Tim Richmond - Some personal thoughts from a fan of the sport

I’m also one of those unfortunate people that never got to go to a race and see Tim Richmond race. Sure I got to see him on T.V. and stuff, but never in person. I consider it a loss. Really.

Tim was an amazing driver who didn’t fit into the ‘Good ol’ Boy’ mold that has now since been eliminated in NASCAR. Too bad Tim wasn’t driving now, he probably would have fit in better with the rest of the drivers - especially with Scott Speed I’d suspect.

I’m not going to go into Tim’s story too much here, I think that has been clearly outlined in most places on the web and in the 30 for 30 program.

What I’m going to tell you about is how I felt about Tim from a fan perspective.

Tim came along at about the same time I started to take more of an interest in NASCAR beyond watching the Daytona 500. Coincidentally television coverage of NASCAR expanded into Canada around the same time with the birth of Canada’s very own sport network, TSN.

Speaking from a fan perspective I thought Tim was just as an aggressive driver as the late Dale Earnhardt and I liked the way he drove and the way he presented himself in post-race interviews. He came off as a genuine person with a great sense of humour and a fierce passion for racing.

One of my favourite races of Tim’s also involved the Intimidator too. The race was on April 20th 1986 at North Wilkeseboro. Actually, Tim didn’t do too good in this race and didn’t give eventual winner Dale Earnhardt any competition but what made this race stand out for me was what Tim did at one point in the race while he was driving the car.

The man was answering a question that was asked by then broadcaster Benny Parsons over the radio while driving the car under green flag conditions. He was passing cars while holding the radio button down and talking with the broadcast crew! I was fortunate enough to find a youtube clip of that event. Watch it, its only a minute and half long.

To me that one solitary event showed how much talent Tim really had and how much potential there was for him to reach the pinnacle of the sport.

His was a career that was cut much too short and if he had died while driving a race car, or even in an air mishap perhaps he would have been treated better than he was by NASCAR. Instead, his death was virtually ignored because of what he died from; AIDS.

Oh, I understand why NASCAR didn’t really acknowledge him and what he died from in the late 1980’s.

Can you imagine the PR nightmare if the world found out that one of NASCAR’s brightest stars died of what was considered at that time a ‘homosexual’ disease? I mean NASCAR was founded on being a man’ssport by moonshiners no less and to be anywhere associated with homosexuality would have hurt the sport at a time when it was just coming into it’s own.

We now know a lot more about HIV and AIDS and we also know that this disease is associated with people from all walks of life and not just one particular group. If Tim were to have lived in this day and age his condition would have been more accpeted by fans, sponsors, drivers, and NASCAR. His condition would have been more managable and he may have even lived long enough to win a Championship. Instead he contracted the disease at a time when people still did not know a lot about it, were afraid of it, and it had a certain stereotype applied to it. And for that Tim was almost an asterisk in the annals of NASCAR history. Such a shame.

Here’s to you Tim, one of the greatest drivers that could have been, and should have been in both life and in death.