Kulwicki voted into NASCAR Hall of Fame
Thirty-three years after his underdog NASCAR career began, 25 years after he died as reigning champion and three years after he first became a finalist for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Alan Kulwicki was voted in Wednesday.
Kulwicki, a quirky Wisconsinite who beat the odds and the best of NASCAR’s southern hotbed, will be inducted Feb. 1 into the hall in Charlotte, N.C., along with drivers Jeff Gordon and Davey Allison and owners Jack Roush and Roger Penske.
Twenty nominees were considered by a panel of former and active participants, representatives of the manufacturers and media members, and collective fan balloting that accounted for one vote.
Kulwicki was the last member of the 10th class to be announced. He was named on 46% of the ballots.
Kulwicki’s short career may have kept him from being considered or chosen earlier. He competed for seven full seasons, winning five races and 24 poles in 207 starts.
But his story is one that seems unlikely to be repeated.
A UW-Milwaukee graduate, Kulwicki packed up his belongings, moved to North Carolina, won rookie of the year honors in 1986 while racing with one car
and two engines, engineered his car from the driver’s seat and raced competitively with a significantly smaller budget and crew than the top teams. He turned down owner Junior Johnson and then beat one of Johnson’s drivers, Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, to win the 1992 title in what was then the series’ closest points battle.
“Phenomenal owner/driver, phenomenal organizer, phenomenal racecar driver, did everything,” analyst Kyle Petty said on the NBCSN broadcast. “That’s the old-school way of doing it.
“He was also the beginning of a new era, bringing that engineering knowledge to this sport. He’s the guy that cracked that door open that’s been blown open now.”
Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash in 1993 en route to a race in Bristol, Tenn. He was 38.
Kulwicki missed the hall last year by a single vote, losing a tie-breaker to truck series pioneer Ron Hornaday Jr. A group of staunch nominators and voters, Fox TV’s Mike Joy and Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage among them, pushed hard for Kulwicki’s selection.
Gordon won four championships and 93 races and as a polished, Indiana-raised Californian helped NASCAR reach new audiences during its booming 1990s. He was named on 96% of the
ballots, the most in hall history.
Roush has won more races across NASCAR’s three national series than any other owner and has eight championships: two in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, five in the Xfinity Series and one in the Camping World Truck Series.
Penske’s teams have won more than 100 races as well as the 2012 title. One of the most successful owners across motor sports, Penske also was a track owner.
Allison won 19 races including the 1992 Daytona 500 before he, like Kulwicki, was killed in an aviation accident in 1993. His father, Bobby, was a member of the second Hall of Fame class in 2011.
In addition to Kulwicki being a sort of cult hero in the sport, his legacy lives on through a park in Greenfield named in his honor, scholarships at both his alma mater and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, and the development program, which provides guidance and assistance to seven promising young drivers each season.
“(Kulwicki’s championship) is that magic moment, where you almost visually when you look back on it see the the end of one era in the sport and the beginning of another era,” said Petty, noting the title race was also Gordon’s debut.
“Alan was that bridge. It was a short bridge because of that accident.”