Bobby Allison

Bobby Allison tuned up for today's Daytona 500 Saturday by driving a Buick 300 miles and winning the Goody's 300 Busch Grand National race at the Daytona International Speedway. The win brought the 51-year-old leader of the Alabama Gang a check for $30,550 and put him in a tie with Cale Yarborough as the winingest driver in Daytona history. Allison's two wins this week--Thursday in a Twin 125 qualifying race and Saturday's 300--gave him 15 wins here, the same as Yarborough.

For the first time since 1959, the year the Daytona 500 was first held, three-time winner Bobby Allison will not be here. He and his wife, Judy, will be in Ames, Okla., for the "Ultimate Daytona 500 House Party" for John Sattler, who won the honor in a promotion by NASCAR.

Veteran driver Bobby Allison was injured in a first-lap accident that left him unconscious Sunday in the NASCAR Miller 500 stock car race at Long Pond, Pa. Allison, 50, of Hueytown, Ala., was taken to the Lehigh Valley Hospital Center in Allentown, Pa., suffering from a concussion, fractured left leg, "blunt abdominal trauma" and possible internal bleeding, track officials said. The driver had to be pried out of his car.

Neil Bonnett's zest for racing carried him to 18 NASCAR Winston Cup victories and made him one of the sport's most popular broadcasters. Bonnett was one of four people inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame on Thursday, joining motorcycle and Formula One racer Mike Hailwood, sprint car champion and Indy 500 winner Jimmy Bryan and engine builder Fred Offenhauser. All four were honored posthumously.

Bobby Allison slipped rump first out the window of the modified Firebird and eased himself to the ground. He looked around at the small crowd that surrounded him, broke into an easy smile, and said, "I like it." The 47-year-old from Hueytown, Ala., seemed more like a visiting uncle taking his nephew's jalopy for a spin around the block than a venerable NASCAR racing champion checking out a car two hours before racing it 150 times around a third-of-a-mile track.

Bobby Allison has been coming out to Riverside International Raceway once or twice a year since 1965 to drive Winston Cup stock cars around the 2.62-mile road course. During that period, he has run 41 races here and won six, more than any other driver. Dan Gurney, Richard Petty and Darrell Waltrip have won five each, but when Allison won the Winston Western 500 in 1981, he moved ahead of the pack.

A year ago today, Bobby Allison was a young man of 50. He had just out-run his son in winning the Daytona 500, the richest and most treasured prize in stock car racing. He was the oldest driver to win a Winston Cup race, but he wore the smile of a younger man, a completely satisfied man. Even the relationship between Bobby and his son, Davey, 27, was more that of brothers than father and son. But today, Bobby Allison is an old man of 51.

Car owner Bobby Allison fired Hut Stricklin and will have a new driver behind the wheel for Saturday's Winston Cup race at Richmond, Va. Stricklin, who is married to Allison's niece, planned to finish the season with Bobby Allison Motorsports before moving to a new team next year. But the team decided to make a change now. Allison's early plans are to put Jeff Purvis in the car at Richmond while continuing to look for a permanent driver.

Darrell Waltrip, winning his first pole position in 99 races, led a front-row sweep by Chevrolet Luminas during first-round qualifying for Sunday's Hanes 500 in Martinsville, Va. It was the 58th pole of his career, breaking a tie with Bobby Allison and giving Waltrip sole possession of fourth on the all-time list.

Stock car driver Bobby Allison, injured in a race at Pocono International Raceway on June 19, has had an internal tube inserted that will drain fluid from his skull to his abdomen, a spokesman for his racing team said.

Tragedy pulled them apart, then another tragedy brought them back together. Hall of Fame stock car driver Bobby Allison and Judy, after 36 years of marriage, divorced after the deaths of their sons, drivers Clifford and Davey. Bobby Allison had been living in Hueytown, Ala., and Judy in Mooresville, N.C., for four years.

This was a good day for Bobby Allison, a man who has known more than his share of bad ones. A crowd of adoring fans was lined up at the state fair to get his autograph, proving that the Allison name is still magic in this part of the country. "There are still times when I just want to sit and cry," said Allison, who lost both of his sons, Davey and Clifford, in the past 15 months. "Sometimes it's not hard to talk about it. Sometimes it is."

NASCAR star Davey Allison was eulogized as "the luckiest man in the world" Thursday as relatives, friends and fans said goodby in a massive outpouring of love and grief. Inside St. Aloysius Catholic Church, some 750 heard the 32-year-old driver remembered as a good son, husband and father. Outside the brick church, hundreds more stood in the hot Alabama sun to listen to the funeral mass on loudspeakers.

When the cars line up Sunday to race at Pocono International Raceway, the black No. 28 Ford Thunderbird will be conspicuous in its absence. Stock car driver Davey Allison will be buried today in his hometown of Hueytown, Ala., after he died Tuesday from injuries sustained in the crash of a helicopter he was trying to land at Talladega Superspeedway. Team owner Robert Yates said Wednesday that he would not enter Allison's car in the Miller Genuine Draft 500 at Pocono with another driver.

On a sizzling summer afternoon at Saugus Speedway in July, 1988, Davey Allison had more important things on his mind than squeezing into Pops Covan's stock car. Allison's father, NASCAR legend Bobby Allison, lay in critical condition in a Pennsylvania hospital after being involved in a crash a few weeks earlier at Pocono International Raceway that ultimately ended his career.

Stock car driver Davey Allison suffered head injuries Monday in a helicopter accident, the most recent in a string of tragedies that has struck the Allison family of Hueytown, Ala. Allison, 32, was piloting the helicopter when it crashed during an attempted landing in the infield at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where he and fellow driver Red Farmer had gone to watch a friend test a car for a NASCAR race.

The first and second wives of Clifford Allison, who was killed in a stock car race last August, are involved in a custody dispute over Allison's 9-year-old daughter, Leslie, in Birmingham, Ala. Clifford's father, former NASCAR star Bobby Allison, has become involved on behalf of his son's widow, Elisa, with whom Leslie Allison has been living. Allison's natural mother, Tammy Pennington, who was Clifford Allison's first wife, has been seeking custody of the girl.

By agreement with her husband, Davey, Liz Allison is overseeing all details of the 8,400-square-foot mansion they're building in Hueytown, Ala., with the profits of his booming stock car racing career. "I don't have any problems with Davey. When I'm happy, he's happy," said Liz, a slender, cheerful woman from Charleston, S.C. "The only problem I'm having right now is with my builder."