winston. Bill Elliott had dominated the Daytona 500 and staged an incredible
come back in the Winston 500, but the pressure and media spotlight had caused
his team to fall flat on their faces at the World 600. The Southern 500 was his
last chance to claim the gargantuan payday. To keep the media and the curious
at bay, armed South Carolina state troopers were assigned to guard the Elliott
team's garage area so they could get some work done. Unfortunately, once the
race started, a police escort around the track for Bill was out of the
question. Elliott started on the pole but gave up the lead to Dale Earnhardt on
lap 14. Throughout much of the race Bill seemed to be struggling and Earnhardt,
Harry Gant and perennial Southern 500 contender Cale Yarborough had the cars to
beat. Gant was the first of the front runners to fall by the wayside, losing a
cylinder and dropping off the pace. On lap 318, Earnhardt got loose and put his
car into the wall. Elliott just barely missed the spinning Chevy as it came
across the track. Elliott went into the lead at that point, but Cale Yarborough
ran him down and passed Bill on lap 322. Less than a lap later a thick cloud of
smoke billowed out from under Cale's Ford. Elliott,
inches off Cale's rear bumper had to be recalling a
similar situation where he had gotten caught in Cale's
oil the previous year and crashed. He made a million dollar move diving low
through the smoke, flying blind, and found himself back in the lead. But Cale
wasn't quite done yet. As ominous as that smoke looked, it was a power steering
hose, not an engine that had blown. The team disabled the power steering
system, and the diminutive but bulldog-tough 46-year old driver returned to
combat. Yarborough gave Bill a run for the money, but Elliott had about a
million extra reasons to keep Cale behind him, and prevailed by .6 seconds at
the line to win the Winston Million.
Of course, combined with Darrell Waltrip's
troubles that day, the win also gave Bill a seemingly insurmountable 206 point
lead in the Winston Cup championship. Well, not quite insurmountable as history
teaches us, but at least Bill got to keep the Million.
*Matt can no longer
field comments or email at Race Fans Forever. If you have comments or
questions, please leave them below and I’ll do my best to supply answers.
~PattyKay Lilley, Senior Editor.