Hall-Of-Famer Allison Helped Make The ’72 Season What It Was

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Hall-Of-Famer Allison Helped Make The ’72 Season What It Was

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After the 1971 season, during which Junior and Richard Howard brought Chevrolet back to NASCAR, the two determined that, rather than special appearances for the car, they would campaign it for the NASCAR Winston Cup championship in 1972.

But they needed two things: A sponsor and a driver. As fortune would have it the driver they hired also happened to have a sponsor.

He also had a lot more, as Junior thought he might. Thus the 1972 season was one of the most successful, and tumultuous, of Junior’s career.

Junior’s contributions to www.motorsportsunplggged.com will appear every other Friday throughout the season.

I have already said this but I think it bears repeating. I am very proud that a man who drove for me, Bobby Allison, will be a member of the next class of inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

He came around at a perfect time – when he was needed.

After the 1971 season, during which Richard and I enjoyed so much success with the Chevrolet, we decided rather than charge promoters $10,000 to have our car enter their races, we’d just go for the whole thing.

We’d try to win the Winston Cup championship. That meant we would run every race, which, in turn, meant we had to have sponsorship.

We both knew about Bobby. He could drive anything and win in it. He knew all about cars and engines and had maintained his own stuff.

Turns out that he was with the powerful Holman-Moody team in 1971. However, that team folded at the end of the season and Bobby was out of work.

Now Bobby had $80,000 in sponsorship from Coca-Cola in his pocket. That, and the fact that he had the skill and determination to win races, made him an easy target for Richard and I.

We talked to him at Rockingham at the end of the season. We needed a driver and a sponsor. Bobby had a sponsor. Our regular driver, Charlie Glotzbach, didn’t. It wasn’t that we were trying to dump Charlie. Bobby had a sponsor and Charlie didn’t. It was that simple.

I felt the combination of Bobby and our Chevrolet was going to be hard to beat in 1972. Bobby was a cagey driver. When he could lead a race, he did. But more times I’d see him stalk someone else and just hunt him down, then go and pass him.

It was like whatever obstacle was in front of him, he’d do his best to get around it. When it came to winning I knew it was just a matter of time.

That came in the sixth race of the year, the Atlanta 500 on March 26. Bobby was third, seven seconds behind A.J. Foyt with 30 laps left. With five laps to go, Bobby passed Bobby Isaac for second place.

A lap later Bobby got around Foyt and went on to win by 0.16-second. It was the first victory for Chevrolet on a superspeedway since I won the National 500 at Charlotte on Oct. 13, 1963.

Needless to say, long-suffering Chevy fans went nuts. Even though Charlie had won a year before, this was the first Chevy victory as a regular NASCAR competitive model in 10 years.

I knew we’d win more races. What I didn’t know is if we would win the championship. To do that, we had to overcome a sizable obstacle: Richard Petty.

The championship he won in 1971 was the third of his career and most folks thought he’d win again in 1972.

I didn’t have to say a thing about Richard to Bobby. He knew the man he had to beat. I always thought that Bobby figured that red-and-blue car of Richard’s was the one thing that stood in his way and he really wanted to beat it. I never told him to back off.

Which Bobby certainly didn’t as the season came to a close with mostly short-track racing. Bobby and Richard staged some of the most vicious battles I’ve ever seen.

It started at Nashville on Aug. 27. Richard got black-flagged for ignoring the stop sign on pit road and lost by 10 cars lengths to Bobby. Richard was furious.

Two weeks later at Richmond, Bobby and Richard were the only contenders for the championship. Richard won despite the fact he slid sideways along the top of the guardrail, dropped off and bounced back onto the track.

We were at Martinsville two races later. Over the last 50 miles, Bobby and Richard just couldn’t stay off one another. Richard tried to pass once, hit the curb and whacked Bobby. When that happened, it knocked Bobby’s gas cap loose. He got the black flag from NASCAR. He ignored it. Good for him.

But in the closing laps Bobby sideswiped another car and cut a tire. That allowed Richard to pass for the win.

The final short-track race of the year was at North Wilkesboro on Oct. 1. Again, Bobby and Richard pounded each other.

They crashed together into the wall. They separated and durned if they didn’t do it again with just two laps remaining. Richard won by two car lengths.

Both their cars were smoking wrecks after the race and neither driver had a good thing to say about the other. They were mad and I can tell you a good many fans, of both drivers, were too.

I never got in the middle of it. I’ve seen two or three occasions where, I think, certain people were madder at the car than they were the driver and I think that’s the way it was with Bobby. He resented Richard’s car.

We lost three of those four short-track races and that didn’t help our cause. Richard won the title by 127.9 points.

We didn’t lose the title because of the short tracks. As far as I’m concerned there were many other reasons.

Bobby was a headstrong guy with his own opinions about car performance. Although I disagree to this day, he claimed there was a huge lack of communication between us.

I think Bobby had his own agenda, too. I suspected he was going to run his own team in 1973, or at least run for Ralph Moody once his lawsuit with John Holman was settled.

And I wondered about his commitment, especially after the Winston 500 in May. We burned an oil line early but got it fixed in plenty of time to go back out and earn a lot of points.

But we couldn’t find Bobby. He had left the track.

Hey, that’s all in the past. None of it matters now. What matters is that without Bobby in 1972, I don’t think Richard and I would have won 10 races and finished second in championship points.

Bobby helped make Chevy’s return to full-time NASCAR competition very successful.

And he went right on winning races in his own cars, and for other team owners, for many, many seasons after 1972.

Yep, I did, too, starting in 1973 when Cale Yarborough came on board.

That’s another story.

Read the orignal story here http://motorsportsunplugged.com/?p=3495