AK Racing
Auto-racing company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AK Racing (originally Terry Motorsports) was a championship-winning NASCAR Winston Cup Series team. The team was founded by Bill Terry in 1982 and fielded Buicks for Bob Jarvis, Tommy Ellis, and Butch Lindley in 1982 and 1983. In 1985, Terry began fielding a Ford for Alan Kulwicki.
 | |
| Owner(s) | Bill Terry, Alan Kulwicki |
|---|---|
| Base | Concord, North Carolina |
| Series | Winston Cup, Busch Series |
| Race drivers | Alan Kulwicki |
| Manufacturer | Ford |
| Opened | 1982 |
| Closed | 1993 |
| Career | |
| Drivers' Championships | 1 |
| Race victories | 5 |
In 1986, Terry took his team full time, but backed out of the operation later in the year. Kulwicki bought out Terry and began running the team as an owner-driver. The team adopted the AK Racing name and raced under that banner until the end of the 1993 season, during which Kulwicki lost his life and Geoff Bodine purchased the team.[1]
Bill Terry era
The team debuted at the 1982 Cracker Barrel Country Store 420 at Nashville Speedway USA with Bob Jarvis driving it as the No. 32 Clinomint Buick, finishing 28th out of 30 cars. Two races later, the No. 32 ran again at the World 600, with Bosco Lowe qualifying 40th and finishing 16th. Lowe drove the car in the Daytona 500 the following season, finishing 39th after a crash. Tommy Ellis drove their next race, bringing the Big Daddy's Buick to a 15th-place finish at Charlotte. Butch Lindley drove the final race of the 1983 season for the team at Martinsville Speedway, finishing 25th after suffering rear end problems.
Alan Kulwicki era
Terry's team did not run a race in 1984, but would return for another part time effort in 1985. Terry hired Alan Kulwicki, a driver in the ASA Series who had also made several starts in the Busch Series. The team switched their engine supplier to Ford and fielded cars #32 and #38 for the Wisconsin native in five races toward the end of the season, with a best finish of thirteenth at Charlotte. Terry then decided to go full time for the first time in 1986, with Kulwicki piloting the #32 and sponsorship from the restaurant chain Quincy's Steakhouse. After Kulwicki failed to qualify for two of the first three races, including the Daytona 500, Terry renumbered the car to #35 for the spring Atlanta race. Kulwicki would record his best career finish thus far shortly thereafter at Martinsville, finishing fourth. However, the team failed to qualify at Talladega, then ran poorly at Dover and Charlotte. After sitting out the spring races at Riverside and Pocono, Kulwicki returned at Michigan. He then avenged his DNQ at Daytona by running tenth at the 4th of July race, and would later record a top ten at Bristol.
After that race, Kulwicki and Terry agreed to have the driver purchase the team outright, and the newly renamed AK Racing moved its operations to Kannapolis, North Carolina. With the team now under his stewardship, Kulwicki ran the last nine races with eight finishes inside the top twenty. His best finish was seventh in the fall Dover race, with the worst being 27th in the season finale at Riverside. Despite missing six races and finishing behind Michael Waltrip, who ran all but one race (the Daytona 500, which like Kulwicki he failed to qualify for) in the series points, Kulwicki's performance was enough to earn him Rookie of the Year honors for 1986.
1987-90
For 1987, Kulwicki would renumber his car to #7, which he would run for the rest of his career. After Quincy's left as sponsor, Kulwicki signed on to carry Zerex Antifreeze on the car going forward. He won three pole positions and finished 15th in points. In 1988, Kulwicki won his first race career race at Phoenix International Raceway. In celebration, he drove the now-famous Polish Victory Lap. He won once more in 1990, but lost his sponsorship after the season once Zerex's parent company decided to focus solely on promoting its Valvoline brand of lubricants.
1991
After rejecting overtures from Junior Johnson to drive for his team in the offseason, Kulwicki attempted to sign with Kraft General Foods for 1991, where he would carry its Maxwell House Coffee brand on the #7. Johnson, who had also tried to sign Kulwicki in 1990 but was unable to, retaliated by usurping him and taking the Maxwell House sponsorship for himself. This left Kulwicki sponsorless as the season got underway, and although he was able to gain sponsorship from the U.S. Army for the Daytona 500 as a promotional effort surrounding Operation Desert Storm, it was only for one race and the team ran unsponsored for the next two races.
Then, at the spring race at Atlanta, Kulwicki caught a much needed break. Atlanta was regarded as the home racetrack for the Hooters restaurant chain, and they had sponsored Mark Stahl's #82 Ford for the first three races of the season. Stahl had yet to qualify for a race, and did not do so at Atlanta, either. Kulwicki, meanwhile, qualified the unsponsored #7 on the pole, and Hooters approached him for a one race deal to put their logos on his car. Kulwicki finished in eighth that day, and shortly thereafter both sides agreed to terms on a long-term sponsorship. By the end of the season, Kulwicki was thirteenth in the standings and won the night race at Bristol; although he finished five places lower in the standings, the team had secure sponsorship again and 1992 would prove to be even more lucrative.
