Papa Allison Shows Son Way Home : Bobby Noses Out Davey but Richard Petty Has Wildest Ride at Daytona

On Valentine’s Day, it would be difficult to know who got the nicest present, Judy Allison or Lynda Petty.

Judy watched her husband, Bobby, and son, Davey, finish nose-to-tail in the most competitive Daytona 500 in history Sunday at Daytona International Speedway, climaxing a week in which 50-year-old Bobby won three races and $249,250. Davey won $113,760.

Lynda watched her husband, Richard, another 50-year-old, walk out of a hospital without injury an hour after a frightening accident in which his car spun violently six times along the wall and then was T-boned by another car as it sat in the middle of the front straightaway.

“Richard’s fine,” Lynda said from the hospital before the race was over. “We’re going home tonight, like always. I know the good Lord sometimes just looks out for you.”

The Bobby-Davey show was the first time a father and son ever finished one-two in a major 500-mile race and the first time since 1960 when father Lee Petty beat son Richard at Pittsburgh that it had happened in a NASCAR Winston Cup-type race.

“As long as Bobby was ahead, I was rooting for him,” Judy said. “If Davey had been leading, maybe it would have been the other way around. It was a wonderful feeling, though, to watch the finish.”

Bobby was driving a Buick Regal owned by the Stavola brothers, Bill and Mickey, of Kingston, N. J. Davey was in a Ford owned by Harry Rainier of Charlotte, N.C., and J.T. Lundy of Lexington, Ky., owner of the Calumet Farms thoroughbred stable.

It was Allison’s third Daytona 500 win. He also won in 1978 and 1981. Earlier in the week, Bobby won a Twin 125-mile qualifying heat race on Thursday and the Goody’s 300 for Grand National cars on Saturday to become the first driver to win all three races in the same year.

The three wins in four days gave Allison 16 at Daytona, more than any other driver in history. He shared the record at 15 for a day with Cale Yarborough.

After the Allisons came Phil Parsons in third place in an Oldsmobile for the highest finish of his Winston Cup career. The Alabama Gang, as Bobby Allison calls his group from Hueytown, made it three out of the top four when Neil Bonnett finished fourth. Bonnett was making his first start since breaking his leg last October at Charlotte.

Davey, 26, last year’s Winston Cup rookie of the year, came close to missing the race after a late practice crash Saturday afternoon. The Rainier-Lundy crew worked all night repairing damage to the frame, suspension and right-side sheet metal.

“I had total confidence in my crew and right up to the last few hundred yards I felt I could win the race,” Davey said. “I had always dreamed, ever since I was a little kid, of getting into a situation like this with my dad, but in the dreams I always won and my dad was always second.”

Father took the lead with 18 laps remaining, followed by Davey, Buddy Baker, Phil Parsons and Labonte in a five-car train. After a caution flag on lap 188, the freight train grew to 13 cars, all chasing the elder Allison. Baker made the first challenge, passing Davey and taking a shot at Bobby. This proved fatal for big Buddy, as no one moved out to help him with the draft and before he realized his mistake, he was back in eighth place.

The Baker lesson was not lost on the challengers. No one tried to pass Allison’s gold colored Buick until son Davey pulled alongside him on the final turn of the race.

“I knew he was strongest up high, so I knew my only chance was to try to pull up with him on the low side and try to beat him to the finish line by a couple of inches,” Davey said. “But he was just too tough. I couldn’t move any sooner because I had to protect second place. I saw what happened to Baker.”

Bobby, listening as his son described the final lap, asked, “Would you have really passed me if you could?”

Davey didn’t hesitate: “Without a doubt.”

“It was a really good feeling being in front and looking back and seeing my own son, thinking he’s the best young driver I know coming up,” Bobby said. “It was just a very special feeling, something that’s hard to put into words.”

On a cool, cloudy Sunday, an estimated 140,000 spectators watched a remarkable display of driving talent as 12 drivers swapped the lead 26 times in 200 laps and completely dispelled the fear that NASCAR’s one-inch carburetor restrictor plate had made passing nearly impossible. A record 17 cars were on the same lap when Allison took the checkered flag and there were 31 of the 42 starters still running.

From the moment at the start when Bobby Allison, Davey Allison and Darrell Waltrip charged past pole-sitter Ken Schrader, until the moment 3 hours 38 minutes later when Bobby Allison withstood a last turn challenge from his son, the 500 miles was a series of side-by-side challenges. Statistics do not do justice to the tightness of the race as cars often changed positions three or four times a lap.

