From Underdog to the Top Dog : Auto racing: Kulwicki, who was killed in plane crash Thursday night, overcame early adversity.

Alan Kulwicki will never get a chance to drive his third trademark victory lap--an around-the-track-in-the-wrong-way statement he made after his first race victory at Phoenix in 1988 and again after winning the NASCAR Winston Cup championship last fall in Atlanta.

“I’d like to do it once more--around the track backward at Daytona after winning the 500,” he said earlier this year. “Then I would retire it.”

Kulwicki, 38, was killed Thursday night when his twin-engine Merlin Fairchild corporate plane crashed in a field as it approached Tri-City Airport in Bristol, Tenn., about 9:30 p.m. EST.

Kulwicki and two members of the Hooters team were en route from Knoxville to Bristol, where he was scheduled to qualify his Ford on Friday for Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol International Raceway.

Kulwicki was defending champion of the Winston Cup event. Gerald Kulwicki, Alan’s father, withdrew the car from Sunday’s race. The elder Kulwicki, as the sole beneficiary of his bachelor son’s will, appointed car owner Felix Sabates as administrator of Alan Kulwicki Racing until a new owner can be found.

“The immediate charge placed with Mr. Sabates is to keep this team together. This is a championship team,” said Tom Hauk, the team’s business manager. “All of the employees of the team are devastated. Not only are we mourning the loss of our driver, team owner and leader, but the loss of three of our best friends.”

Sabates owns cars driven by Kyle Petty and Kenny Wallace.

“I probably held more respect for Alan Kulwicki than anyone else in this sport for what he was able to do with sheer determination,” Petty said. “His accomplishment should stand as a statement of what can be done if you want it enough and are willing to work for it.”

Every race he ran and everywhere he went, Kulwicki was considered the underdog--even by himself. For the final race last year at Atlanta, where he came from behind to edge former champion Bill Elliott by 10 points for the championship and a $1-million bonus, he removed the first two letters of the Ford Thunderbird decals on his car so they read: UNDERBIRD.

And he always wore a Mighty Mouse patch on his racing uniform.

“I guess I’ve always been different,” said Kulwicki, of Polish descent. “That’s why I did that ‘Polish Victory Lap’ the first time at Phoenix. Most people didn’t know who I was. I thought I ought to give them something to remember me by.”

He was different. He was the first college graduate to win a Winston Cup title, having a degree in engineering from Wisconsin Milwaukee, and he was the first champion from above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Before qualifying began Friday on a cold and gray Tennessee day, the truck that hauled Kulwicki’s car from race to race circled the 0.533-mile Bristol track in his honor. A fan raised a sign that read: “Gone to race in a better place. We’ll miss you.”

Also killed in the crash were Mark Brooks, 26, son of Hooters chairman Robert H. Brooks; Dan Duncan, 44, liaison between the sponsor and the team; and Charlie Campbell, 48, the Hooters corporate pilot.

Hooters closed its restaurants Friday.

Kulwicki had been in Knoxville for an autograph session Thursday afternoon at a Hooters restaurant.

For nearly seven years, after leaving his home in Greenfield, Wis., in 1985, to tackle the high-powered stock cars of the Winston Cup series, Kulwicki had waged a fight to race competitively with little or no sponsorship against teams with multimillion-dollar backing.

“There were so many times I could have quit and just said, ‘Well, it just wasn’t meant to be,’ ” he said of his early struggles. In his first six seasons, he had only two victories.

Four races into the 1991 season, Robert Brooks offered a partial sponsorship from his restaurant chain. Kulwicki responded by winning another race, and Brooks rewarded him with a three-year contract.

“There isn’t enough thanks to go around for Hooters’ part in my winning (the series championship),” Kulwicki said. “They took an incredible burden off my shoulders and allowed me to focus all of my attention to preparing and driving the car. I’ll do anything I can to promote them--on and off the track.”

Among the things he did was make personal appearances at Hooters outlets, such as the one Thursday in Knoxville.

“I’m really sick because Alan didn’t get a chance to enjoy the things he’d built, spent his whole life with a total focus to get to,” said driver Mark Martin, who much like Kulwicki struggled for several years before landing sponsorship help. Martin also raced with Kulwicki on short tracks in the American Speed Assn.

“On the other hand, he did win the championship and proved to everyone in this business he could do what we didn’t think an owner-driver could do,” Martin added. “So I’m proud for him in that respect and real sad he didn’t get to enjoy it longer.”

Kulwicki, who once turned down a reported $1-million offer from Junior Johnson to drive his cars, was a loyal Ford driver.

“This is a great loss to everyone in the motorsports community,” said Michael Kranefuss, director of the Ford Motor Co. racing program. “Alan was really more to us that just the Winston Cup champion and a guy who raced Fords. He was the people’s champion as well.”

Eyewitnesses said the plane appeared to be making a normal approach when it suddenly dropped. Kulwicki had called from a plane phone after leaving Knoxville to have a friend pick him up.

“What makes this hurt so is that Kulwicki and everyone connected with the plane was ultra conservative,” said Wayne Estes, a Ford spokesman. “Many of these drivers are real daredevils in their planes, but the people Alan surrounded himself with were extremely safety conscious.”

Kulwicki will be buried in his hometown of Milwaukee. Arrangements are pending.