Last weekend, NASCAR and the greater racing community at large lost one of its finest drivers.
Bobby Allison, on the surface, had an incredible NASCAR career. The 1983 NASCAR Cup Series champion won 85 Cup races, the fourth-most of all time. He found success with so many different car owners, winning with 13 of them, including himself. This is a mark no other driver has matched.
But with Allison, it’s what’s below the surface that is truly remarkable.
Every year, I write a NASCAR Hall of Fame column explaining who I would put on my ballot. While researching that, I’ve tripped into a new stat or story that makes Allison even more of a legend in my own eyes. And it happens just about every year.
This year was actually about the NASCAR Modified Series. The Mods are the oldest series in NASCAR, but there has historically been remarkably little turnaround for the stars of that series to become Cup drivers.
There have only been four Mod champions in series history to go find meaningful success to Cup racing. Red Byron and Fonty Flock won the first two titles and both found great success in the Cup Series in that era. The most recent of the four was Jimmy Spencer.
Who came in-between? It was Allison, winning championships in a car he and his brother Eddie built in Bobby’s backyard in 1964 and 1965.
Allison actually had a very clever start to Cup racing. After racing part time with a Ford his first two years, he built a Chevrolet in his backyard that was owned by Donald Brackins.
This was in a time period when Chevrolet had essentially no NASCAR presence. Ford and Chrysler were taking turns dominating the series, with both building bigger and bigger cars to go after each other in the horsepower department.
Allison’s idea was to enter the smaller and more nimble Chevrolet in 1966 and 1967 because it could go much quicker at a lot of the little short tracks on the Cup schedule. It was an idea that netted him both wins and a legion of fans; fans back then were very much aligned to car manufacturers, and Allison’s success was the only real accomplishment the bowtie had seen in years.
Allison himself won respect for both his underdog status and refusal to stand down. A race in August 1966 at Bowman-Gray Stadium devolved into a massive car brawl between Allison and the also-legendary Curtis Turner.
Turner was near the end of his career and spun out Allison to start the mess. Allison retaliated and spun Turner out, at one point driving through the track’s open football field infield to get at Turner.
Allison held his ground against the driver often called the Babe Ruth of stock car racing. It was a characteristic Allison wore on his sleeve for the rest of his career; if he thought he was right, he didn’t take a lot of bullshit.
And that aspect of Allison wasn’t commendable. It’s what led to him racing for so many different owners, after all.
No, what makes Allison such a remarkable figure to aspire to is his refusal to ever give up and to do whatever it took, no matter how hard he had to work. Nobody worked as hard as Allison did in racing.
In some ways, he was the second after Joe Weatherly to really aim to win the championship. So many drivers before the modern era were fine with just going for the big races with the big purses.
That’s not to say drivers were unhappy winning the championship. But Cup racing back then took a gigantic financial and time commitment to race the full season.
One time, Bill France and Junior Johnson were arguing about Johnson never committing to full-time driving. France asked Johnson why he wouldn’t do it. Johnson said he liked being involved, then opined that racing was a lot like a big breakfast. You had your bacon and your eggs; the chicken was involved but the pig was committed.
Allison was, if nothing else, committed. In 1970, his car owner Mario Rossi could only commit to run Allison at the big purse races. Rossi agreed that Allison could build and enter his own car to race in the events Rossi wasn’t entering.
The first of these was Richmond Raceway, the fourth race of the season (ignoring the Daytona International Speedway Duel that Allison could not start). Allison didn’t have the car ready in time, so he had to skip the race.
At the end of the season, Allison finished just 51 points behind champion Bobby Isaac. There were 26 cars in that Richmond race; had Allison entered with the way the points system worked, he would have won the championship by finishing 25th or better.
I wrote earlier this season about Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari next year in Formula 1. In it, I regaled a story about how Allison threw away his concerns and principals just for the chance at a championship by joining DiGard Racing, a risk that ended up being a success.
That refusal to give in was put to the test in his later life. He had to retire from driving due to a traumatic brain injury sustained in a wreck at Pocono Raceway in 1988. He lost both of his sons: Clifford Allison, who inherited his dad’s good looks and humor, and Davey Allison, who inherited his dad’s hard work and refusal to lose. His best friend, Neil Bonnett, also died.
The care Bobby Allison received for his brain injury wasn’t covered by his insurance company after a long legal case, leaving him largely broke. And his marriage with wife Judy fell apart, leaving him living at home for a few years in the 1990s with his elderly mother.
Comparisons to the biblical figure Job were made by a number of outlets covering him at the time. But again, Allison never once gave up, getting back on his feet financially doing PSAs for the state of Alabama.
“What would Bobby Allison do?” That should be the mantra every driver in every series takes to heart. It’s just those two basic mentalities: Never give up and do whatever it takes.
That doesn’t mean to run into other cars. Stay up until 3 a.m. working on your racecar. If a team or sponsor drops you, out-hustle everybody else to get back on the grid. And always remember that the championship is the only thing that matters in racing.
When Allison died last weekend, the family asked in lieu of flowers if fans could instead donate to a few places in his name. A few of them were to be expected.
Allison was a devout Catholic throughout his life, so donations to the church were only natural. The International Motorsport Hall of Fame Preservation Society was obvious as it’s based at Talladega Superspeedway.
But Victory Junction Gang Camp was also mentioned, and there’s probably a good reason for it. When Adam Petty passed away, both Bobby and Judy Allison, despite being separated for years at that point, put aside their differences to comfort the Petty clan.
Afterwards, well, one thing led to another, and Bobby and Judy grew back together again. After all of the tragedy, all of the setbacks, Bobby was able to find happiness once again.
Never give up.
About the author
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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Good one, thank you.
I agree, good one. Thanks. Bobby will always be my favorite from my NASCAR start as a 5 yo kid with my dad in the early 70’s seeing him drive those Coca Cola cars at Martinsville.