The 1992 Hooters 500 was the 29th and final race of the 1992 NASCAR season. It was held on November 15, 1992, at Atlanta Motor Speedway and is widely considered the greatest NASCAR race of all time, with three stories dominating the race: the debut of Jeff Gordon in the Winston Cup Series, the final race of seven-time champion Richard Petty's thirty-five-year career, and the battle for the series points championship with six drivers mathematically eligible to win the title.
The race was won by Bill Elliott in the No. 11 Budweiser Ford for Junior Johnson and Associates, recording his fifth win of the 1992 season. Alan Kulwicki, driving the No. 7 Hooters Ford for his self-owned AK Racing, won the championship by finishing second behind Elliott.
The 1992 Hooters 500 represented the 33rd running of the Atlanta fall race, and the sixth time the event was held as the NASCAR season finale.
Background In 1992 Atlanta Motor Speedway was one of eight intermediate tracks, a track between one and two miles in length, to hold a Winston Cup Series race. The layout at Atlanta Motor Speedway at the time was a four-turn traditional oval track that was long. The track's turns are banked at twenty-four degrees, while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, and the back stretch are banked at five.
The race, and its subsequent championship outcome, was run under the points system that had been introduced to NASCAR in 1975. In this system, which was used until the end of 2003 season in the Cup Series, the drivers competed to have the highest cumulative point total at the end of the season, when they would be awarded the Winston Cup. Under this system, the possibility existed that a driver could win the Winston Cup with several races to spare. However, the opposite was also true as a points race could be so tight that it would take until the final race of the year to decide it and multiple drivers could conceivably become champion. This race was a case in point for the latter, as six drivers entered Atlanta with a shot at the championship.
Media coverage
Television ESPN broadcast the race to a nationwide television audience as part of its Speedworld motor racing series. Bob Jenkins was the lap-by-lap commentator with Benny Parsons and Ned Jarrett as analysts in the booth. Jerry Punch and John Kernan reported from pit road.
Radio The race was also carried over radio by Motor Racing Network. Barney Hall & Eli Gold manned the announce position in the booth. Joe Moore reported from turns one and two, with Allen Bestwick stationed in turns three and four. Jim Phillips, Winston Kelley, and former NASCAR driver Dick Brooks covered the action for MRN from the pit and garage areas.
Pre-race
Championship battle The six drivers, in order of their positions in the Winston Cup standings entering the race weekend, were Davey Allison in the #28 Texaco/Havoline Ford for Robert Yates Racing, Kulwicki, Elliott, Harry Gant in the #33 Skoal Bandit Oldsmobile for Leo Jackson Motorsports; Kyle Petty in the #42 Mello Yello Pontiac for Felix Sabates' Team SABCO; and Mark Martin in the #6 Valvoline Ford for Roush Racing.
Davey Allison (leader)
Allison, coming off of a 1991 season that saw him win five times and come in third place in the final standings, picked up where he had left off in 1992 and won the season opening Daytona 500. After recording five consecutive top five finishes to open the season, Allison suffered the first of several big wrecks when he crashed out of the spring Bristol race in April. While he rebounded the next week to win at North Wilkesboro and then two races after that at Talladega, Allison would suffer a violent crash as he crossed the finish line to win The Winston in May, coming away with a bruised lung and concussion. Then, at Pocono in July, he spun off on the back stretch and the car became airborne and rotated several times; he suffered another concussion and a severely broken arm in the accident but continued to race. While he continued to race well, including winning at Michigan in June, Allison also had several finishes of thirtieth or worse due to accidents; his crew chief, Larry McReynolds, referred to this trend as “checkers or wreckers” years later. He also had to deal with a personal tragedy after his brother Clifford, driving in the Busch Series, was killed in a practice crash in August at Michigan.
One of the places where Allison's bad luck struck was at Darlington during the running of the Southern 500, one of the races that at the time comprised the Winston Million. R.J. Reynolds, the company that owned Cup Series title sponsor Winston Cigarettes at the time, offered a $1 million bonus to a driver if he managed to win three of NASCAR's four biggest events in a single season, which at the time consisted of the Daytona 500, the spring race at Talladega, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Southern 500. Bill Elliott was the only driver to accomplish this feat to date, having done so in 1985; Allison's first chance to win the $1 million bonus was at the Coca-Cola 600, but he had not won the race, which meant that he would need to win at Darlington to clinch it.
The race was run under questionable weather conditions and, thanks to a crew member misreading a radar screen, Allison pitted instead of staying out with the lead. Five laps after he pitted, handing the lead to Darrell Waltrip, the race was called due to rain. Allison finished fifth, while Waltrip recorded his second victory of the year, the final victory of his NASCAR career, and his first in the Southern 500, enabling him to complete a career Grand Slam by winning all four of NASCAR's Crown Jewels.
After a late season series of struggles by Elliott, Allison was able to rally back into contention and when he won second to last race of the season at Phoenix, his fifth victory of 1992, he reclaimed the points lead. Entering the Hooters 500, Allison was the only driver who controlled his own destiny. Running fifth or better would clinch the title for him outright. If he led a lap, he would clinch the title with a seventh-place finish or better. If Allison managed to lead the most laps, he only needed to finish eighth or better.
