 | Davey Allison: Encyclopedia II - Davey Allison - 1993
Davey Allison - 1993
Though 1992 had been a heartbreaking year for Davey Allison and the Robert Yates Racing team in more ways than one, they had to be encouraged by their run for the championship. But 1993 opened on a sour note with Allison finishing 28th at Daytona. That finish was followed by a 16th at Rockingham, but Davey rebounded to win at Richmond the following week. No one knew at the time, but it would be Davey Allison's last win.
The next race at Atlanta was delayed a week by a blizzard that blanketed much of the Southeast. Morgan Shepherd won the race and Davey finished 13th. He then posted an 11th at Darlington. Despite the early season struggles, Davey was sixth in the Winston Cup standings, while defending series champ Kulwicki was ninth.
But the Darlington race would be the last of Alan Kulwicki's career. On April 1, 1993, Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash enroute to the Tri-Cities Regional Airport near Bristol, TN. NASCAR had lost its Winston Cup champion and the crash was only a harbinger of things to come.
Three days after Kulwicki's death, Davey Allison finished fifth at Bristol. He followed that finish with a fourth at North Wilkesboro, second at Martinsville, seventh at Talladega, and 15th at Sears Point. He finished a disappointing 30th in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, but rebounded at Dover, finishing third. He was sixth at Pocono, but finished 35th at Michigan and 31st at Daytona. Halfway through the 1993 season, Davey was fifth in the point standings, but was 323 points behind leader Dale Earnhardt. Still, Davey and the Robert Yates team were confident that they could put their early season struggles and inconsistency behind them and could make a run for the championship in the second half. The inaugural race at New Hampshire International Speedway proved the team's optomism was not unfounded. Davey led 38 laps of the event and finished third behind Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin.
The following day, Monday, July 12, 1993, Davey Allison boarded his newly acquired Bell helicopter to fly to Talladega Superspeedway to watch family friends Neil Bonnett and David Bonnett test a car for David's Busch Series debut. He picked up another family friend, Red Farmer, enroute to the track. Allison was attempting to land the helicopter inside a fenced-in area of the track infield when the craft nosed up suddenly, then crashed. Neil Bonnett was able to free a semi-conscious Red Farmer from the wreckage, but could not reach Allison. Paramedics arrived and freed Allison, who was alive but had suffered serious head injuries. He died the next morning, July 13, 1993.
In his all-too-short NASCAR Winston Cup career, Davey Allison posted 19 wins, 66 top-five and 92 top-ten finishes. He also won 14 poles and earned $6,724,174. He was survived by his wife, Liz, and two children, daughter Krista, and son Robert.
Davey was also leading the IROC series championship at the time of his death, with one race remaining in the four race series. Terry Labonte drove the final race in place of Allison and secured the championship for him.
Davey Allison was posthumously inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1998.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "1993", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
