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CUP: A Tribute to Alan Kulwicki
Written by: Tom Jensen   
11/09/2006
Phoenix, Ariz.
 


Kulwicki celebrates his first and only NASCAR title in '92: the last owner/driver to win the Cup took his maiden victory in the inaugural Phoenix race in 1988. (Photo: Ford Motor Co.) » More Photos

Thirteen years after his untimely death, the legend of Alan Kulwicki still burns as brightly in the Sonoran Desert as the noonday sun over the vast, bleak and hardscrabble terrain around Phoenix International Raceway.

NASCAR came to PIR and the Valley of the Sun for the first time in 1988, a move that at the time was as bold and audacious as Kulwicki's decision to relocate from Wisconsin to Concord, N.C., where starting in 1985 he would pursue his improbable dream of one day becoming a NASCAR Winston Cup Series champion.

It was a very different world then. NASCAR wasn't the most popular form of racing in the United States at the time, open-wheel Indy-style racing was, with Championship Auto Racing Teams dominating the headlines.

At that time, NASCAR was very much of a regional sport, still locked in the Deep South and populated by racers with names like Junior and Chocolate and Bud.
There were no billion-dollar TV contracts, no half-million-dollar motorcoaches for the drivers and certainly no following of substance for NASCAR west of the Mississippi.
ca. 1988: Alan Kulwicki leads the pack out of turn 3 at Daytona. (Photo: Ford Motor Co.) » More Photos

Phoenix was a great racing town in the late 1980s, and had been ever since native son Jimmy Bryan's heydey 30 years earlier. But Phoenix was an open-wheel town built around names like Foyt, Andretti and Unser, not around guys like Earnhardt and Labonte. There hadn't been a big-time stock-car race in the 24 years PIR had been open since a USAC race in 1968. It's safe to say a lot was riding on the 1988 Checker 500, the first NASCAR Winston Cup race ever at PIR.

"NASCAR made it a big deal, because it was one of the first forays into the open-wheel market," said Penske Racing South President Don Miller. "The open-wheel stuff had been there for years and years and years, and to bring a stock-car group in there it was almost like sacrilege."
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