An Unhappy Champion : For Rusty Wallace, Success and Popularity Mix Like Water and Oil

Championships can have rich rewards, such as the $1 million that Rusty Wallace got for winning the 1989 Winston Cup stock car series, but the winning can leave sores, too.

Wallace has his million, the title, and his wife, Patti, has a full-length mink coat, but there are still things that rankle the feisty redhaired driver from St. Louis as he prepares to open defense of his championship Sunday in the $2-million Daytona 500:

--He doesn’t like it when he hears boos, instead of the cheers he thinks a champion deserves.

--He doesn’t like it when he is continually reminded of how he won the championship in the final race, struggling home in 15th place to edge Dale Earnhardt by just 12 points.

--He thinks it was unfair, and perhaps reflected prejudice on the part of Southern reporters, that third-place finisher Mark Martin, and not the Winston Cup champion, was voted “Richard Petty driver of the year” by the National Motor Sports Assn.

--And he is tired of hearing about how he and car owner Raymond Beadle, a former drag racing champion, sued and counter-sued one another over his contract in the midst of running for the championship.

Wallace, 33, is like a big, friendly puppy who wants everyone to love him, and he loves everybody, but he keeps bumping into things, especially rivals’ race cars.

“I can’t win for losing,” he said while relaxing Tuesday inside his motorhome in the infield at Daytona International Speedway. “Seems like the more autographs I sign, the more charities I attend, the more (reporters) I talk to, the more I smile, the louder the boos sound.”

Wallace knows why, but that doesn’t make him like it.

“I’d always been one of the good guys until that day in Charlotte (N.C.) when I got into it with Darrell (Waltrip), and boy, when that happened, I got a lot of heat. And it’s not letting up.”

The situation was this:

Waltrip was leading the Winston, a non-points, all-star race on May 21 at Charlotte Motor Speedway that paid $200,000 to the winner. One lap from the finish, Wallace’s Pontiac made contact with the rear of Waltrip’s Chevrolet. The brief brush spun Waltrip around, and Wallace went on to win.

Waltrip was furious. “I hope Rusty chokes on that $200,000,” he said. “He knocked the hell out of me.”

Wallace, as any red-blooded racer would do, denied hitting Waltrip deliberately and called the incident “just racing.”

Strangely, until that moment, Waltrip had been the most unpopular racer on the NASCAR circuit. Fans remembered when he was a brash youngster from Tennessee who brushed aside the legends of the sport--Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison--in his charge to the top.

Yarborough labeled Waltrip, “Jaws,” as much for the manner in which he devoured the opposition as for the manner in which his mouth irritated everyone.

“It was time, I guess, for Darrell’s image to change, and I was the unfortunate one who got caught up in it,” Wallace said. “Darrell’s days of being out in front seemed to be over. He wasn’t winning, he had a poor team and he was 40. He and (his wife) Stevie were trying to have a baby and she had a miscarriage, and all of a sudden people were feeling sorry for him.

“Then along comes this cocky kid from Missouri who’s beating the favorite sons and he gets tangled up with Darrell, and it’s like a volcano exploded.”

It isn’t easy coming into Dixie to try and win races and popularity contests against good ol’ boys from south of the Mason-Dixon line. Joe Ruttman from California, Geoff Bodine from New York and Alan Kulwicki from Wisconsin can attest to that.

“I’ll tell anyone, I don’t like to hear the boos,” Wallace said. “I can’t believe that one little bumping can change one guy (Waltrip) from a jerk to a good guy, and another guy, me, from a good guy to a jerk.

“Just because I come from Missouri and not the Carolinas or Georgia or Alabama, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t have the same dreams, the same ambitions and the same aggressiveness as a Dale Earnhardt or a Bill Elliott or a Darrell Waltrip or a Cale Yarborough.”

Wallace has been racing with Beadle’s Blue Max team only four years but has won 17 races, earned more than $5 million, including a one-year record $2.23 million last year, and has finished in the top five in 45 of 125 starts.

