In NASCAR, championship destinies sometimes hinge on heated moments that last mere minutes. Such was the case in early 1992 at the Daytona 500, when a flying tape measure, a slammed toolbox, and a furious exit from the garage area redirected the future of NASCAR engineering. Tony Gibson—longtime NASCAR crew member for Alan Kulwicki and Tony Stewart’s former team partner at Stewart-Haas Racing—recently revealed the heated details on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s podcast. But how did an explosive confrontation between Alan Kulwicki and his engineer inadvertently create the blueprint for Jeff Gordon’s future dominance?
The Daytona argument that changed everything
Ray Evernham is now a Hall of Fame engineer and crew chief who has tons of accolades, but back in 1992, he was trying to make his way into the sport and joined Alan Kulwicki Racing as an engineer. However, Alan Kulwicki himself was a talented engineer, and Tony Gibson could see the friction from the start. “Ray was going to head up the engineering side of things,” Gibson explained to Dale Earnhardt Jr. about Evernham’s role on the team. “There wasn’t even engineering departments back then,” quipped Dale Jr. “There wasn’t. That’s what Alan was driven by right? Mechanical engineering. And then here comes Ray. Ray was going to take us to the next level, we were gonna be the first group to go that way.”
The conflict ignited when Kulwicki, notorious for his meticulous attention, instructed Gibson to double-check Evernham’s frame height measurements during Daytona 500 preparations. Gibson was hesitant, as he knew Ray would be quite upset that Kulwicki didn’t trust him. “He’s gonna be mad at me checking behind him,” Gibson said he told Kulwicki. However, Kulwicki was the team owner at the end of the day, and Gibson reluctantly went behind Evernham’s back, which essentially dropped a lit match into a pit of gasoline. “Until I trust him, you’re going to go behind and check them,” Kulwicki said, as per Gibson.
What followed was a textbook case of what happens when trust issues emerge between two perfectionist innovators. “I’ll never forget this,” said Gibson, as he recounted the events that took place on the day of the Daytona 500. Gibson continued, “Ray gets done, he’s like, ‘Why are you checking my frames?’ I said, ‘Well, Alan wanted me to check just to make sure everything’s right.’ So there’s this trust thing now that pops up. They start getting into it… Ray [Evernham] and Alan [Kulwicki] start yelling back and forth… After he [Ray Evernham] got done yelling at Alan, he took his tape measure and threw it… the tape measure goes right by him [Kulwicki] and slams into the toolbox. Ray walks over, shuts his briefcase, walks out of the garage area.”
When drivers clash on the track because of a bad move or rough racing, a long talk can usually solve it. However, when you can’t trust your own engineer to do his job, nothing can salvage that, and that’s what happened between Kulwicki and Evernham. It was purely a case of two people at the top of their game, unwilling to yield superiority.
In a twist of NASCAR fate, Bill Davis was walking in as Evernham was walking out, creating an immediate new opportunity. Bill Davis was the owner of former NASCAR team Bill Davis Racing and in 1992, a young Californian daredevil named Jeff Gordon was driving the #1 car in the Xfinity Series for him. This is where the connection between Ray Evernham and Jeff Gordon started. The rest, as they say, is history. “Ray walks right through there. Walks right through the gate… Well, here comes Bill Davis walking the other way, and that’s how they connected,” Gibson recalled. “Ray went to work for Bill just that quick.”
Evernham reflected on his partnership with Jeff Gordon, saying, “From the first day we ever worked together, boom! We hit it off. We had fun, we did good, he was what I wanted, and I was what he wanted.” From working on Fords at Bill Davis Racing to transitioning to Chevrolet at Hendrick Motorsports in the Cup Series, Ray Evernham and Jeff Gordon were inseparable. They racked up championships in 1995, 1997, and 1998. However, as for the 1992 season, Kulwicki got to have the last laugh.
Before departing, Evernham made a bold prediction that would haunt and motivate him for years. “He yelled this at Alan several times,” Gibson remembered. “‘You’ll never win a championship running your operation like this!’ And we ended up winning the championship in ’92.” Years later, Evernham acknowledged to Gibson, “I was wrong.” And the way Kulwicki won his championship was a story for the ages.
Alan Kulwicki’s unexpected championship
From 1986 to 1991, three names dominated the NASCAR Cup Series grid. Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace, and Bill Elliott. Earnhardt won the championship in four of those six years, while Wallace and Elliott won a championship each. Bill Elliott broke Earnhardt’s streak of championships by winning in 1988 after The Intimidator had won two in a row, but Earnhardt will still be in the mix, finishing in third place. When Wallace won in 89′ Earnhardt was right on his tail in 2nd place. Where was Alan Kulwicki all this while? Lounging between 14th and 15h in the driver’s standings. However, something changed entering the new decade.
In 1990, Kulwicki showed consistency and prowess, finishing 8th in the driver’s championship, his first-ever top-10 finish, as Earnhardt took the crown yet again. In 1991, Earnhardt won again, but 1992 saw a huge slide for the then 5-time champion. The Intimidator won just one race all season and had nine finishes outside the top 20. Meanwhile, Bill Elliott was crushing everyone in his path. Elliott won four of the first five races and had a 278-point lead on Alan Kulwicki with just six races to go in the season. The title felt decided, but Kulwicki never gave up.
Those last six races will haunt Bill Elliott forever. Elliott finished outside the top 25 in four out of the final six races! An unprecedented decline coincided with remarkable consistency by Kulwicki, who never finished outside the top 12 for that same period. Kulwicki also notched up four top-5 finishes! However, the points gap was still in Elliott’s favor entering the final race of the season at Atlanta, but Kulwicki had one last ace up his sleeve.
Elliott was determined to take the win home that night, and Kulwicki was fine with that. He knew that even a 2nd place finish, along with the bonus points for leading the most laps, would get him the championship, and that’s exactly what he did. Elliott won the race, but it was race runner-up Kulwicki down at victory lane after leading 103 laps, just a single lap more than Elliott, to clinch his one and only championship.
Unfortunately, Kulwicki never got to defend his title, as he passed away in an aircraft accident months after his incredible triumph. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019 and remains one of the greatest stories in motorsports history.
The post Tony Stewart’s Partner Let’s Slip Insane Alan Kulwicki Reason Behind Jeff Gordon’s NASCAR Domination appeared first on EssentiallySports.