And it was one of the safest, too. Except for the six-car accident involving Petty, there was not another incident with more than one car in trouble.

Petty’s wild ride on lap 104 of his 28th Daytona 500 began when his Pontiac was bumped in tight quarters by Phil Barkdoll and turned slightly sideways. A.J. Foyt, following closely behind, clipped the left front corner of Petty’s car, sending it pirouetting on its nose like a top. After three or four revolutions, the distinctive Pontiac fell on its side and began to tumble over and over, finally plopping down on what was left of its all fours.

Before the gasps from onlookers had subsided, along came another group of cars blinded from the smoke, dust and debris, and ran smack into Petty. Brett Bodine, Eddie Bierschwale and Alan Kulwicki all hit him as he bounced around like a rubber ball.

Petty was taken by ambulance to the track medical center, where he walked in, limping slightly. He was taken to Halifax Medical Center where he was checked out and discharged.

Petty’s daughter, Sharon, said her father pleaded with doctors to “Let me git up and git outta here,” which they did very shortly.

The participants view of the accident:

Barkdoll: “We were all in there together. I don’t know whether Richard got loose or I bumped him or what caused it. But I hit him in the rear end and turned him around. I went on by him and saw him spinning in my mirrors.”

Foyt: “It looked like Petty’s back end came out. I went down on the bottom, and he came across. When he came down, I hit his left front with my right front. I sure hope he’s OK. I was the one who really hit him hard and sent him spinning.”

Bodine: “I was coming out of turn four and saw the accident so I started slowing down. I was holding a straight line when the car turned on me. I was trying to pick my way through while keeping an eye on Richard, but I lost control a little and right at that moment Richard came straight in front of me. It was really unfortunate that I hit him like that, because he’d already taken a lot of licks before I got there.”

Bierschwale: “I thought I had the whole thing cleared but I hit Bodine and then I hit Richard. I was going about half speed, on the brakes. I cut a tire, and I think that’s what caused me to hit Bodine.”

Kulwicki: “We could see them wrecking up there and Darrell (Waltrip) and I slowed down. I thought I had threaded my way through, but I must have run across some debris because the right front tire blew and put us right into the wall.”

The caution flag was out for 21 laps while emergency crews cleaned up the track and also made repairs on the spectator fence. Two posts were knocked down and safety pins stretched out of place, although no spectators were hurt. The scene was reminiscent of the accident last year at Talladega where Bobby Allison became airborne and wiped out a large stretch of fencing.

It was that accident, in which Allison’s car came perilously close to sailing into the seats, that caused NASCAR to put a restrictor plate on cars for the Daytona and Talladega tracks. The carburetor restrictor cut speeds approximately 18 m.p.h.

The long caution period also contributed to an average winning speed of only 137.531 m.p.h., the slowest since 1960 when Junior Johnson averaged 124 m.p.h. in winning.

For most of the race it appeared that Bobby Allison and Waltrip had the dominant cars. Waltrip, who led 69 of the 200 laps to 70 for Allison, once dropped back to 35th position after an inopportune pit stop, but in 20 laps he regained the lead. Once he threaded his way through slower traffic, he moved from fifth to first in four laps as he picked off Harry Gant, Bonnett and Rusty Wallace a lap at a time and then swooped past Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt in a daring move at the end of the back-straightaway.

With only 25 laps remaining, Waltrip had a 28-second lead over Bobby Allison and looked as if he might win his first Daytona 500. Suddenly, however, he began to slow and in a single lap dropped from first to sixth and finally finished eleventh.

“This Chevy is the best car I’ve ever had anywhere in my whole life, bar none,” said Waltrip, who has won three Winston Cup championships and 71 races in his 17-year career. “There at the end something internally in the motor gave out. I heard a noise and then we started heading towards the back.

“It was really tough those last 10 laps watching people I’d beaten all day pass me. Davey and Bobby had it going their way, but I still think I could have beaten them if I hadn’t had that last problem.”

Tim Richmond, the controversial driver whose problems with NASCAR have escalated toward a lawsuit over whether he should be allowed to race again, missed the season’s opening race, but may have had the last word. Richmond hired a plane to fly over Daytona International Speedway with a trailing message: “Fans I Miss You. Tim Richmond.”