Remembering NASCAR champ Alan Kulwicki on his 70th birthday. Triumph, tragedy in 1992-93

In the 31-plus years since his tragic death, it’s become clear that the racing gods threw away the mold after Alan Kulwicki’s career ended.

He was unique then, and in retrospect even more so.

The Wisconsin racer, who made perhaps the greatest underdog run to a championship in NASCAR history, would’ve turned 70 years old Saturday.

Let’s look back on the quiet thinker who brought an engineer’s touch to the cockpit of his Underbird, brought Hooters to racing and, along the way, invented the Polish Victory Lap.

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America’s Dairyland also breeds racers

Alan Kulwicki grew up in one of Milwaukee’s many Polish-American suburbs. His earliest interests in automobiles likely came from his father, Gerald, who built engines for several USAC championship teams.

Though NASCAR, especially in those days, was considered a southern sport, he was born into an area familiar with stock-car racing. The list of native Wisconsin racers includes Dave Marcis, Dick Trickle, Paul Menard, Pancho Carter and a whole host of Sauters.

Alan began racing karts as a young teen, largely without the help of his dad, who encouraged him to learn the ins and outs of automotive design and power on his own.

He began raing late-models in the mid-’70s and, in 1977, won the track championship at Slinger Speedway. It was also in 1977 that he earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

In 1979-80, he won back-to-back track championships at Wisconsin International Raceway. He moved up to the Midwest-based ASA circuit and raced there until making his NASCAR move in 1984, when he finished seventh or better in four Busch Series starts.

Kulwicki adapted to NASCAR in his own way

Kulwicki ran six Cup Series races for owner Bill Terry, who would sell his team to Kulwicki early in the 1986 season.

Kulwicki served many roles on his underfunded team and had trouble keeping help due to his demanding nature and desire for things to be done his way. Future Hall of Fame crew chief Ray Evernham lasted just six weeks with the team.

“It’s not a matter of people feeling like he was a genius. That man was a genius,” Evernham said in later years. “But his personality paid for that.”

Kulwicki was a loner and was only married to his work. It wasn’t unusual to see him walking from his hauler to the garage, and vice versa, dressed in his driver uniform and carrying a brief case.

In 1986, he famously owned one race car and two engines, and employed just two full-time crew members, yet he won that year’s Rookie of the Year honors.

NASCAR’s Polish Victory Lap was born in 1988

Kulwicki finished 15th in the 1987 points standings and improved to 14th the next year, when he got his first Cup Series win late in the season at Phoenix.

It was after that Phoenix win that Kulwicki rewrote the book on victory celebrations. Instead of the customary victory lap, he turned around his Ford and circled the track clockwise. This allowed him to view the grandstands out of his driver-side window, a pragmatic move, and he would dub it his “Polish victory lap.”

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NASCAR legend and team owner Junior Johnson approached Kulwicki after 1989 and offered him a seat replacing Terry Labonte. While only a small handful of racers would’ve turned down Junior, Kulwicki declined because he wanted to continue owning his own team.

He won one race in both 1990 and 1991 while finishing eighth and 13th in points, and attracting sponsorship from Hooters. In other words, there was no sign of what was to come in 1992, when he shocked the stock-car world.

The underdog Underbird wins a NASCAR championship

In 1992, Kulwicki won the spring race at Bristol and the first summer race at Pocono while hanging in the top five of the points race throughout most of the year.

He moved to second after the next-to-last race of the season, at Phoenix, setting up a three-man race for the championship at Atlanta’s season finale.

Davey Allison went to Atlanta leading in points, with Kulwicki 30 points back and Bill Elliott 40 back. Fully embracing his underdog status, Kulwicki dropped the T and H from the front of his car so that it spelled U-N-D-E-R-B-I-R-D.

At Atlanta, Allison was caught up in a crash and limped his damaged car to a finish of 27th, 43 laps off the pace. Elliott won and gathered 180 points for the victory, but Kulwicki matched his 180 by finishing second and leading the most laps (5 point bonus).

At age 38, he won the championship by 10 points.

Tragedy struck twice in 1993 for NASCAR

There’s obviously no way of knowing how Alan Kulwicki’s career would’ve played out. But in an era when star drivers raced deep into their 40s and sometimes beyond, you assume he would’ve remained behind the wheel for several more years before moving into the role of full-time owner.

Through five races of 1993, the defending champ had three finishes of sixth or better and sat ninth in points heading to Bristol, where he was defending champ of the spring race.

After a Thursday sponsor appearance at a Knoxville Hooters, Kulwicki was a passenger on a Hooters corporate plane crossing Tennessee to Bristol, when the plane crashed as it neared its final approach to Tri-Cities Regional Airport.

Just over three months later, Davey Allison, with whom Kulwicki had battled for the previous year’s championship, died due to injuries suffered in a helicopter crash while attempting land at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Alan Kulwicki, NASCAR champ we lost in 1993, would’ve turned 70 today