Alan Kulwicki Racing, Inc., better known as AK Racing and originally known as Terry Motorsports. was a championship-winning NASCAR Winston Cup Series team. The team was founded by Bill Terry in 1982 and fielded Buicks for Bob Jarvis, Tommy Ellis, and Butch Lindley in 1982 and 1983. In 1985, Terry began fielding a Ford for Alan Kulwicki.
In 1986, Terry took his team full time, but backed out of the operation later in the year. Kulwicki bought out Terry and began running the team as an owner–driver. The team adopted the AK Racing name and raced under that banner until the end of the 1993 season, during which Kulwicki lost his life and Geoff Bodine purchased the team.
Bill Terry era The team debuted at the 1982 Cracker Barrel Country Store 420 at Nashville Speedway USA with Bob Jarvis driving it as the No. 32 Clinomint Buick, finishing 28th out of 30 cars. Two races later, the No. 32 ran again at the World 600, with Bosco Lowe qualifying 40th and finishing 16th. Lowe drove the car in the Daytona 500 the following season, finishing 39th after a crash. Tommy Ellis drove their next race, bringing the Big Daddy's Buick to a 15th-place finish at Charlotte. Butch Lindley drove the final race of the 1983 season for the team at Martinsville Speedway, finishing 25th after suffering rear end problems.
Alan Kulwicki era Terry's team did not run a race in 1984, but would return for another part time effort in 1985. Terry hired Alan Kulwicki, a driver in the ASA Series who had also made several starts in the Busch Series. The team switched their engine supplier to Ford and fielded cars #32 and #38 for the Wisconsin native in five races toward the end of the season, with a best finish of thirteenth at Charlotte. Terry then decided to go full time for the first time in 1986, with Kulwicki piloting the #32 and sponsorship from the restaurant chain Quincy's Family Steakhouse. After Kulwicki failed to qualify for two of the first three races, including the Daytona 500, Terry renumbered the car to #35 for the spring Atlanta race. Kulwicki would record his best career finish thus far shortly thereafter at Martinsville, finishing fourth. However, the team failed to qualify at Talladega, then ran poorly at Dover and Charlotte. After sitting out the spring races at Riverside and Pocono, Kulwicki returned at Michigan. He then avenged his DNQ at Daytona by running tenth at the 4th of July race, and would later record a top ten at Bristol.
After that race, Kulwicki and Terry agreed to have the driver purchase the team outright, and the newly renamed AK Racing moved its operations to Kannapolis, North Carolina. With the team now under his stewardship, Kulwicki ran the last nine races with eight finishes inside the top twenty. His best finish was seventh in the fall Dover race, with the worst being 27th in the season finale at Riverside. Despite missing six races and finishing behind Michael Waltrip, who ran all but one race (the Daytona 500, which like Kulwicki he failed to qualify for) in the series points, Kulwicki's performance was enough to earn him Rookie of the Year honors for 1986.
1987-90 For 1987, Kulwicki would renumber his car to #7, which he would run for the rest of his career. After Quincy's left as sponsor, Kulwicki signed on to carry Zerex Antifreeze on the car going forward. He won three pole positions and finished 15th in points. In 1988, Kulwicki won his first race career race at Phoenix International Raceway. In celebration, he drove the now-famous Polish Victory Lap. He won once more in 1990 at North Carolina Speedway and finished in the top ten in points for the first time, but lost his sponsorship after the season once Zerex's parent company decided to focus solely on promoting its Valvoline brand of lubricants.
1991 After rejecting overtures from Junior Johnson to drive for his team in the offseason, Kulwicki attempted to sign with Kraft General Foods for 1991, where he would carry its Maxwell House Coffee brand on the #7. Johnson, who had also tried to sign Kulwicki in 1990 but was unable to, retaliated by usurping him and taking the Maxwell House sponsorship for himself. This left Kulwicki sponsorless as the season got underway, and although he was able to gain sponsorship from the U.S. Army for the Daytona 500 as a promotional effort surrounding Operation Desert Storm, it was only for one race and the team ran unsponsored for the next two races.
Then, at the spring race at Atlanta, Kulwicki caught a much needed break. Atlanta was regarded as the home racetrack for the Hooters restaurant chain, and they had sponsored Mark Stahl's #82 Ford for the first three races of the season. Stahl had yet to qualify for a race, and did not do so at Atlanta, either. Kulwicki, meanwhile, qualified the unsponsored #7 on the pole, and Hooters approached him for a one race deal to put their logos on his car. Kulwicki finished in eighth that day, and shortly thereafter both sides agreed to terms on a long-term sponsorship. By the end of the season, Kulwicki was fourteenth in the standings and won the night race at Bristol; although he finished four places lower in the standings, the team had secure sponsorship again and 1992 would prove to be even more lucrative.
