Kulwicki Takes a Numbers Game : Auto racing: He loses race, wins points competition and $1 million by virtue of arithmetic.

By the margin of a single 1.552-mile lap around Atlanta Motor Speedway’s high-banked oval, Alan Kulwicki of Greenfield, Wis., is the 1992 Winston Cup stock car champion. And $1 million richer.

Kulwicki didn’t win the Hooters 500, the season’s final race, Sunday. Bill Elliott, a local favorite from Dawsonville, Ga., did. Kulwicki finished second.

But because he led 103 laps and Elliott 102 of the 328-lap race, Kulwicki finished 10 points ahead, 4,078 to 4,068, to earn the $1-million Winston bonus as champion.

It was the first championship for Kulwicki, 37, who called it “a dream come true.”

The driver who leads the most laps earns five points. Had Elliott led only one of those led by Kulwicki, they would have tied in total points and Elliott would have won the championship. The victory Sunday was his fifth, and most season victories is the tiebreaker. Kulwicki won only two.

“My crew told me that if I led on lap 310, I would lead the most laps and there was nothing Bill (Elliott) could do as long as I finished right behind him,” Kulwicki said. “I decided not to do anything foolish and make a stupid mistake trying to beat him in the race. Winning it would have been nice, but compared to the championship, it didn’t have too high a priority.”

Elliott took the checkered flag, his second at Atlanta this season, 7.7 seconds ahead of Kulwicki.

“We ran as strong as we could all day long,” Elliott said. “There was nothing more we could do. Alan Kulwicki did what he had to do, and it was enough.”

Elliott, the 1988 champion, finished the day the way he started it--10 points behind Kulwicki.

“It was a weird day, totally weird,” Elliott said. “Maybe winning the race isn’t as good (as winning the championship), but considering this was our first year together, we did pretty well, winning five races and finishing second (in the points).”

Elliott left his family-run team last year to join Junior Johnson’s Budweiser team. He won $93,600 Sunday, and his second place in the points race is worth $330,000.

“Imagine that, winning or losing the championship comes down to needing someone between Kulwicki and us,” Johnson said. “All in all, it was still a great season. But we needed someone in there between us, that’s all.”

Kulwicki, who came to NASCAR from Wisconsin seven years ago with little more than a pickup truck and a trailer to assume the role of perennial underdog, gave his championship a special twist when he turned his Hooters Ford around after the race and took a lap backward.

It was a stunt he did first at Phoenix after he won his first Winston Cup race in 1988.

“When I came here (to NASCAR) in 1986, a lot of people said I was crazy to think I could compete because I wasn’t a good ol’ boy from the South, and I didn’t have a million dollars,” Kulwicki said. “So when I won I decided to do something different. . . . I’ll probably retire it now.”

Elliott and Kulwicki benefited from an accident involving Davey Allison, the points leader going into the final race. Allison needed to finish only fifth or better to win the title, and was running sixth when he and Ernie Irvan crashed coming off the fourth turn, down the front straightaway, on the 253rd lap.

“It looked like Ernie had a flat tire or something,” Allison said. “The car just got away from him. I saw him get loose, and we just ran out of room. I hate to have it end this way because the guys over at Robert Yates Racing deserve better, but that’s just the way it works sometimes.”

The accident left a long black smudge on the pit wall where Allison’s car slid. Allison finished third in the points race after starting the day with a 30-point lead over Kulwicki.

Irvan said he didn’t know what happened.

“The first thing I remember is Davey Allison coming in (the infield hospital) to find out if I was all right,” Irvan said. “I didn’t even know who else was in the accident until then. I hate what happened to Davey, but that’s racing. We were just trying to win the race.”

Elliott averaged 133.322 m.p.h. for the 3-hour 44-minute 40-second race, slowed because of seven caution flags for 45 laps.

The race was barely underway when seven cars crashed in the first turn of the second lap, taking out the first row. Pole-sitter Rick Mast, who set a qualifying record of 180.183 m.p.h. last Friday, returned after his crew repaired his car and finished 28th, 72 laps behind the winner.

The happiest man on the premises, outside of Kulwicki, was Michael Kranefuss, director of Ford’s racing program, after his cars finished 1-2-3 in the Winston Cup standings and 1-2-3-4 in the race, just as they did in the Daytona 500 season opener.

“It was the best day of my career, without a doubt,” Kranefuss said.