Bobby Allison’s crash into the catch-fence at Talladega Superspeedway in the 1987 Winston 500 led to the use of restrictor plates to slow speeds at NASCAR’s two giant speed-plants — Talladega and Daytona International Speedway. Allison recalls what it was like to be airborne … in a car.
I was in the Stavola brothers’ Buick. Bill Elliott ran 212 (mph) to win the pole, and I was on the outside pole at 211.
A few laps into the race (Lap 22), my engine blew up. A piece went under the car and blew the right-rear tire out and made the car go up into the fence in front of the grandstands. It tore down some of the safety fence and did a little bit of injury to a few of the fans.
I was just hanging on, trying to get where I could absorb any impact I might get and hope everybody missed me. I didn’t have time to get scared. I saw the flagman (Harold Kinder) waving the flag, and I missed him by about a half an inch.
As I continued to wreck I got oil in my eyes from my dry-sump tank that had broken. I couldn’t see. I got ’em wiped out pretty good, but I had to go to the infield care center and get cleaned up a little bit better, where I could get my full sight back.
The oil was hot, but it wasn’t too bad. We had oil coolers on the car, and it was right at the beginning of the race. It also lost some of the heat from flying around in the air. It could have been serious. I don’t think any other parts or anything else got in my car.
I wound up back on the race track a couple hundred feet down from the flagstand. I couldn’t see what had happened behind me. When the ambulance got me to the infield care center, I heard Dr. Hardwick tell them to shut the helicopters off … we wouldn’t need them. That was good news to me — good news that I didn’t need them and nobody else did, either.
(Talladega) wasn’t my favorite place to race, by any means. I liked it OK. I won there, and I thought that was pretty neat. But I always felt like Charlotte was more fun to race. Rockingham was fun. Darlington was fun. At Darlington you had to really be on your toes, but it was still fun.
Talladega’s always been the big place. Things could be done to make it better. One guy makes a suggestion. Another says that’s no good. The debate goes on.
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