Davey Allison Is a Chip Off the Old Engine Block

There’s an old Army saying that only innocent recruits volunteer for anything.

Davey Allison has never been in service, so he didn’t know the difference when he was a teen-ager and volunteered to help his dad in the garage. Or, when he got older, to volunteer to test a race car for a friend who was hurt.

The first time he volunteered, it changed him from the cleanup crew to a race mechanic. The second time changed him from a part-time race driver to a NASCAR Winston Cup competitor who would sit on the front row in his first two Daytona 500s.

When Davey’s father, Bobby Allison, was attempting to campaign his own Matador on the NASCAR circuit in the late ‘70s, help was hard to find. The car performed so poorly and apparently was so difficult to work on that the elder Allison couldn’t keep mechanics.

Davey was 16 at the time, and for four years his job had been to sort nuts and bolts, sweep the floor, clean the toilets, carry boxes and do other assorted handy work for 50 cents an hour.

“I was doing all the mechanical work myself, and it was killing me,” Bobby said. “Davey volunteered to help, and I figured I might as well try him. By mid-summer, he could do a complete tear-down. I mean he could build an engine, put it on the dyno, prep it, test it, tear it down, put it back together, everything needed to get the car ready.”

Davey even did more than his dad realized, he said recently.

“After everyone left the shop, I taught myself how to weld,” Davey said. “Dad gave me a key to the shop, and after he closed it up, I would go back, pick up scrap metal and weld it together, practicing every night.

“The toughest part was making sure I knew where the settings were on the welder, so I could put it back so no one knew I had been messing with their equipment.”

Davey was in high school in Hueytown, Ala., at the time, but all his thoughts were focused on racing.

“I don’t remember ever thinking of anything else,” Davey recalled. “I was intrigued by the idea of cars racing side by side, wheel to wheel.

“The only time I ever tried anything else was in the ninth grade when I went out for the football team. But the coach said I had to gain 40 pounds to play. He didn’t want me on the team unless I weighed 130 pounds. I quit. I enjoyed sports but I only went out for football to pass time until I was old enough to go racing.

“I hated school. I never liked it, and I still don’t, but one thing Dad insisted on was graduating from high school. He said he’d never let me race if I didn’t graduate. I still have nightmares about taking tests. All the time I was in school, I felt like I was in prison.”

Before he was old enough to race, even before he was old enough to go to school, Davey tagged along to races with his dad.

“I guess I was about 4 when I went to my first race. The whole family used to go, but after my brother (Clifford) was born, Mom began to stay home and I went alone with Dad. We’d get to a track, Dad would sit me up in the stands and tell me where to be, and I’d stay there. When the race was over, I’d run down to the pits, climb in the truck and go to sleep.”

Later, when he was in high school, Davey got the job of driving the truck with the race car.

“A lot of my friends envied me because they thought it was so glamorous to go to the races with my dad, but it sure didn’t seem glamorous to me. He was up in his airplane, and I was in the truck with the car. One year we logged 150,000 miles on one tow vehicle.

“Hueytown is pretty far to travel for Winston Cup races. Dad would give me a place and a time to be, and I’d better be there. There’s nothing glamorous hauling a race car all night.”

The day Davey turned 18, he showed up at Birmingham Speedway with a ’72 Nova in tow, ready to race.

“Uncle Donnie had retired the Nova, and he said I could use it. I had to change it to fit the Birmingham rules, so Kenny (Donnie’s 14-year-old son) and I stripped it down and got it ready in Dad’s shop. He said I had to do it after hours. That meant I worked 8 to 5 on his car to get the privilege to use the shop. Kenny and I did all the work before 8 and after 5.”

The first night Davey didn’t run, but a week later he made his first start and finished fifth.

Bobby, who wasn’t there, remembers the night:

“I was racing for Bud Moore that year, and I was in Martinsville. Naturally, I was anxious to know how he did so I called home. Bonnie (Davey’s sister) answered the phone. She’s Davey’s biggest fan. She told he did great, that he started last and finished fifth. I asked her what happened and she said there were three cautions (for accidents), but he only caused two of them.

“He got hit hard a few times and had to do a lot of repair work. He did it himself, which is always a good lesson for a young man. You think twice about taking some chances when you realize you have to do the repair work yourself.”

After a couple of years driving with moderate success in NASCAR Grand American and ARCA circuits, where he was rookie of the year in 1984 after winning at Talladega, Atlanta and Indianapolis Raceway Park. Davey decided to try Winston Cup in 1985.

