RIVERSIDE 400 STOCK CAR RACE : Richmond Back on Track After Life-Threatening Illness

After being sidelined for nearly six months with life-threatening double pneumonia, stock car driver Tim Richmond returned to Winston Cup competition last Sunday in the Pocono 500 and made his first start a winning one.

Was he exhilarated, after missing 11 races, to take the checkered flag?

“It was strange,” Richmond said during a break in practice for today’s Budweiser 400 at Riverside International Raceway. “It was the most emotional victory I’ve ever had, but the next day I was in a severe depression.

“The more I thought about winning, the more depressed I got. All I could think about was where we could be at this time had we run the whole season.”

Richmond had good reason to expect big things this year. He won the season finale here last fall in the Winston Western 500 and finished 1986 with seven wins, two more than champion Dale Earnhardt.

Then came the double pneumonia. Richmond spent all of December in a hospital bed and all of January in bed at home in Ashland, Ohio.

“I’ll tell you, I’ve taken some pretty good wallops in a race car, but I’ve never been hit with anything as tough as that before,” he said. “I’m still not up to tackling some of the physical tracks, like Bristol or Dover. Maybe not even Darlington.”

Two tracks appealing to Richmond are Pocono, where he won last week, and Riverside, where he won last November.

“Pocono is the easiest track we race, physically,” he said. “It was a great place for me to come back. I’d won both races there last year, so I had a good feeling about the place.

“I have the same feeling about Riverside. I won both races here in ‘82, the first two Winston Cup races I ever won, and then I won last year.”

Richmond will start in the fifth position today in a new Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS built especially for road courses by Harry Hyde in Harrisburg, N.C. He qualified at 116.919 m.p.h.

Terry Labonte, in Junior Johnson’s Chevrolet, will start on the pole after a 117.541 lap.

Benny Parsons, who has filled in for Richmond on the Hendrick’s Motorsports team, will drive the car that Richmond won in here last year.

Parsons, who won the Winston Cup championship in 1973, was astounded that Richmond won his first time back.

“It was phenomenal, just unbelievable,” said the 45-year-old veteran from Ellerbe, N.C.

Richmond, whose brash, cocky attitude has not always endeared him to NASCAR, maintains that he was not surprised at his performance.

“After 11 years, racing nearly 11 months a year, it takes more than four or five months to lose the feel,” he said. “I never felt like I’d been gone from it.”

Richmond tried to keep in shape by swimming and playing tennis and a little golf while recuperating. He did not drive a race car until March 31, two days after the 500 at Darlington.

“We broke the track record in our first test,” he said. “In all, I drove about 200 miles at Darlington, North Rockingham and Charlotte before I drove in the Winston.”

Richmond tested himself in the Winston, a 200-mile non-points race at Charlotte May 17, and finished third.

That was all the racing he did before last Sunday, but he thought it was enough.

“When I was walking to my car (at Pocono), a film crew was following me,” he said. “A guy with the mike asked me what I felt my chances were of winning.

“I said I felt they were 100%. I felt the same way during the race, even after I fell a lap down in the middle. After Harry (Hyde) got the shift linkage straightened out, I made up the lap and just outran ‘em.”

Once Richmond got his dark red No. 25 to the front, he led the last 46 laps and held off Bill Elliott by eight car lengths.

“It was without a doubt the most satisfying win of my life,” Richmond said. “Even more than the Southern 500 last year at Darlington.”

While recovering, Richmond visited Indianapolis and the 500, where in 1980 he had been rookie of the year.

Richmond started 19th in his first 500 at Indy, led one lap and finished ninth after running out of fuel three laps from the finish.

“It was the first time I’d been back to Indy since 1981 and I’ll admit, I got a severe itch to go back there. I’m not about to scratch it yet, though.

“The only way I’d go back was if Rick Hendrick had his own Indy car and he wanted me to drive it. I wouldn’t race for any other owner and jeopardize my NASCAR career. But if Rick wanted me to take a break from Winston Cup racing and go to Indy, I’d love it.”

It was Hendrick, the Charlotte-based auto dealer who has five cars in today’s race, who rescued Richmond--in a manner of speaking--and turned his career around last year.

Richmond had won only two races in three years with Raymond Beadle, and none in 1985, when Hendrick tabbed him to drive one of his cars.

“Tim’s a real good person,” Hendrick said when stock car followers questioned his judgment. “He just needs a little direction.”

Hendrick turned his project over to Hyde, a crusty, no-nonsense 61-year-old crew chief who was as conservative as Richmond was flamboyant.

“I don’t know why everyone thought it was odd for Harry and me to be teamed up,” Richmond said. “We were together at Daytona in ’82 but we didn’t make the race. We get along fine.”

In their first season together for Hendrick, they won seven races and eight poles, good for $772,720.

Richmond’s off-track adventures often cause as much comment as his driving.

For instance, when he was in Indianapolis last month he attended a Huey Lewis concert and fell off the stage, injuring his ankle.

The easy supposition was that he had a little too much liquid cheer.

“Not so,” he insists. “I just stumbled coming down a ramp. Sometimes my image gets places before I do.”

Hyde is not concerned about his driver’s image.

“I hear a lot of things about what he does, but when he shows up at the race track he’s all business. I couldn’t ask for anyone to be more attentive and anxious to get the job done.”

Richmond, who aspires to become an actor, looks more like a rock singer than a race driver with his shoulder-length locks, mustache, dark glasses and toothpick.

The double pneumonia did more to hamper his acting career than his driving.

“I was just getting started,” he said. “I’d had some scripts to read and was getting the feel of it when I got sick. It knocked that idea backwards.

“I’m still a long way from back (as a racer) even though I won last week. That didn’t prove I was solid. It’ll be some time before I get back to acting.”

After today’s race, Richmond will drive next week at Michigan and the 4th of July at Daytona, then will sit down with Hendrick and evaluate the future.

“I’ll probably run Pocono, too. That’s two weeks after Daytona. I’ve won there three times in a row so I’d be crazy not to try for four.”

Also waiting for the evaluation is Parsons, the big, good-natured replacement for Richmond.

“It’s been a thrill to start out running for the Winston Cup again in a super car,” said Parsons, who had raced only intermittently since 1981. “I never thought I’d get the chance to do it again.”

Parsons started out fast, winning a 125-mile qualifying race at Daytona and then finishing a close second to Elliott in the 500. Since then, however, he has had only two finishes in the top five, second in the Motorcraft 500 at Atlanta and fifth in the Budweiser 500 at Dover.

“The original deal was for me to run until July 4, or until Tim came back,” Parsons said. “If I can put a couple of good finishes on the board before then, I’ll be up in the points enough to make it worthwhile to keep me running.”