NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Moore, Allison A Strong Team
Three of the first six drivers voted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame drove for Bud Moore...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 20, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Bud Moore is one of five men who will be enshrined into the NASCAR Hall of Fame next week. (Photo: Getty Images)
Among the three of them, Dale Earnhardt, David Pearson and Bobby Allison won 11 championships in what is now known as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, as well as a total of 260 individual races.

Earnhardt, Pearson and Allison have a couple of other things in common: All three have been voted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Earnhardt in the inaugural class this year and Pearson and Allison for next season.

And at one time, each of the three drove for fellow Hall of Famer Bud Moore, the World War II veteran who returned to Spartanburg, S.C., and became one of the best NASCAR has ever seen, first as a championship crew chief and then as a car owner.

Moore and Allison teamed up at the start of the 1978 season in what turned out to be a fortuitous pairing for both men. But it sure didn’t seem that way when the season opened at Riverside, Calif., on the old road course and then headed to Daytona for Speedweeks.

Allison was in a deep career slump and Moore was stung by the fact that his star driver Buddy Baker bolted at the end of the 1977 to drive for M.C. Anderson.

“I’ve got to say that I was struggling,” said Allison, who had gone winless in 1976 driving for Roger Penske and ’77 driving for himself. “I’d been through a series of good and bad, and more bad than good, and all of a sudden it was more bad than bad even. I was really not feeling good and had worn myself down. I didn’t really know what the reason was, but I had mostly worn myself out and wasn’t eating right or sleeping right or anything. I was just feeling bad.”

And that’s when Moore stepped in.

“Bud called me up and said, ‘Get in this car for me and we’ll go to work for you and get you a really good ride,’” said Allison. “I was really struggling, and those of you that know the situation. We went to Riverside and were fast and the car failed right away, which was a heart break for me. Buddy had been through a little bit of that the year before.”
Bobby Allison was chosen for the second NASCAR Hall of Fame class. (Photo: Getty Images)

Once they got to Daytona, things took an interesting turn. The Gatorade Duel qualifying races were rained out on Thursday and had to be run on Friday.

“We hadn’t run but about three or four laps and Baker and Bobby were fighting for the lead and both of them spun out off Turn 2 and Bobby backed the car into the wall,” said Moore. “Baker didn’t get bent up too bad, so we got back to the garage and I told the boys, ‘Okay, we’re gonna fix this car.’”

Allison thought at that point his Speedweeks had ended.

“It tore the car all to pieces,” Allison said of the crash. “So I went to the motel feeling sorry for myself and pouting and all those things I always did when I was younger. I just really suffered through the night and the next day I decided that I needed to go out there and tell Bud I was going to back to Alabama. Everything had gone sour on us and here we were in bad shape.”


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