Talladega: Best and Worst Moments

Fiery crashes aside, winners have won this track with no gas, no power, sliding sideways and flying through the air. From the day Talladega SuperSpeedway opened, race cars flirted with the 200 mph barrier. It was here that Buddy Baker became the first man to ever officially top that mark on a closed course when he drove a Dodge to a lap at 200.447 mph in March of 1970. A day in 1987 changed NASCAR racing at the Alabama track forever: Bobby Allison nearly went flying into the grandstands after cutting a tire in the tri-oval. Of course, Talladega has served up plenty of other high and low moments in its fabled history.

Anything you won't do, I can do better
When NASCAR founder William H. G. France built Talladega, he was not going to let a bunch of drivers tell him it wasn't safe for racing. Tires were having trouble holding up to the forces generated by speeds approaching 200 mph, though, and the sport's top stars asked France to delay the track's first race. France not only said no, he went out in a car himself and, at age 59, ran a lap at 175 mph. The tires would hold up if the drivers went that fast, he said, so the race was on. The big-name drivers all packed up their cars and went home, but France held the race anyway and journeyman Richard Brickhouse got his only career Cup win. France allowed the fans who showed up that day to keep their tickets and trade them in for a seat at a future Talladega race.

21 cars and a cloud of dust
NASCAR decided to start 60 cars in the 1973 Winston 500-which didn't turn out to be such a good idea. Twenty-one cars were involved in a crash on the backstretch on Lap 28, with 18 of them knocked out of the race. Wendell Scott was seriously injured. The crash kicked up so much dust that more cars crashed into the melee on the return lap because drivers couldn’t see.

The fall of a giant
Tiny Lund stood 6-foot-5 and purportedly weighed 250 pounds or more. Fellow driver and friend Buddy Baker once saw Lund throw a punch in a fight and break the leg of a man who tried block the blow. In the Talladega 500 in August of 1975, Lund was driving a car owned by A.J. King. Six laps into the race, Lund hit J.D. McDuffie's car, spun into the wall and slid across the track sideways before Terry Link's car slammed into its driver's side. Lund was killed. Two fans jumped out of the stands and pulled Link out of his car, which caught fire after hitting Lund’s car. Baker knew Lund had been in a wreck, but didn't know his friend had died until he was asked about it in a press box interview after Baker had won the race.

Smile for the camera!
Of the many great Talladega finishes, the best might have been the 1981 DieHard 500. Darrell Waltrip was trying to hold off Terry Labonte and rookie driver Ron Bouchard as they came off Turn 4 on the final lap. Waltrip tried to throw a block, Labonte went high and Bouchard dove low. Three-wide at the finish, Bouchard was declared the winner after photos were checked closely.

A spill, then a thrill for Phil
In July 1983, there was barely enough left of Phil Parsons' car after his barrel-rolling crash in the Winston 500 to be put on display at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame's Museum. Benny Parsons, Phil's brother, saw the wreck and was so worried about Phil he asked his team to get a relief driver. When told his brother was fine, Benny said, "OK, get me a voltage regulator, then." Phil Parsons came back in 1988 to win a race at Talladega for his only career Cup win.

Lead, lead or get out of the way
There were 75 lead changes in the Winston 500 in May 1984. Actually, there were many more than that, but NASCAR only scores lead changes at the end of each lap. The 75 "official" lead changes still stands as a record for the Cup series. Cale Yarborough made the last pass for the lead on the last lap, getting by Harry Gant for the win. Thirteen different drivers led at one point or another - Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Benny Parsons, Buddy Baker, Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace, Phil Parsons, Terry Labonte, David Pearson, Ron Bouchard, Gant and Yarborough.

Hey, look at me! I'm winning!
Dale Earnhardt went from fourth to first on the final lap of the 1984 DieHard 500, with Cale Yarborough spinning sideways as he came out of Turn 4. As Earnhardt came through the tri-oval, he was waving at the crowd as he came to the checkered flag. One writer covering the race said that was the only time all day a driver could have stuck his hand outside the window without poking another driver in the eye.

Two laps down? No problem when you're awesome
The day Bill Elliott became "Awesome Bill" came in the Winston 500 in May 1985 when Elliott came from two laps down to win the race. Astoundingly, he did it all under green-flag racing conditions on a 2.66-mile track. A loose oil-fitting had brought Elliott to pit road with his car smoking, and he was more than 5 miles behind when he went back out. Then, he simply ran the field down from there, making up one second per lap at times. "We surprised ourselves that day," Elliott said.