“I would have won the ARCA championship if I hadn’t missed a race to get married,” Davey said. “I drove three races for Hoss Ellington in 1985. I finished 10th at Talladega but didn’t finish the other two. The next year I got a chance to drive for Nathan Sims, an old family friend from Pensacola, Fla., but when he couldn’t line up a sponsor, we ended up running a low- budget operation.

“We went to Talladega and blew three motors in seven laps of practice. That was too much. I went to the owner and told him I couldn’t run anymore in his car. I told him I didn’t need to have equipment that was going to fall apart on the race track.”

Davey Allison had become, by his own choice, an unemployed race driver.

It was time to volunteer again.

“One of the dark sides of racing is that often a driver gets a break at the expense of someone’s accident,” Davey Allison said. “That is what happened to me when Neil Bonnett got hurt at Pocono.

“I called Junior Johnson and offered my services to practice and qualify the car so that Neil could run it at Talladega. I called Monday morning, the day after the Pocono race, and told Junior that if Neil couldn’t practice and qualify, that I was available.

“That call put me where I am now.

“Junior called me back and said to come down and practice, just the way I had it planned. But, as the week went on, it became apparent that Neil would not be able to drive. The doctors said he couldn’t use his bad arm. I had mixed feelings. I was excited about the opportunity, but I didn’t want it to be at the expense of a close friend.”

Allison ended up driving the car in the race. He led on several occasions, drove through several wrecks and hung on to finish seventh.

Car owner Harry Rainier didn’t see that race because he was in Australia, but a friend videotaped it and showed it to Rainier two weeks later. Not long after that, Rainier contacted young Allison about driving his car because his regular driver, Cale Yarborough, had announced that he would not be back in 1987.

“I had been pretty low before I drove Junior Johnson’s car. I was getting only a few rides, now and then, and had no serious prospects for 1987. That led to the call from Mr. Rainier, and things have been sailing every since.”

Allison didn’t wait for 1987, however. Late in the 1986 season, he started hanging around the Rainier pits, observing how the crew worked, how Cale and the crew responded, how everyone got along.

“It helped when we started the new season. I was familiar with the crew and when we went to Talladega to test, I felt right at home. I ran 211 (m.p.h.) in the old car, and then when we got our new model I ran close to 213. We knew we had something.”

Allison opened the season by qualifying behind Bill Elliott for the No. 2 position in the Daytona 500--the highest position attained by a rookie.

“I think we could have won that race, but we made a rookie mistake,” Davey said. “We had a jack break during a pit stop. It had never happened before, and I didn’t know how to react. I got overanxious and left without the lug nuts. I didn’t make it back around.

“The same thing happened later on at Michigan and that time I sat still, waited for a new jack, and went on my way with a minimum of lost time. Daytona turned out to be a learning process.”

Allison won two races, the Winston 500 at Talladega and the Budweiser 500 at Dover, Del., which was the first time any rookie had ever won more than one race. Although he ran in only 22 of 29 races, Davey finished nine times in the top five, wound up 21st in the Winston Cup standings and won $361,060.

This year, returning with the Rainier-Lundy team (J. T. Lundy is owner of Calumet Farms), Allison is once again in the front row for the Daytona 500 after qualifying last Saturday at 192.666 m.p.h.

Only Allison and pole-sitter Ken Schrader (193.823 m.p.h.) have their positions assured for Sunday’s $1.5-million Daytona 500. The rest of the field will be determined by the results from today’s Twin 125-mile qualifying races.

“You know, this is really a strange thing,” Davey said Wednesday as he prepared for today’s Twin 125. “I’ve never started a Winston Cup race here worse than second. I had the outside pole for last year’s Daytona 500, sat on the pole for the 125-miler, sat on the pole again for the Firecracker 400, and now I’m on the pole for another 125-miler and on the outside pole Sunday.”

Last Sunday, in the Busch Clash for 1987 pole-sitters, Davey and his dad chased defending Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt to the wire.

“We just ran out of room and laps. Dale’s no superman, he can be beaten, but he’s not the kind to beat himself. He’s like a Wild West gunslinger, he’s got the reputation, and that’s enough to scare a lot of guys. But I think it’s time someone beat him. It might as well be me.”

One of the most perplexing problems in the Allison family is one that confronts Mom and Pop Allison, Davey’s grandparents. Who should they root for in Sunday’s Daytona 500?

“I’m pulling for Davey,” said E. J. (Pops) Allison, 82. “Mom is for Bobby, and we’re bringing in Uncle Jake (he’s 79) from Lake Placid, Fla., to pull for Donnie.”

Bobby and Uncle Donnie will be in the heat with Schrader today, while Davey will be the only family member in his heat.