It took Ernie Irvan just a little over two years to transform from a promising young talent to an unpopular competitive menace then to an established NASCAR star.
In that time frame, he won the Daytona 500, created an on-track incident that sidelined one of NASCAR’s most popular drivers for three years and issued an apology for his on-track aggressiveness that helped alter his image.
Irvan migrated from Salinas, Calif., to North Carolina to fashion a career in NASCAR Cup Series racing. He took odd jobs, some of them at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and drew some notice when he won an ARCA Menards Series race in 1989.
A year earlier, he secured a full-time Cup ride with veteran D.K. Ulrich, a long-time independent competitor. By the end of the 1989 season, Irvan had scored only five top-10 finishes in 54 races.
However, in 1990, Irvan’s fortunes changed significantly due to the decision a team owner made under very unusual circumstances.
Irvan was scheduled to race with long-time team owner Junie Donlavey, a man known to grant young competitors an opportunity to compete.
But planned sponsorship for the Donlavey team never materialized and Irvan was permitted to find work elsewhere.
As fate would have it, Morgan-McClure Motorsports, a team much more prepared to succeed, partly because it had secured sponsorship from Kodak, was undergoing difficult times.
Its driver was Phil Parsons, Benny Parsons‘ younger brother, who had departed Leo Jackson’s established team. It had been a rough go for Parsons, who wrecked three times in the first three races in 1990, none of which were his fault.
That made no difference to the team owner, the late Larry McClure. Parsons was dismissed after his wreck at Richmond Raceway.
For a driver to be fired after just three races into a season was highly unusual, to say the least. It’s routine for a team to stay intact long enough to possibly overcome misfortune.
“Phil’s driving style didn’t mesh with our team,” McClure said. “I knew things weren’t going to work, so I decided to make a change now rather than later.”
“I’m shocked,” Parsons said. “I knew they might want to make a change, but I don’t think three races is enough time to judge.”
Others felt the same way. I was one of them. I wrote that McClure was too hasty; that he should have allowed Parsons and his team more time to gel.
Few had any idea who Parsons’ successor might be. At the time, it seemed there were few candidates with a reasonable amount of experience.
McClure didn’t hesitate. Knowing that Irvan was available, he placed a call to him and requested an interview. Irvan wasted little time getting to team headquarters in Abingdon, Va.
“I like Ernie,” McClure said. “I like what I have seen of him recently, and I would like him to drive my car.”
Irvan’s first race with McClure was the Motorcraft Quality Parts 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he used his aggressive style to power his way to a third-place finish.
A happy McClure, who had been competing seven seasons without a victory, said he wasn’t surprised at Irvan’s performance and declared it was good enough to silence the critics, including me.
But things were decidedly different in the next race at Darlington Raceway. Irvan qualified third but fell 10 laps off the pace after an early spin.
On the restart following the sixth caution of the day, Irvan seemed determined to get one lap back. He dueled with leader Ken Schrader until he slipped sideways, clipped Schrader and started a 13-car melee.
Neil Bonnett, driving the Wood Brothers Racing Ford, was caught up in the incident. At first, it did not appear to be serious.
But it was later determined that Bonnett had suffered a concussion and a severe case of amnesia – he had no recollection of the accident or that he was even racing at Darlington. Doctors recommended he sit out indefinitely.
Irvan was considered the cause of it all, including Bonnett’s injuries, and quicky fell out of favor with many competitors.
They openly said that Irvan’s lack of common sense – “What is he doing racing against the leader when he’s 10 laps down?” – was clearly at fault.
“He seems to be the kind of guy who can hurt you on the track,” said Darrell Waltrip.
Even a victory at Bristol Motor Speedway two races later, the first ever for McClure’s team, didn’t seem to quell competitor mistrust of Irvan.
Nor did Irvan’s victory in the 1991 Daytona 500, which enhanced the McClure organization’s reputation as a quality team with a quality driver.
In the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in May, near the midway point of the race, Irvan clipped the rear of Kyle Petty’s Pontiac and started a violent multicar crash that launched Mark Martin’s Ford skyward.
Later, at Pocono Raceway, Irvan was close to another multicar crash, for which he was blamed even though he claimed he was innocent.
“Seems if I get even five car lengths close to something, I catch the blame for it,” Irvan said.
But he realized his aggressive driving style, which some compared to Dale Earnhardt’s, was costing him much respect in the garage area. He had become the butt of jokes and ridicule. He was tagged with the nickname “Swervin’ Irvan.”
At the Talladega Diehard 500 on July 28, he did something few, including me, had ever seen. In the drivers meeting, he stood up and apologized to all the competitors in the room. I sat a mere five feet away.
He said he knew he had lost the respect of many other competitors. He admitted he had driven over aggressively at times. He wanted to be liked in the garage area and would appreciate it if everyone gave him a chance.
“I definitely want to be a friend to everyone in this meeting,” he concluded.
He was applauded.
He admitted the episode was embarrassing, but it seemed to have the desired effect. He wasn’t blamed for a multicar wreck in the race, even though he was right in the middle of it.
By 1992, Irvan was competing with a clean slate. His derogatory nickname had largely disappeared. He won six more races with McClure through 1993 and then in 1994, six more with Robert Yates Racing, including three after recovering from serious injuries in a crash during practice for the second Michigan International Speedway race that forced him to miss most of the 1995 season.
Irvan pressed on until another serious accident at Michigan in a NASCAR Xfinity Series car, which also resulted in head trauma, forced him to announce his retirement at the 1999 Southern 500 at Darlington.
Irvan became a NASCAR star only after a tumultuous couple of seasons in 1990-91, during which he made what proved to be the correct competitive, and personal, adaptations.
Consider that had he not done so, everything might have turned out so differently, indeed.
Steve Waid has been in journalism since 1972, when he began his newspaper career at the Martinsville (Va.) Bulletin. He has spent over 40 years in motorsports journalism, first with the Roanoke Times-World News and later as publisher and vice president for NASCAR Scene and NASCAR Illustrated.
Steve has won numerous state sports writing awards and several more from the National Motorsports Press Association for his motorsports coverage, feature and column writing. For several years, Steve was a regular on “NASCAR This Morning” on FOX Sports Net and he is the co-author, with Tom Higgins, of the biography “Junior Johnson: Brave In Life.”
In January 2014, Steve was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame. And in 2019 he was presented the Squier-Hall Award by the NASCAR Hall of Fame for lifetime excellence in motorsports journalism. In addition to writing for Frontstretch, Steve is also the co-host of The Scene Vault Podcast.