Davey Allison: The Prodigal Son

His third start was at Atlanta on November 3. He only went 52 laps when his engine failed. His was the first car to be eliminated.

Davey was hired to drive for Nathan Sims, a family friend from Pensacola. But when Davey blew three engines in seven laps, he decided he needed to run better equipment and quit.

In 1986 Davey drove in four races for trucking magnate Earl Sadler and his son Check, who were from Greenville, South Carolina. Davey's best finish in 1986 was a twelfth at Richmond. Tom Pistone prepared the cars in his Charlotte shop and acted as crew chief. Davey was expecting to race in as many as twenty races, but the Sadlers weren't able to attract a sponsor. The low point of the season came at Darlington, where Davey was involved in a crash on the first lap. Critics barked that the only reason he was in the race was that his last name was Allison. He had no serious prospects for continuing.

Then in July 1986 Neil Bonnett was injured at Pocono. Davey decided to open the door himself. He called car owner Junior Johnson and offered his services to practice and qualify the car for Neil. Junior hired him, and when doctors refused to let Bonnett drive because of an injury to his right arm, on July 27, 1986, Davey drove Junior's car in the Talladega 500.

Davey led the race several times, and when he finished seventh, no one ever questioned his ability again.

Bonnett had been one of the first to appreciate Davey's skill. "He's a good one," he said. "There's a quality that separates the good ones from the rest, and he has it. It's something people don't like nowadays: aggressiveness. But I say you can either be a choirboy or a race driver."

Davey had put in his time, paid his dues. Now he was ready. Harry Ranier had not seen the Talladega race because he was in Australia at the time, but a friend taped it and showed it to him two weeks later. Ranier was impressed and hired Davey for 1987.

Driver Cale Yarborough had left Ranier to start his own team, and took his sponsor, Hardee's, with him. Crew chief Waddell Wilson left as well. And Harry Ranier was having financial difficulties.

Harry Ranier recovered. He attracted a new sponsor, Texaco. And he made two important hires, signing Joey Knuckles to be the crew chief and Robert Yates to be the team manager and engine builder. Davey, a twenty-five-year-old rookie on the Winston Cup circuit, had exactly eight Winston Cup races under his belt.

Most rebuilt race teams take some time to make their mark. Davey's Texaco team made its impact immediately. Davey had driven at Daytona since 1991 in races in lesser circuits, so the track was not new to him. In his first attempt at qualifying for the Daytona 500, Davey outran his father and his uncle Donnie to win the outside pole at 210.364 miles an hour. He was the first rookie ever to start in the first row in the Daytona 500. Bill Elliott was the pole sitter.

"He may be a rookie in some other people's eyes, but not in mine," said Elliott.Bobby qualified fourth behind Ken Schrader.

"Don't turn your back on the Alabama Gang," cracked Bobby. "They're liable to take your wallet."

Bobby finished sixth that day; Davey twenty-seventh.

"I think we could have won that race, but we made a rookie mistake," said Davey. "We had a jack break during a pit stop. It had never happened before, and I didn't know how to react. I got overanxious and left without the lug nuts. I didn't make it back around."

At the end of May, Davey and Bobby again were running one, two at the high-banked Dover Downs International Speedway when Bobby's car overheated three-quarters of the way through the race and he had to drop out. Davey won again. It was the first time in Winston Cup history that a rookie had won two races in a season.

Davey Allison was named Rookie of the Year.

After J. T. Lundy left Ranier racing after the 1987 season, Ranier's financial state worsened. Engine builder Robert Yates even spent some of his own money to keep the team going. Yates would turn out to be a single most important figure in Davey's racing career.

Robert Yates had begun his racing career in 1968 working for Holman and Moody as its air gauge department manager and quickly moved up to assistant engine builder. In 1971, he joined Junior Johnson's race team and built engines for Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough. Then he spent ten years fighting with the Gardner brothers at DiGard while he built engines that ran fast and lasted. Yates had been the engine builder when Bobby won his driving championship in 1983.

DiGard wasn't stable, and just before the Daytona 500 in 1986, Yates left the team abruptly.