Losing the Rat Race : Kulwicki Hasn’t Had Time to Savor NASCAR Championship

If there is a downside to winning a national championship, it’s that no one gives you any time to savor it.

That’s how it has been for Alan Kulwicki, the 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup stock car racing champion, since he edged Bill Elliott in a dramatic season-ending race last Nov. 15 at Atlanta.

“Everything has been a blur, one thing running into another,” Kulwicki said as he prepared his Hooters Ford for today’s Gatorade Twin 125-mile qualifying race for the 1993 season-opening Daytona 500.

“Since mid-November, there have been only three days I’ve had to myself. I don’t want to give the wrong perception, that I’m not pleased with the attention, but now and then fame just isn’t much fun.”

His main reward for winning was a $1-million bonus.

“I bought a tux for the banquet in New York, and that’s about it,” the 38-year-old bachelor said when asked how he spent his winnings.

“I guess I can relate to how President Clinton must feel,” he said.

“He worked so hard to get to the position he sought, and then he finds a lot more demands on his time than he’d anticipated. When it’s all added up, it’s rather overwhelming.”

Kulwicki’s feelings stem from his climb, when he was often considered the underdog and rarely received the attention given to fellow championship contenders.

Since the day in 1985 he packed up everything he owned and headed south from Greenfield, Wis., Kulwicki has been an anomaly among Winston Cup drivers.

Last year he became the first driver-owner to win the NASCAR championship since Richard Petty in 1979, the first champion with a college degree and the first champion from north of the Mason-Dixon line.

“I didn’t even have any contacts in NASCAR when I arrived in Charlotte,” Kulwicki said. “All I had was a dream and a lot of ambition. I wanted to be the best at what I was doing and to do that, I had to go where the best were.

“I had gone about as far as I could in the Midwest, where life (as a stock car driver) was a lot simpler. The number of sponsors, money and recognition was not one-tenth of what NASCAR offered.”

After getting his degree in mechanical engineering at Wisconsin Milwaukee, Kulwicki worked two years as an engineer and raced cars as a hobby before becoming a full-time driver. He won track championships at the Slinger and Kaukauna tracks in Wisconsin before racing five years on the American Speed Assn. circuit. His biggest victory was the Miller 200 at Milwaukee in 1983.

His father, Gerald, was a noted engine builder who worked on championship stock cars driven by Norm Nelson and Roger McCluskey, but Gerald showed little interest in his son’s racing.

“At times I resented the fact that he didn’t want me to race and did little to promote my career,” Alan said. “I always felt he could have pulled some strings, but he never did. He never invested his money in my cars, but he was always ready with an answer when I would ask him questions. He just had a different perspective. He knew how difficult it was to be successful, and he didn’t want me to get hurt. I was all he had left. Now he is my biggest fan.”

Kulwicki’s mother died when he was in the second grade. His only brother, a hemophiliac, died when he was in the seventh grade.

“I don’t want to paint a picture that my dad did a bad job of raising me,” he said. “There are certain things a mother is supposed to do and a father can’t. It would have been nice to have had a pat on the back or someone giving me moral support, but I had to find that within myself.”

When he arrived in Charlotte to challenge the NASCAR establishment and its multimillion-dollar operations, he had one race car, two engines and two crew members. He still managed to run in 23 races and was rookie of the year in 1986.

Then he turned down an estimated $1-million contract to drive for the legendary Junior Johnson. Few, if any, have done that.

“If the offer had come earlier, when I was shorter on money and experience, I might have taken it, but when it did come I felt I was on the verge of winning races,” Kulwicki said. “I felt it was just a matter of time. Then I got to thinking, if an owner told me that I could make all the decisions about how to set up the car, I might just as well do it for myself.

“If I had walked away from my own team, I would have always wondered what could have been. Now I know.”

In one of life’s little ironies, it was Johnson’s car, the No. 11 driven by Elliott, that Kulwicki beat in the closest finish in Winston Cup history for the NASCAR title. After 18 races, covering more than 12,000 miles, the difference came down to one lap on Atlanta’s 1.5-mile course.

Kulwicki’s winning margin was 10 points, 4,078 to 4,068. Five were awarded to the driver leading the most laps. Kulwicki led 103, Elliott 102. If Elliott had led one more lap, he would been the champion and $1 million richer, because if they had tied in points, Elliott would have won the tiebreaker--most victories. He won five, Kulwicki two.

“The crew had everything figured out perfect that final race, but we won the championship through hard work and never giving up through the entire year,” he said. “After we crashed at Dover, we were 278 points behind Elliott with six races to go. It was unrealistic to even think about the championship, but the attitude among the crew never waned. They worked just as hard as if we were a contender, and in the end, we were.”

Even a Jan. 24 homecoming in Greenfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, left Kulwicki feeling frustrated.

“Who was it said you can’t go home again?” Kulwicki asked, then added, “Well, he was right. It just wasn’t quite like it was when I went home before I was the champion. This time it was like people put me on a pedestal, and I don’t like that.

“People waited in line from three to four hours just to get my autograph, most of them people I didn’t even know. It didn’t seem right, having them wait for nearly four hours to get maybe 30 seconds of my time. When I used to go home, the people who came to see me were old acquaintances. This time there were about 5,000 people, most of whom I’d never met.

“It made me feel uneasy, having people put me on a different level. Maybe someday I’ll get used to it, but I’m still trying to adjust.”

Kulwicki has one burning goal--to make one more trip around the track the wrong way, in what he calls his Polish Victory Lap.

“I did it after my first win at Phoenix (in 1988) and I did it after I won the championship at Atlanta. It’s not something I plan on doing every time I win, but if I won the Daytona 500, it would be special enough to do it one more time.”

Kulwicki has been a natural at being the underdog. Before the final race at Atlanta, he removed the first two letters of the Ford Thunderbird decals on his car so it read: UNDERBIRD. And he continues to wear a patch with the Mighty Mouse cartoon character on his driver’s uniform.

His positive outlook hasn’t changed either. Despite being only the 28th-fastest qualifier for Sunday’s Daytona 500 and having to start from the sixth row in today’s second 125-mile qualifying race, he sees nothing but good ahead.

“If we don’t win Daytona, it won’t devastate us,” Kulwicki said. “We’ll just go on to Rockingham, and if we don’t win there, we’ll go on to Richmond. It’ll be the same way we approached last year.”