He Did It His Way: Alan Kulwicki, 1954-1993

Eighteen years ago today, word began to spread throughout NASCAR circles that an unthinkable tragedy had taken place. Everyone found it too hard to believe; some even took it as the poorest of poor April Fool Jokes.

When dawn broke on April 1, 1993, however, it was clear that this was no joke. The NASCAR Winston Cup Champion was gone.

If one were picking a song to eulogize Alan Dennis Kulwicki, the choice is a no-brainer. Like Ol’ Blue Eyes himself once said, he did it his way. And if you didn’t want to do it his way, the highway was easy to find.

Despite his hard head and sometimes breathtaking independent streak, there wasn’t much reason to not want to do it Alan’s way, because his way worked. It earned him five victories against the NASCAR powerhouses of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. While the competition then might not have been quite as stiff as it is today, NASCAR was just entering the engineer-dominated state it remains in to this day. Big-time stock car racing was supposedly well past the point where an independent car owner could take the wheel and contend for top-fives, much less wins.

Alan didn’t just contend. He beat the best of the best on four of NASCAR’s toughest tracks - Phoenix, Rockingham, Pocono, and Bristol, where he won twice and recorded his last win in August of 1992. Perhaps the fact that he actually was an engineer, graduating with a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1977, played a role in his success. Still, it was a huge achievement in racing for the diminutive Wisconsinite to do what he did against the likes of Robert Yates, Richard Childress, Junior Johnson, Rick Hendrick, and Jack Roush.

He was the Little Engine That Could - and did. And he did it mostly on his own, with help from a handful of trusted employees.

It isn’t that other owners didn’t want him. They most certainly did. Johnson offered him contracts prior to both the 1990 and 1991 seasons. The first time, Alan turned him down simply because he wanted to remain independent and keep driving his No. 7 Fords. The second time, however, he declined Johnson’s offer because he thought he had a sponsorship deal with Maxwell House Coffee. Instead, Maxwell House ended up on Johnson’s No. 22 Ford, driven by Sterling Marlin, forcing Alan to open the season unsponsored.

He secured Hooters sponsorship early in that 1991 season, and of course took the famous No. 7 Hooters Ford to the top of the sport. Maxwell House, meanwhile, never recorded a points-paying Winston Cup victory in their four seasons with Johnson and Bill Davis.

Alan’s biggest accomplishment, of course, is the 1992 Winston Cup title. That year, he became only the second man ever to come from behind in the season’s final race to hoist the championship trophy.

The ‘92 Hooters 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway has gone down as perhaps the greatest race in NASCAR history, owing in part to the retirement of Richard Petty and the debut of Jeff Gordon. It is Kulwicki’s performance, however, that has made that day - and the 1992 Winston Cup season as a whole - one no fan who experienced it will ever forget.

Taking hold of the point lead with less than 100 laps remaining, following Davey Allison’s tangle with Ernie Irvan, Alan did everything he needed to do to beat Bill Elliott for the crown. It seemed fitting that, as Kulwicki the driver held off Elliott by 10 points - the margin his 103 laps led gave him over Elliott, who led 102 - it was Junior Johnson himself that Kulwicki the owner denied the title.

The underdog of all underdog’s had triumphed over the sport’s best. Or, rather, the Underbird. Kulwicki, with permission from Ford Motor Company, removed the “TH” from the “THUNDERBIRD” nameplate on his car’s front bumper, replacing them with a sticker of the character that perhaps epitomized him best: Mighty Mouse.
At the championship ceremony that December, Alan was honored as the man who had triumphed against the sport’s best while doing it his way. And fittingly, it was indeed Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” that played during a salute to the man who truly did it his way.

On April 1, 1993, less than four months after the ceremony, Alan and executives from Hooters were flying to the Tri-Cities Airport in Johnson City, Tennessee, home of the Bristol Motor Speedway. Having won the last two night races at Bristol, Alan was one of the favorites for that weekend’s event, even though he had struggled through the first five races of the season.

On approach to the airstrip, the plane crashed. All on board perished.

That Sunday, Rusty Wallace, one of Kulwicki’s closest friends in racing and his old Midwest rival, took the checkered flag in the Food City 500. He took the full cool down lap, then drove around to the backstretch, turned his car around, and paid tribute to his fallen friend with Alan’s traditional victory celebration. After scoring his first win at Phoenix in 1988, Alan had run a backwards victory lap - the Polish victory lap, he called it - so that he could salute the race fans while facing them.

For the rest of the 1993 season, winning drivers paid tribute to the Little Race Driver That Could with a backwards victory lap. In July, it became a double tribute, following the passing of Allison due to injuries sustained in a helicopter accident in the Talladega infield. To this day, amidst all the burnouts, backflips, and bows, the Polish Victory Lap remains a staple of post-race celebrations, especially in the aftermath of tragedies such as the death of Dale Earnhardt and the 2004 Hendrick Motorsports plane crash.

Even eighteen years after his untimely death, Alan Kulwicki remains one of the most inspirational figures in NASCAR history. Against all odds, he proved that any man, big or small, is capable of anything he truly wants to accomplish if he works hard enough. Alan’s own work ethic was perhaps best displayed just two weeks before he died. A blizzard had blanketed the Atlanta Motor Speedway as the “Storm of the Century” gripped the East Coast. While most teams packed up and left the track, anticipating a postponement of the race, Alan, in firesuit and helmet, stood waist deep in snow, working on his car until NASCAR finally called off the race.

That was just his way. And his way worked.