Quick Facts
Byname of:
Robert Arthur Allison
Born:
December 3, 1937, Miami, Florida, U.S.
Died:
November 9, 2024, Mooresville, North Carolina (aged 86)

Bobby Allison (born December 3, 1937, Miami, Florida, U.S.—died November 9, 2024, Mooresville, North Carolina) was one of the winningest drivers in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) history and a member of one of the most notable, and most tragic, families in racing. A NASCAR champion in 1983, he raced competitively at NASCAR’s highest level for a quarter century.

Early life

Allison took up racing in high school against the wishes of his parents. After high school he went in search of better racing than could be found in South Florida and made his way to Alabama. Allison, his brother Donnie, and friend Red Farmer formed the roots of the “Alabama Gang,” a group of drivers that operated out of a shop near Birmingham.

NASCAR career

Allison stepped up to the Grand National (now Cup) Series in 1965 and achieved his first victory in 1966. He also won the Daytona 500 on three occasions: 1978, 1982, and 1988. Although he won only a single championship, Allison’s 84 race victories placed him third on NASCAR’s all-time list when he stopped racing in 1988. In 2024 NASCAR awarded Allison victory in a 1971 race, the outcome of which had been disputed due to sanctioning issues. That took his career wins to 85, making him NASCAR’s fourth all-time winner, behind Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Jeff Gordon. (There is some controversy about one other potential win, in 1983, involving possibly illegal engines used by the drivers who finished ahead of Allison.)

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Allison was involved in several key moments in NASCAR history. He was a part of the fight between Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500, which, through its live television broadcast in the United States, helped catapult the sport to national prominence. And in 1987 at Talladega Speedway in Alabama his car went airborne and tore off a long swath of fencing, injuring many spectators. In response NASCAR mandated that racers use restrictor plates—devices that, by restricting an engine’s air intake, limit its horsepower and, thus, the car’s speed—on its superspeedways (Talladega and Daytona), which is a rule that remains in effect today.

Almost all of the members of the Alabama Gang were enshrined in various Halls of Fame, with Allison earning induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011.

Family tragedies

In 1988, one year after his Talladega incident, Allison suffered a career-ending wreck at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania that left him with severe head injuries. That was only the start of Allison’s racing tragedies. In 1993 both of his sons died in separate accidents—Clifford in a practice accident in Michigan and Davey in a helicopter crash at Talladega. The next year, Neil Bonnett, another member of the Alabama Gang, died in a Daytona 500 practice.

Allison served as a race-car owner for several years in the 1990s with little success.

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NASCAR

sports organization
Also known as: National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing
In full:
National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing
Areas Of Involvement:
Who’s won the most NASCAR Cup Series championships?

NASCAR, sanctioning body for stock-car racing in North America, founded in 1948 in Daytona Beach, Florida, and responsible for making stock-car racing a widely popular sport in the United States by the turn of the 21st century.

Integral to NASCAR’s founding in the late 1940s was Bill France, an auto mechanic and sometime race-car driver. France had organized stock-car races in Florida throughout the 1930s and ’40s, and, after several unsuccessful attempts to create a series of races that would determine a national champion, in 1947 he created the National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC), a yearlong series of 40 races held across the southeastern United States. France was responsible for establishing and enforcing the technical regulations that governed the cars; creating a scoring system that would award drivers points used to determine a series champion; organizing and promoting each race; and awarding cash prizes to the winners of races and to the series champion. These would become NASCAR’s primary tasks as a sanctioning body.

Although the NCSCC was successful, France had greater ambitions. He convened a series of meetings in December 1947 in Daytona Beach attended by racetrack owners and race-car owners and drivers and intended to establish a still-larger stock-car-racing series. What emerged from those meetings was NASCAR, which replaced the NCSCC. France was its first president. The first race sanctioned by NASCAR was held on Jan. 4, 1948, at Pompano Beach, Florida. In February of that year NASCAR was incorporated, with France the primary stockholder.

In 1949 NASCAR changed the rules governing the cars: whereas in 1948 “modifieds”—cars varying in age and in the mechanical modifications made to them for the purpose of racing—were allowed to compete, from June 1949 only late-model (recently manufactured) stock cars were permitted. Races that year were called Strictly Stock races, and Red Byron became the series champion.

France changed the name of the series to Grand National in 1950, a name used until 1971, when the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds bought sponsorship rights to the series and renamed it the Winston Cup Series (it was also known as the Cup Series or NASCAR Cup Series). By then, stock cars had become purpose-built race cars; NASCAR’s rules required cars to resemble their stock counterparts in their dimensions and appearance, but car owners, drivers, and mechanics increasingly exploited those rules in their attempts to gain a competitive advantage. NASCAR was also responsible for mandating safety equipment in cars that, by 1970, had reached over 200 miles (320 km) per hour in nonrace conditions.