1992
In that season, Kulwicki won at Bristol in the spring and then won his first superspeedway race when he won at Pocono in the summer. He became a championship contender, challenging Davey Allison and Bill Elliott (who, incidentally, had been signed by the same Junior Johnson who Kulwicki had declined to race for the year earlier) for most of the season and staying somewhat consistent while both of his chief competitors, who recorded more victories, also dealt with mechanical issues and accidents. Entering the season finale at Atlanta, Kulwicki trailed Allison by thirty points. Feeling he was truly the biggest underdog among the drivers who had a chance to win the Winston Cup that afternoon (in addition, Kyle Petty, Harry Gant, and Mark Martin were also mathematically eligible), Kulwicki got permission from NASCAR and Ford to place stickers over the first two letters in the car’s branding on the front grille, which caused it to read "Underbird".
In the race, Martin, Petty, and Gant fell out of contention early. Then, Allison crashed on lap 254 and suffered severe damage to his car, leaving Kulwicki and Elliott to determine the championship for themselves. Kulwicki, who had been battling gearbox issues all day, managed to clinch the five point bonus for leading the most laps in the race; he led exactly one more lap than Elliott, who entered the race ten points behind Kulwicki in the standings. Kulwicki came to the finish in second place behind the race-winning Elliott, clinching the championship and becoming the first owner-driver since Richard Petty, who was making his final start that afternoon, won his last championship in 1979.
1993
Kulwicki started out the season with three top tens and two top fives, two of which were on the short tracks of Rockingham and Richmond. These were bookended by a 26th place finish in the Daytona 500, where he fell three laps down, and a 36th place finish in his return to Atlanta, where the "Underbird" car (which the team brought to the track) crashed out. The team finished sixth at Darlington, then began heading to Bristol, where Kulwicki was the defending race winner.
Blountville
On Thursday, April 1, Kulwicki was returning from a promotional appearance at a Hooters restaurant on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was scheduled to fly from Knoxville to Tri-Cities Regional Airport in Blountville, Tennessee that night, and boarded a Swearingen Merlin III twin-engine turboprop he leased from Hooters owner Bob Brooks. Two Hooters executives were also aboard the plane.
The plane departed Knoxville at 8:58 PM local time and was cleared for landing thirty minutes later. One minute after that, radio contact was lost with the pilot, and shortly after that, the aircraft began a rapid descent that was later determined to have been caused by icing conditions that triggered shutdown of its engines. It crashed and burst into flames nearly six miles outside of the airport, killing Kulwicki and the three others on board.
Aftermath
As per his will, Kulwicki left the team to his father, Gerald. The elder Kulwicki did not have any interest in running the team, so after consulting with his attorney, the team was placed under the stewardship of Felix Sabates, the owner of Team SABCO, while a buyer was sought. As far as the driving duties were concerned, Kulwicki had decided that, if anything was to happen that would result in him being forced to give up the seat, he wanted Jimmy Hensley, the 1992 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, to replace him in the #7.
Almost immediately, a problem arose. At the time, Hooters was also sponsoring Loy Allen Jr. in both the ARCA and Busch Series. Representatives from the company met with Sabates and Gerald Kulwicki and put forth the idea of having Allen take over the car. Sabates was not interested in having Allen drive the car and repeatedly rejected the overture. This, combined with the enormity of the loss from the plane crash, and lingering tensions between the team and the sponsor from before the accident (Kulwicki had been in contentious talks with Hooters about renewing beyond 1993 and was said to be in contact with Anheuser-Busch about taking the Budweiser sponsorship for 1994), led Hooters to end their backing of the #7.
Meanwhile, Sabates had been fielding offers for the team but found that many of the potential buyers were not interested in buying the team and running it, instead only being interested in its real estate. He did, however, receive several offers from drivers who were looking to follow in Kulwicki's footsteps and become owner drivers. One of these offers was from Geoff Bodine, who was driving the #15 Motorcraft Ford for Bud Moore Engineering at the time.
On May 12, 1993, Bodine announced that he had purchased AK Racing. An arrangement was made for him to run the day-to-day operations of the team while Bodine continued to drive for Moore. A series of different sponsors ran on the car in the interim, while Bodine eventually procured sponsorship from The Family Channel. Hensley continued to run in the #7 until the fall race at Dover, by which time Bodine was released from his contract with Moore and took over the car for the remainder of the season. The team officially became Geoff Bodine Racing for 1994.