“There’s a lot of guys down here who have been driving these cars since the ‘70s and don’t have that many wins,” Wallace said. “You don’t get a record like that without being aggressive. I enjoy driving hard, and sometimes that means rubbing another guy.

“That’s what’s made all the great drivers great. Richard (Petty) and Bobby (Allison) did a lot of rubbing and bumping that they’re still talking about, and so did Darrell and Cale, and me and Earnhardt, and Darrell and Earnhardt.

“So, why do (fans and reporters) take it out on me. I’ll never understand how they voted Mark the driver of the year. I won six races and he won one, and I won the championship and he finished third, and he gets the award. You figure it out. I can’t.”

Part of it, perhaps, is that matter of how Wallace won the championship in the final-race shootout at Atlanta on Nov. 19.

Wallace, in an attitude reminiscent of some of Waltrip’s early-day “Jaws” remarks, was particularly acrimonious in his criticism of Elliott when he accused the 1988 champion of “stroking” his way to the championship in the final race that year, instead of racing to win.

“I’d be ashamed of racing that way,” Wallace said at the time. “If you’re not racing to win, you shouldn’t be out there. What Elliott did was disgraceful.”

What Elliott also did was drive an ultra-conservative race to finish eighth, while Wallace was winning his fourth race in the final five. But Elliott’s finish was enough to beat Wallace for the championship by 24 points.

So, when Wallace came to the final race of 1989 with a 78-point lead over Martin and a 79-point margin over Earnhardt, stock car racing fans wondered if he would really go for it, or follow Elliott’s advice and cruise to a finish of 18th or better.

Wallace insisted he was going for the checkered flag.

The results indicated otherwise. While Earnhardt was running away with the race, just as Wallace had done a year earlier, Wallace struggled along back in the pack and finished 15th. The margin was cut to 12 points, but Wallace had his championship.

“I drove my guts out in that race,” Wallace said. “It might have looked sloppy, but I never tried harder in my life. It was one of those days when it seemed like everything went wrong.

“But the ultimate goal in my life, ever since I started running stock cars back at Lakehill Speedway (in Valley Park, Mo.) when I was 16, was to win the Winston Cup, and I did it. That was the biggest thing that ever happened to me.”

But racing fans remember how he ripped Elliott.

Reminded of that again this week, Wallace smiled--he always seems to be smiling--and launched into yet another explanation.

“What can you expect when you make a pit stop early,” Wallace said, “and a lap later the yellow (caution flag) comes out and you lose a lap, and then you think a tire is about to blow and you lose another lap checking it out, and then a lug nut comes loose and you have to stop again and lose another lap?

“The fans in the stands, and watching on TV, couldn’t see all the problems we were having. They just saw me dropping back, farther and farther, but there was no way I was stroking. Hell, I was driving as hard as I could just to get up to 15th. I thought for a while I’d lost the whole thing.”

Elliott fans smirk at the explanation. They say their driver had the guts to stand up and say what he was going to do, but Wallace did the same thing without admitting it.

It doesn’t help Wallace’s case, either, that Elliott, the quintessential good ol’ boy from Dawsonville, Ga., was voted the most popular driver in NASCAR five years in a row--until Waltrip got it this year, largely on the strength of the Charlotte episode with Wallace.

“Maybe someday when I’m 40, and some cocky, young kid starts banging on my doors, I’ll win a popularity contest,” Wallace said. “I hope it happens sooner than that, though. I think I’m friendly, outgoing and reliable. I like to make others happy. What more can I do?”

According to Wallace, all is peace and quiet and harmonious between him and car owner Beadle now, but the memory lingers on.

“You can say what you want about it, it was just a financial dispute, but at no time did it deter from my racing program,” Wallace said. “I drove just as hard, and Barry Dodson and his team worked just as hard preparing the car, as we ever did. I won races when we were right in the middle of it. It was just something between the two of us.

“What happened is, I was in the fourth year of a five-year option contract where the fifth year was good only if all conditions were met. I felt he voided it by being late with payments, so I sued to break it. I wanted out, to start my own team.