1992 In that season, Kulwicki won at Bristol in the spring and then won his first superspeedway race when he won at Pocono in the summer. He became a championship contender, challenging Davey Allison and Bill Elliott (who, incidentally, had been signed by the same Junior Johnson who Kulwicki had declined to race for the year earlier) for most of the season and staying somewhat consistent while both of his chief competitors, who recorded more victories, also dealt with mechanical issues and accidents. Entering the season finale at Atlanta, Kulwicki trailed Allison by thirty points. Feeling he was truly the biggest underdog among the drivers who had a chance to win the Winston Cup that afternoon (in addition, Kyle Petty, Harry Gant, and Mark Martin were also mathematically eligible), Kulwicki got permission from NASCAR and Ford to place stickers over the first two letters in the car’s branding on the front grille, which caused it to read "Underbird".
In the race, Martin, Petty, and Gant fell out of contention early. Then, Allison crashed on lap 254 and suffered severe damage to his car, leaving Kulwicki and Elliott to determine the championship for themselves. Kulwicki, who had been battling gearbox issues all day, managed to clinch the five point bonus for leading the most laps in the race; he led exactly one more lap than Elliott, who entered the race ten points behind Kulwicki in the standings. Kulwicki came to the finish in second place behind the race-winning Elliott, clinching the championship and becoming the first owner-driver since Richard Petty, who was making his final start that afternoon, won his last championship in 1979.
1993 Kulwicki started out the season with three top tens and two top fives, two of which were on the short tracks of Rockingham and Richmond. These were bookended by a 26th place finish in the Daytona 500, where he fell three laps down, and a 36th place finish in his return to Atlanta, where the "Underbird" car (which the team brought to the track) crashed out. The team finished sixth at Darlington, then began heading to Bristol, where Kulwicki was the defending race winner.
Blountville On Thursday, April 1, Kulwicki was returning from a promotional appearance at a Hooters restaurant on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was scheduled to fly from Knoxville to Tri-Cities Regional Airport in Blountville, Tennessee that night, and boarded a Swearingen Merlin III twin-engine turboprop he leased from Hooters owner Bob Brooks. Two Hooters executives were also aboard the plane.
The plane departed Knoxville at 8:58 PM local time and was cleared for landing thirty minutes later. One minute after that, radio contact was lost with the pilot, and shortly after that, the aircraft began a rapid descent that was later determined to have been caused by icing conditions that triggered shutdown of its engines. It crashed and burst into flames nearly six miles outside of the airport, killing Kulwicki and the three others on board.
After Kulwicki's death
Immediate aftermath As per his will, Kulwicki left the team to his father, Gerald. The elder Kulwicki did not have any interest in running the team, so after consulting with his attorney, the team was placed under the stewardship of Felix Sabates, the owner of Team SABCO, while a buyer was sought. Crew chief Paul Andrews and the crew informed Gerald Kulwicki that they had no intention of stopping their work, as his son would have wanted them to continue as normal. Therefore, the day following the race at Bristol, the AK Racing shop reopened for business and began preparing for the team's intended return at Martinsville on April 25, taking the scheduled off week for Easter and skipping the spring race at North Wilkesboro.
Sabates received several offers immediately, but some were rejected outright because the potential buyers were only interested in the property that the race shop occupied. He did, however, receive offers from four Winston Cup Series drivers who were interested in forming their own owner-driver operation as Kulwicki had. One was his championship rival Bill Elliott, who had owned a car in the Busch Series off and on and was fielding a car for his nephew Casey in the series this particular year. Another was Ricky Rudd, whose contract to drive the #5 Tide Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports was expiring at the end of 1993. The other two were the Bodine brothers, Geoff and Brett. Geoff at the time was driving for Bud Moore Engineering in the #15 Motorcraft Ford, while Brett was driving for Kenny Bernstein's King Racing in the #26 Quaker State Ford.
In the interim, the #7 would need a driver to replace Kulwicki. He had said numerous times that if something were ever to happen to him that would prevent him from driving the car, be it injury, retirement, or a worst case scenario, Kulwicki wanted Jimmy Hensley to take his place. Hensley had just finished the 1992 season as the Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, driving a partial schedule for Cale Yarborough in his #66 Ford. As fate would have it, he was also available, as Hensley had only run three races as an injury replacement for Jimmy Means (like Kulwicki, an owner-driver) in the #52 NAPA Auto Parts Ford in 1993.
Hooters drops out However, things were not all positive for AK Racing. In addition to sponsoring Kulwicki, Hooters was also sponsoring Loy Allen Jr. in the ARCA Series (and, coincidentally, had just signed on to be its title sponsor for 1993) as well as in the Busch Series, where he was driving for his father, Loy Sr.. Sabates, Gerald Kulwicki, the Allens, Bob Brooks, and several executives from Hooters met for five hours shortly after Bristol to discuss business. During the meeting, Brooks and Loy Allen Sr. broached the idea of Loy Jr. taking over the #7. Sabates said no.