Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994 TAG: 9405230008
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
For a race team, the process of reloading a hauler after a race usually is accomplished with grim determination and surprising speed in the midst of a throng of people.
But the winner enjoys a different routine - a cleanup drenched with the pure pleasure of victory.
After Bodine won The Winston Select on Saturday night, recovering from an early spin to beat Ken Schrader and Sterling Marlin in a 10-lap duel, his team was no different. His crew members took their sweet time about loading the truck.
When Bodine came back from the Speedway Club with his wife, Kathy, they had a bottle of champagne to share. For crew chief Paul Andrews, engine-builder Danny Glad, Cal Lawson, Peter Jellen, Jeff Buice, Tom Mount, Pete Jackson, Rich Wolsky, Bob Gulbranson, Ed Leslie, Shane Parsno, Gary Preziosi and Danny Cameron - the 1992 Winston Cup championship team of Alan Kulwicki - this moment had been a long time coming.
"It's been a long, hard road for us, so we're glad to be here," Andrews said.
The team had tasted its sweetest success only 18 months earlier, but for the orphaned crew of the late engineer/racer from Wisconsin, the underdog who did it on his own, it must have seemed like ancient history - perhaps even another lifetime.
They had experienced such incredible good fortune with Kulwicki in the title stretch run of 1992, culminated by that golden November afternoon at Atlanta in a race that was so close, so tense and, finally, so glorious.
As Kulwicki gently steered his Ford through the final turn and blurted into his radio in a high-pitched and cracking voice: "I tell you, I've got chills up and down my spine!," his crew dissolved into an orgy of delirious leaping, hugging and screaming.
The rest of the year was a dreamy blur, and suddenly they were into 1993, struggling just a bit in defense of their Winston Cup points title. Kulwicki was ninth in points when he boarded a plane on a cold, drizzly Thursday night in Tennessee for a routine flight from a personal appearance in Knoxville to Bristol to begin the race weekend.
He died when that plane crashed April 1, 1993. For the team, life now demanded a tax of grief and hardship, payable on the installment plan, every bit as cruel as their championship had been joyful.
They came right back to the races, if only by habit, but suddenly their sponsor was gone. By mid-May, they had new owners - Geoff and Kathy Bodine - but Geoff wasn't able to begin driving the car until the fall.
When he did, he promptly fell into one of the worst spells of misfortune in his career. He crashed in his first race at Dover and his third race at North Wilkesboro. He crashed at Phoenix. He crashed at Atlanta. He managed to destroy nearly every car they had just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
During the winter, the new team continued to struggle to find a sponsor. Rumors circulated that it was all falling apart, that Bodine was going to bail out. Crewmen were getting good offers from other teams.
But Andrews and the rest of them stuck it out, stuck by the Bodines.
And Bodine proved again Saturday night that he's a winner of the highest order. He may not be a member of the big four winners club, at least not yet, but he can win races - big races. He drives his guts out. And he can win on any track, in anyone's car.
Bodine won for Rick Hendrick. He won for Junior Johnson. He won for Bud Moore. Now he has won for himself and his team, the old Kulwicki crew.
The Winston Select may never be more than a glorified exhibition race in Humpyland. But aside from last year's contrived aberration of a race, it has developed a pedigree as stock car racing's most uninhibited event.
Freed from the shackles of the points race - and having to worry about finishing - the drivers go a little crazy. Darrell Waltrip was the "D.W." of old. Ernie Irvan reverted to his old habits. Dale Earnhardt hit the wall.
Half the competitors spun or wrecked in the Select and the Open, but there was great racing, too.
The sheer spectacle of this floodlit extravaganza is unmatched in NASCAR racing. It has the feel of a Saturday night short-track race and the scale of an Indy 500.
So it was a fitting stage for the return of Bodine and of Kulwicki's old crew as winners. Some day, inevitably, some of these crewmen will go their own way. But no one can ever say they walked away before renewing their legacy as champions.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB