Davey Allison: The Prodigal Son

Robin Pemberton, the crew chief of the DiGard team, recalled the day Robert Yates left DiGard and the final days of a once-great race team.

"We made some decent runs with Greg [Sacks] in '85, but we were struggling," said Pemberton. "We made it through the year, made it through the wintertime attempting to build a car or two, but then there was big money trouble. The checks never bounced, but we knew it was close when we would get paid, because we always got our paycheck two minutes after the bank closed.

"We made it through the wintertime but some of our people left. They had been there long enough, and it didn't look like we would have a sponsor.

"We signed TRW, the automotive after-market, to be Greg's sponsor in 1986. We started the season, but we were struggling. Robert Yates was still there. In February of 1986 we were at Daytona for the 500, and Dick Beaty, who was in charge of competition for NASCAR, made the announcement at the end of the day, 'OK, guys, put your tools down and go home.'

"The night he made that announcement, Robert Yates said, 'Okay, I'm laying my tools down, and I'm going home.' Well, what Robert meant was, he was laying his tools down and going home home. He said to me, 'I got you this far.'

"I had the sense something was going wrong, and sure enough, that was his last day at Di-Gard. He was gone. He took his tools, and he went home. He had just had enough. One too many checks didn't go in the right direction. So the next day I have no engine builder.

"We went to Richmond, then we went to Rockingham. By then we were working from six in the morning until five or six in the morning every day. We didn't have enough men, didn't have enough going on. You would literally leave the shop, drive home, take a shower, turn around, and drive back to work. My wife wasn't doing real good with it. Our child was four months old. This whole thing was insane.

"It was time to leave."

Robert Yates was so disillusioned with what happened to him at DiGard that he decided to leave stock car racing completely and accept a job working on the development of synthetic fuels. His civilian career didn't last a year. In 1987 the master engine builder was hired as team manager of the Ranier-Lundy race team, which itself was experiencing hard times.

Davey expressed his concern to the hardworking Yates that if he didn't do something, there would be no race team at all in 1988. Even though Yates had been a weekly paycheck employee his whole career, Harry Ranier saw in Yates the same thing Davey saw: a bright-no, brilliant-engine man who had what it took to own and run a successful race team. At the end of the 1987 season, Ranier offered to sell Yates the team at a discount with an affordable payment plan.

Davey and Robert Yates had developed a mutual admiration society. When Davey heard about the offer, Davey told Yates, "If you buy the team, I will drive for you the rest of my life."

"What Davey loved about Robert was that he loved to win," said Eddie Allison. "Robert's a racer. Robert is sharp, and Robert really knew why the motor ran, so he could bolt the stuff on he knew made it run. And Robert was willing to listen. He didn't buck Davey on how to make the car turn the corner, as so many do."

His confidence bolstered by Davey's promise, Robert Yates agreed to buy the team from Ranier, though he was acting against his very conservative nature. An ethical, upstanding person, Yates firmly believed in the adage, "Neither a lender nor a borrower be," and to buy the team Yates would have to go into hock.

This was a crossroads in his life. If Robert Yates was going to be a team owner, this was his shot. Because Harry Ranier was in financial trouble, the team would go for a cut-rate price. Not cheap, but cut-rate. Yates could see it was a team with all the elements in place: good cars, great engines, and a talented young driver. And so Robert Yates sold his car and mortgaged his home and secured the financing to buy the race team.

For the rest of his career, as promised, Davey Allison would drive for Robert Yates Racing.

Peter Golenbock has written six New York Times bestsellers. His books include American Zoom, The Last Lap, and NASCAR Confidential. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.