“It ended up we compromised, and I’m still around--for this year, at least. My contract is up this year, and it’s likely that I’ll have my own team next year. I’m getting used to the idea this year working with my little brother, Kenny, on his Busch Grand National deal.

“We work well together. When I was back racing in the ASA (American Speed Assn.), Kenny used to build my cars and go to the tracks and help out. Now I’m in a position to help him out.”

Kenny Wallace, 26, is planning to drive all 30 Grand National races this season in a Pontiac owned by Rusty and prepped in his new 8,000-square-foot racing shop adjacent to Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“Raymond (Beadle) is a fun guy, a great guy to be around,” Wallace said, “and I owe him a lot for taking a chance three years ago with someone who thought he knew it all, but I’ll tell you something, when he starts talking money, Raymond is a mean son of a gun.”

Racing fans may have difficulty picking Wallace out of the field Sunday. Although he is driving for the same team, with the same owner and the same No. 27, his sponsors have changed, and so have his car’s colors.

Instead of the white-and-green Kodiak colors, the Pontiac is black with gold numerals, in Miller Genuine Draft colors. Ken Schrader is now in the Kodiak car.

“I’ve had a number of fans come up to me and congratulate me on how well I’m doing here this week, and I have to tell them that it’s not me, it’s Schrader,” Wallace said. “I just wish it was me.”

Schrader, in a Chevrolet, won the pole, and also ran away with the Busch Clash for last year’s pole-sitters.

Wallace, on the other hand, qualified a disappointing 34th and will start 13th in the second 125-mile qualifying heat Thursday to determine his starting position in Sunday’s 500-mile race.

“I’m banking on running well in the 125 and moving up for Sunday,” Wallace said. “We learned a lot in the Busch Clash about how the car was handling on this track, and it should help us Thursday. I started eighth last Sunday and got up to fourth before I dropped back to eighth again, but the car was too loose. The race was so short (20 laps) that we couldn’t stop, but if we could, we would have fixed the handling and looked a whole lot better.”

Wallace insisted that there is no lack of dedication, nor desire, now that he has achieved his ultimate goal of winning the Winston Cup championship.

“The intensity is still there, maybe greater than ever,” Wallace said. “To win something as sweet as the Winston Cup only makes me want to accomplish other goals, such as winning on different tracks. Especially here at Daytona. I’ve won here in IROC and the Busch race, but this place has never done well by me in the 500, and I want to change that around.

“And the only way I know how to change it around is to work with the crew, then get in the race and drive as hard as the car will go. That’s really the only way I’ve ever gone at things.”

Wallace has driven in seven previous Daytona 500s and never finished higher than seventh, in 1988.

“The only change you’ll see in Rusty Wallace from last year is that I’m giving up racing on short tracks and in the Busch Grand National series,” he said. “I love racing as much as ever, but I decided to give it up for two reasons.

“One, I’m making so much money driving my Winston Cup car that it would be really foolish if I went out and got hurt driving somewhere else and had to miss doing what I’m supposed to be doing. And secondly, I want to devote more time to Kenny’s car, and I can’t do that traveling around on one-night stands at places like Saugus (Calif.) or Elko (Nev.) and Victoria (Canada), racing against all comers. You know, when I went to that race in British Columbia, I had to make a 45-minute ferry ride just to get there.

“Another thing, when I’m not racing around the country now, it’ll free me up to spend more time at home with my family, and that’s very important to me. Patti has been a rock standing beside me, and I need to show my appreciation more.

“There were plenty of times on our way up when I wanted to kick the dog or knock down the bathroom door, just to beat on something, when Patti calmed me down. She’s always been there when I needed her, and now the kids are growing up, too, and I’d like to be around them more.”

The Wallaces have two boys--Greg, who will be 10 next week, and Stephen, 2, and a daughter, Katie, 6.

“My dad was extremely important to me, and I’d like to be that way to them,” Wallace said. “Dad was a short-track racer, too, so he knew the frustrations I was feeling when I was starting out.”

How about the frustrations now that he is champion of all stock car racing?

“Aw, I can take care of that with a few wins, starting Sunday,” he said. Smiling, as usual.