In the 1970s there was an influx of corporate advertising, which was both a function of and spur to NASCAR’s growing national profile. NASCAR itself underwent a number of changes, with France stepping down as president in 1972 in favor of Bill France, Jr., his son. After years of experimenting with the number of points awarded for each race, NASCAR in 1975 imposed a scoring system that remained in place until 2004, thereby inaugurating the “modern era” of the Cup Series. The 1970s were dominated by Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough, who between them won eight championships from 1971 to 1980.

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In the 1980s Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt emerged as the most prominent drivers in the Cup Series. The sport continued to expand, and in 1984 Ronald Reagan became the first sitting U.S. president to attend a Cup Series race. In the 1990s Earnhardt won four championships and Jeff Gordon three. In 1994 the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the home of the Indianapolis 500, hosted its first Cup Series race.

In February 2001 Earnhardt, one of the sport’s best-known drivers, was killed in a last-lap crash during the Daytona 500. Driver safety became a high-profile concern, and NASCAR implemented a number of measures intended to increase safety, including the requirement that drivers use head-and-neck restraint devices to prevent injury and the installation of “soft walls”—steel-and-foam barriers, intended to dissipate the energy of a crash—at racetracks. NASCAR also began development of a race car called the “car of tomorrow,” designed in part to provide the driver with greater protection during a crash; it was used in about half of the races during the 2007 season and was adopted for the full season in 2008.

Other changes to the Cup Series during the first decade of the 21st century included Brian France’s being named his father’s successor as head of NASCAR in 2003 and experimentation with several scoring systems intended to increase competition at the end of the season. The building of new racetracks outside Chicago and Kansas City, Kansas, continued efforts begun by NASCAR in the 1990s to expand beyond the southeast United States, its traditional base. After the phone company Nextel announced it would succeed R.J. Reynolds as the series sponsor, the Winston Cup Series was renamed in 2004 the Nextel Cup Series. In 2008 the series name changed again, to the Sprint Cup Series, to reflect Nextel’s merger with Sprint, another telephone service provider. In 2007 the Japanese automaker Toyota entered the Cup Series, traditionally dominated by American manufacturers such as Chevrolet (see General Motors Corporation) and Ford. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Jimmie Johnson had emerged as the dominant driver in the Cup Series; in 2009 he became the first driver to win four consecutive series championships.

In addition to overseeing the Cup Series, NASCAR sanctions two major national series: the Nationwide Series (founded in 1982 and called the Busch Series 1984–2007), in which race cars that differ somewhat in engine and body size from Cup cars are used, and the Camping World Truck Series (founded as the Super Truck Series in 1995 and called the Craftsman Truck Series 1996–2008), in which race cars with bodies that mimic pickup trucks are used. NASCAR also sanctions a number of regional series in the United States. NASCAR’s headquarters are in Daytona Beach.

NASCAR Cup Series champions are provided in the table.

NASCAR* champions
year winner
*National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
1949 Robert ("Red") Byron
1950 Bill Rexford
1951 Herb Thomas
1952 Tim Flock
1953 Herb Thomas
1954 Lee Petty
1955 Tim Flock
1956 Buck Baker
1957 Buck Baker
1958 Lee Petty
1959 Lee Petty
1960 Rex White
1961 Ned Jarrett
1962 Joe Weatherly
1963 Joe Weatherly
1964 Richard Petty
1965 Ned Jarrett
1966 David Pearson
1967 Richard Petty
1968 David Pearson
1969 David Pearson
1970 Bobby Isaac
1971 Richard Petty
1972 Richard Petty
1973 Benny Parsons
1974 Richard Petty
1975 Richard Petty
1976 Cale Yarborough
1977 Cale Yarborough
1978 Cale Yarborough
1979 Richard Petty
1980 Dale Earnhardt
1981 Darrell Waltrip
1982 Darrell Waltrip
1983 Bobby Allison
1984 Terry Labonte
1985 Darrell Waltrip
1986 Dale Earnhardt
1987 Dale Earnhardt
1988 Bill Elliott
1989 Rusty Wallace
1990 Dale Earnhardt
1991 Dale Earnhardt
1992 Alan Kulwicki
1993 Dale Earnhardt
1994 Dale Earnhardt
1995 Jeff Gordon
1996 Terry Labonte
1997 Jeff Gordon
1998 Jeff Gordon
1999 Dale Jarrett
2000 Bobby Labonte
2001 Jeff Gordon
2002 Tony Stewart
2003 Matt Kenseth
2004 Kurt Busch
2005 Tony Stewart
2006 Jimmie Johnson
2007 Jimmie Johnson
2008 Jimmie Johnson
2009 Jimmie Johnson
2010 Jimmie Johnson
2011 Tony Stewart
2012 Brad Keselowski
2013 Jimmie Johnson
2014 Kevin Harvick
2015 Kyle Busch
2016 Jimmie Johnson
2017 Martin Truex, Jr.
2018 Joey Logano
2019 Kyle Busch
2020 Chase Elliott
2021 Kyle Larson
2022 Joey Logano
2023 Ryan Blaney
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.