DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The details of NASCAR legend Bobby Allison’s final conversation with his son Davey are fuzzy and fading.
The long-term effects of Allison’s near-fatal wreck in 1988 at Pocono Raceway, age and the passage of time have stolen some of the 84-year-old’s most treasured memories.
But not all of them.
“I had some really good conversations with Davey along the way,” Allison recalled recently. “I always felt good about that. I saw that he had that seriousness and that desire to succeed to his ability.
“It always made me feel really good.”
Davey Allison’s talent and drive behind the wheel allowed him to follow in his father’s footsteps all the way to Victory Lane in the 1992 Daytona 500. Less than 18 months after a career-defining win, Allison died during a helicopter crash in July 1993 at Talladega Speedway’s infield near his family’s Birmingham home.
Davey Allison’s family and friends wonder what could have been 30 years later on the week NASCAR’s showcase event seizes center stage at Daytona International Speedway.
Dale Earnhardt’s dominance, Jeff Gordon’s rise, Rusty Wallace’s consistency and the arrival of stars such as Tony Stewart during the sport’s heyday complicate the question of where Allison’s career would have fit in.
Allison’s innate talent, family tradition, work ethic and relationship with the Robert Yates Racing stellar team positioned him well and earned him 19 Cup Series wins and eventually a spot in the Hall of Fame in 2019.
“He was going to win a championship eventually; he came close the year before he died,” said Mike Bolton, who covered motorsports for the Birmingham News. “As time passes on, people forget. Most NASCAR fans now probably never saw him race.”
Those who did see Allison remember him fondly.
The black No. 28 Texaco-Havoline Ford Thunderbird made an impression on a boy who worked in his family’s Pennsylvania tire shop after school and visited the local dirt tracks on weekends.
“He just had a very stoic, tough, focused aura about him,” Daytona International Speedway track president Frank Kelleher, 42, said of Allison. “The black race car just to me felt very tough, like a superhero.”
The continuation of the Allison family legacy also inspired an aspiring driver in the Nevada desert.
“I looked up to Davey Allison because my dad was racing when I was growing up and there was an easy reference of Bobby and Davey,” 43-year-old NASCAR stalwart Kurt Busch said. “My father was Tom, and I looked up to him when I first started racing — it had that father-son relationship.
“Bobby, Davey and the whole Alabama Gang was a big motivator for the Busch family out of Las Vegas.”
Davey Allison’s impact extended beyond the track.
“I think about him a lot; not so much about the racing end of it,” said Donnie Allison, his uncle and longtime NASCAR driver. “You never saw him where he didn’t have that smile on his face. You never saw him where he wasn’t very cordial to everybody.”
Consequently, Allison’s connection to fans was unique but well-earned.
Crew chief Larry McReynolds recalled a seasonably warm April day in 1993 at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway when Allison did not let broken ribs suffered during a crash a week earlier in Bristol, Tenn., curtail an autograph session.
“I just happen to look down pit road and see a pickup truck with someone sitting on a chair in back of it,” said McReynolds, now an analyst at Fox Sports. “I’m sure most of the other drivers were already back in the Mooresville or Charlotte having dinner, and here’s a guy with broken ribs and beaten up yet he stayed until every fan was gone.”
The fans were there for Allison at the end, too.
Bolton recalled the roadside lined for miles leading to St. Aloysius Church in Bessemer, Ala. Some people held signs featuring his No. 28. Others threw flowers as the hearse passed. Many people cried.
Thousands packed inside the church for Allison’s service.
“Davey’s funeral was the biggest after Bear Bryant’s,” Bolton said.
Allison remains larger than life to 81-year-old uncle Donnie.
“He and I were very, very close,” he said. “Probably closer than him and his daddy.”
Donnie coached his sons in youth football and recalled Davey as a talented two-way halfback. Against his big brother’s wish, Donnie gave his nephew the first late model race car — he would drive it to victory as a 16-year-old. Davey, Donnie and his sons regularly hunted deer out on Allison’s farm.
“The hardest thing I had to do after his death — he had a room in my farm — was clearing that room out,” Donnie said. “It was very difficult.”
Meanwhile, Bobby Allison struggled with his health while facing incalculable loss.
The August before Davey Allison died, younger brother Clifford was killed in a crash during practice in Michigan.
Yet the glint in Bobby Allison’s piercing blue eyes and warm handshake are not those of a man holding too tightly onto a devastating past.
“It was a tough period of time,” Allison said. “I realized this was something that could not be undone, but I still had to go on. I had to address it the best I could and just really try to be the right kind of person and keep my Christianity and continue on and try to make whatever success I could out my own life.”
These days, Allison uses a walker following years with a limp after the Pocono crash.
Davey Allison’s death left deeper scars. Allison had been his father’s shadow as a child in the garage, pit road or Victory Lane.
Later, Allison was on his father’s tail during perhaps his finest hour.
Bobby Allison held off his son to win the 1988 Daytona 500 at age 50 to become the oldest winner of the Great American Race. Allison was not quite ready to cede his place in the family pecking order.
He figured the day was coming, only it never did fully arrive.
“We were talking shortly before his death and he was complaining he had not won enough,” Allison recalled. “I said, ‘Davey, look at how good you’ve done; you’ve done really really well. He said, ‘Dad, I want to beat you.’
“What a tremendous compliment: ‘Dad, I want to beat you.’ ”
