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Sprint Cup
CUP: A Hall Of Fame Top-10
Next week voters will choose five men from a list of 25 nominees to become the second class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame...
Bobby Allison, one of this year’s 25 nominees for the NASCAR Hall of Fame. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
The people who vote in the NASCAR Hall of Fame elections carry the same prejudices as might members of the general public. They are of their generation; they hail from a hometown and a region; they tend to know more about some candidates than others.
If they aren’t as familiar with the accomplishments of Candidate A as they are Candidate B, they’re more likely to vote for Mr. B. Many in the voting group, of course, will have done their homework and will have enough facts about each nominee to make a more serious judgment.
After the race wins, championships and other statistics have been considered, however, it is likely that pure name recognition, mixed with varying approaches to the sport’s history, plays a considerable role in these elections.
Working from that foundation, it is likely that a driver with the flair and reputation of Curtis Turner, who won 17 Cup races and no championships, will get more votes than a background figure like Herb Thomas, who won 48 times and scored two national championships in the 1950s.
Turner was a party animal and a rough-and-tumble driver who usually either won or crashed trying. Thomas, a dirt farmer who decided on a whim that he could be a race car driver, was more accomplished but less visible.
Both Turner and Thomas are likely to be in the hall eventually. The order in which they’re chosen could be interesting.
Sifting through this year’s 25 nominees, and mixing in some knowledge of the voting panel and the apparent voting patterns from last year, SPEED.com will take a look over the next five days at the top 10 candidates, two per day and in alphabetical order. (SPEED’s live television coverage of the hall selection process will begin Wednesday, Oct. 13, at 3 p.m.).
BOBBY ALLISON – Allison won 84 (85 if you ask him, but that’s another story) Sprint Cup races and a championship (1983) and has a reputation – entirely justified – as being one of the toughest, most resilient drivers in NASCAR history.
He rolled off the short tracks of Florida to race in the big time in the 1960s and soon made himself a threat virtually anywhere he raced.
Allison and rival Richard Petty staged some of the most ferocious battles in the history of the sport, and Allison asked no quarter – and gave none – in tense encounters with such contemporaries as Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Sr.
In a stunningly successful 1972 season, when he teamed with car owner Junior Johnson in bright red and gold Coca-Cola-sponsored cars, Allison won 10 races and finished second 12 times.
He raced with grit and determination, never backing down from a challenge.
DALE INMAN – A key player in the success of Richard Petty and the Petty Enterprises team, Inman is likely to be the first candidate to be elected to the hall based strictly on crew-chief accomplishments.
Although recent years have produced such super crew chiefs as Ray Evernham and Chad Knaus, none approaches Inman’s records. He won 193 races and eight championships.
Inman, Richard Petty’s cousin, was in on the ground floor at Petty Enterprises, the Level Cross, NC-based operation that became the template for great stock car racing teams. He and rival Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers team largely defined the modern crew chief position, both with pit-stop innovation, strategic moves and mechanical knowledge.
No other driver-crew chief combination will enjoy the sort of success Petty and Inman engineered in the 1967 season, winning 27 races, including 10 straight, in a bright blue Plymouth that – like Petty – resides in the Hall of Fame.
Inman won Cup championships with Petty in 1964, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1979 and added another with driver Terry Labonte in 1984.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
If they aren’t as familiar with the accomplishments of Candidate A as they are Candidate B, they’re more likely to vote for Mr. B. Many in the voting group, of course, will have done their homework and will have enough facts about each nominee to make a more serious judgment.
After the race wins, championships and other statistics have been considered, however, it is likely that pure name recognition, mixed with varying approaches to the sport’s history, plays a considerable role in these elections.
Working from that foundation, it is likely that a driver with the flair and reputation of Curtis Turner, who won 17 Cup races and no championships, will get more votes than a background figure like Herb Thomas, who won 48 times and scored two national championships in the 1950s.
Turner was a party animal and a rough-and-tumble driver who usually either won or crashed trying. Thomas, a dirt farmer who decided on a whim that he could be a race car driver, was more accomplished but less visible.
Both Turner and Thomas are likely to be in the hall eventually. The order in which they’re chosen could be interesting.
Sifting through this year’s 25 nominees, and mixing in some knowledge of the voting panel and the apparent voting patterns from last year, SPEED.com will take a look over the next five days at the top 10 candidates, two per day and in alphabetical order. (SPEED’s live television coverage of the hall selection process will begin Wednesday, Oct. 13, at 3 p.m.).
BOBBY ALLISON – Allison won 84 (85 if you ask him, but that’s another story) Sprint Cup races and a championship (1983) and has a reputation – entirely justified – as being one of the toughest, most resilient drivers in NASCAR history.
He rolled off the short tracks of Florida to race in the big time in the 1960s and soon made himself a threat virtually anywhere he raced.
Allison and rival Richard Petty staged some of the most ferocious battles in the history of the sport, and Allison asked no quarter – and gave none – in tense encounters with such contemporaries as Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Sr.
In a stunningly successful 1972 season, when he teamed with car owner Junior Johnson in bright red and gold Coca-Cola-sponsored cars, Allison won 10 races and finished second 12 times.
He raced with grit and determination, never backing down from a challenge.
DALE INMAN – A key player in the success of Richard Petty and the Petty Enterprises team, Inman is likely to be the first candidate to be elected to the hall based strictly on crew-chief accomplishments.
Although recent years have produced such super crew chiefs as Ray Evernham and Chad Knaus, none approaches Inman’s records. He won 193 races and eight championships.
Inman, Richard Petty’s cousin, was in on the ground floor at Petty Enterprises, the Level Cross, NC-based operation that became the template for great stock car racing teams. He and rival Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers team largely defined the modern crew chief position, both with pit-stop innovation, strategic moves and mechanical knowledge.
No other driver-crew chief combination will enjoy the sort of success Petty and Inman engineered in the 1967 season, winning 27 races, including 10 straight, in a bright blue Plymouth that – like Petty – resides in the Hall of Fame.
Inman won Cup championships with Petty in 1964, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1979 and added another with driver Terry Labonte in 1984.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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