Allison was attempting to become the second second-generation driver to win the Winston Cup Championship - his father Bobby won the title in 1983. At the time, Lee and Richard Petty were the only father-son duo to be Cup Series champions.
Alan Kulwicki (—30)
Kulwicki entered the final race of the season with two victories, winning the spring Bristol race that Allison crashed out of and following that up with a victory in June at Pocono. While his win total was not as high as the five for Allison or the four for Elliott, Kulwicki's strength was his consistency. Entering the Hooters 500 race weekend, Kulwicki had recorded a total of sixteen top ten finishes in the twenty-eight races run to that point, ten of which were top five finishes. In eight of the other twelve races, Kulwicki finished inside the top twenty, and he was running at the end of all but two races.Alan Kulwicki career statistics at Racing-Reference.info
Kulwicki also had personal reasons for wanting to win the championship, as his career had nearly been derailed by Elliott's car owner Junior Johnson. Over the previous few seasons, Johnson had actually approached Kulwicki twice with offers to drive for his team. In 1989, Kulwicki turned down an offer to drive the #11 car for Johnson. Toward the end of the 1990 season, Johnson had decided to field a second car for 1991 and again asked Kulwicki to drive it, going as far as to offer him a seven-figure deal for his services; he again declined.
However, in 1990, Kulwicki's team was not on as secure financial footing as it had been in 1989. He had been running with sponsorship from Zerex, a brand of coolants owned by Valvoline's parent company Ashland Oil, since 1987, but they had decided not to renew their contract for another year. He had been negotiating with Kraft General Foods to bring Maxwell House Coffee on board, and the sides appeared ready to strike a deal.
Johnson, meanwhile, was furious that he had been rejected twice by Kulwicki and went to Kraft General Foods himself, convincing them to instead sponsor his second team for 1991. This left Kulwicki to run the operation out of pocket until he could find a full-time sponsor. After he qualified on the pole at Atlanta in the spring, he was approached by executives from Hooters, which was based in Atlanta and had sponsored a car that failed to qualify. Kulwicki agreed to terms with Hooters, thus bringing in the much needed sponsor money and allowing the team to continue running.
Kulwicki asked for and got approval from NASCAR to place two Mighty Mouse decals on the front of his car, covering the TH in “Thunderbird” so it read “Underbird”; he did this largely because he felt like, as the only driver in the championship mix running his own team, he was the underdog in the fight. Recent events would seem to support his theory; after he crashed out of the Peak Antifreeze 500 at Dover, which resulted in a 34th-place finish and relegated to a 278-point deficit, Kulwicki culled together a streak of five consecutive top fifteen finishes, four of which were top fives, and climbed back into contention as the drivers ahead of him began to falter.
Like Allison, Kulwicki had a chance to join the Petty family in the NASCAR history books. The aforementioned Lee Petty was the last owner-driver to win the Winston Cup.
Bill Elliott (—40) After spending his entire full-time NASCAR career with Melling Racing driving the #9 car, Elliott joined up with Junior Johnson for 1992. He was coming off of a season where he, for the first time since he became a full-time driver in Winston Cup, failed to finish in the top ten in points. The pairing bore fruit almost immediately, as the 1988 series champion added another record to his résumé.
Despite running poorly at Daytona, Elliott went on to win the GM Goodwrench 500 at Rockingham, the Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond, Atlanta's spring event in the Motorcraft Quality Parts 500, and the TranSouth 500 at Darlington in consecutive weeks. This tied the NASCAR Cup Series record, which had at the time only been done four other times, the most recently by Harry Gant one season earlier.
Allison's inconsistent performance and injuries kept Elliott close enough to him in the standings and enabled him to take the championship lead into the summer months and build upon it.Bill Elliott career statistics at Racing-Reference.info After the Daytona 500, Elliott did not finish outside of the top 20 in any event and recorded fourteen top tens prior to the Peak Antifreeze 500 at Dover in September. He ran second there, improving on his result from the spring when he finished 13th, and opened up what was then a 154-point lead on second place driver Allison.
After that, however, things took a bad turn. Elliott finished 31st in a 32 car field at Martinsville a week after the Dover race after an engine failure, followed that up with a 26th-place run at North Wilkesboro finishing multiple laps down, and finished 30th at Charlotte after his sway bar broke. Elliott managed to finish in the top five at Rockingham again when the series returned there in late October, and entered Phoenix with a seventy-point lead over Allison. There, he was forced to withdraw after a cracked cylinder head caused his engine to fail. Allison's win combined with Elliott's 31st-place finish caused a 110-point swing in the standings; Elliott left Phoenix not only trailing Allison but also Kulwicki, who had run fourth.
Elliott's goals were to finish run up front and put as much distance between himself and both the #28 and the #7. All three drivers had run in the top 10 at the spring event at Atlanta, so Elliott would likely need misfortune to befall both Allison and Kulwicki.
Harry Gant (—97)