Atta boy, young man
Bobby Hillin Jr. was just 22 years old when he won the 1986 DieHard 500, emerging from a lead draft of 10 cars at the white flag. Only two drivers, Donald Thomas in 1952 and Fireball Roberts in 1950, had won races in the sport's top series at a younger age.

The day it almost was all over
Bill Elliott had won the pole for the 1987 Winston 500 at 212.809 mph. That speed still stands as NASCAR's all-time qualifying record because of events two days later. Bobby Allison cut a tire coming through the tri-oval. His car spun backward and then took off into the air. It ripped into the fence between the track and the grandstands, chewing away more than 150 yards of the netting as it skittered along. Luckily, the fence kept the car out of the grandstands. Davey Allison would take the checkered flag that day for his first career win, but the lasting legacy of the day is carburetor restrictor plates-still used-which keep cars from going as fast as their engines could take them at Talladega and its sister track in Daytona.

It's a gas, gas, gas
Harry Gant's engine wasn't running when he coasted to win the 1991 Winston 500. In a race marred by a 20-car crash that left Kyle Petty with a broken left thigh, Gant's out-of-gas car coasted under the checkered flag, thanks, Darrell Waltrip angrily contented, to an illegal last-lap push from Rick Mast, whose car was owned by the brother of Gant's car owner. That made Gant the oldest driver to ever win a Talladega race - at 51 years and almost 5 months. "Harry's car got a little loose, and I bumped him," Mast said. "I didn't get any orders from the pits to help him. My radio was out."

Rusty's wild ride
Rusty Wallace finished the Winston 500 in May 1993 flying upside-down and backward across the finish line before flipping 10 times and winding up in a mass of twisted metal in Turn 1. Wallace had been racing with eventual winner Ernie Irvan, Jimmy Spencer and Dale Earnhardt and suffered a broken wrist and a concussion.

Sad day, horrible crash
Just days after Alabama favorite son Davey Allison died from injuries he suffered when he crashed a helicopter in the track's infield on July 25, 1993, Talladega had one of the most spectacular wrecks in its history. Jimmy Horton's car went flying over the wall in Turn 1 and flipped down a four-story high banking. Horton was not seriously hurt, but Stanley Smith was after slamming the wall. Later in the race, Neil Bonnett's car got airborne into the fence on the frontstretch and the race was delayed for more than an hour while repairs were made.

Hurry home to Mom
Mark Martin won the Winston 500 in 1997 at an average speed of 188.354 mph, making it the fastest 500-mile race in NASCAR history and the first race run without a single caution flag in the history of the Talladega track. The race had been delayed by rain from earlier in the spring and was pushed back to the Saturday before Mother's Day in May.

And the winner is...
When the 1999 Touchstone Energy 300 was over, Terry Labonte and Joe Nemechek both headed for victory lane. Neither of them could tell who had won the Busch Series race, and neither could anybody else who was there that day. The photo finish finally revealed that it had been Labonte, by a matter of inches, who'd reached the finish line first. The official margin of victory was .002-seconds for Labonte's car.

"Where did HE come from?"
Dale Earnhardt was 18th with five laps to go in the 2000 Winston 500. His black No. 3 Chevrolet had not been running up front all day. He had not had a dominant car. He did, however, have the innate knowledge of the draft that had made him the most successful restrictor-plate racer in NASCAR history. Earnhardt picked up Kenny Wallace and Joe Nemechek as drafting partners in the pack and, by the time he took the white flag, he was leading the race. Afterward nobody, not even Earnhardt himself, could really explain what had happened. He'd won at Talladega again, in what would prove to be the last, and one of the most memorable, victories of his career.

Dale Jr., Dale Jr., Dale Jr., Dale Jr.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. had won three straight races at Talladega and was trying to do something nobody - not his father nor Talladega master Buddy Baker - had been able to by making it four in row. Nobody, in fact, had won four straight races anywhere since Bill Elliott at Michigan in 1985 and 1986. Earnhardt Jr. had won the pole, but his team had changed engines on race day and he had to start at the rear of the field. He also had the nose of his car damaged as he picked his way through an early wreck. He'd nearly lost a lap a couple of times, but he'd stayed on the lead lap and coming to the end of the day he was back in the hunt. With less than four laps to go, Earnhardt Jr. surged into the lead in Turn 3 with a pass that, at the very least, flirted with violating a rule banning passing below a yellow line on the inside of the track. NASCAR ruled Earnhardt Jr. hadn't gone below the line to advance his position and ruled his pass legal. He'd won at Talladega for the fourth straight time, and written his own name into the history books of NASCAR's biggest, fastest - and sometimes meanest - track.

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