The joy of the memory is there. He senses it. But as with the memory itself, it remains elusive. It lurks, seemingly but not necessarily forever, just beyond the fingertip reach of Bobby Allison.

Yet Allison hasn't given up. Just as when he was one of the greatest racecar drivers on the planet, he never will. As long as there is a chance, he will continue to pursue -- and so he does.

When the mood strikes him, he trudges to the videocassette recorder in his home and inserts the tape of the greatest moment in his storied 25-year career. It is a recording of the 1988 Daytona 500, which Allison won for the third time at the remarkable age of 50. His son, Davey, then 26, finished second, just two car lengths behind.

"Here I was 50 years old, and I won the Super Bowl of world-wide racing. I don't care what anybody says, that's what it is -- the Super Bowl of racing, world-wide," says Allison, now 70. "To do that for the third time at age 50 with the best young man in racing who also happened to be your son running second, it's gotta be the greatest sporting event ever."

And Allison has no memory whatsoever of it.

Twelve races later, on June 19, 1988, while starting out on the first lap of the 200-lap Miller High Life 500 at Pocono International Raceway, Bobby Allison radioed his pit crew and told them he thought he had a tire leaking air. As he drove through the second turn, the tire blew and the car broke loose, backing into the outside wall and bouncing back into rush-hour traffic that was just getting up to speed.

Fellow driver Jocko Maggiacomo had nowhere to go. He T-boned Allison's No. 12 Buick in the driver's side door.

Allison was cut from the car and airlifted to LeHigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa., where he was listed in critical but stable condition with a cerebral concussion, blunt abdominal trauma and a broken thighbone.

It would take him more than two years to recover enough from the devastating injuries to begin functioning again as a relatively normal human being. At first Allison could not remember much of anything -- about anything. Slowly, most treasured memories returned over time.

But not the one of him finishing one-two with his son on Feb. 14, 1988.

"I do know it happened. I have pictures. I have people who shake their heads and say, 'You did win the race. Scout's honor,' " says Allison. "But I personally have no recollection of it."

Bobby Allison's time behind the wheel, which included 718 starts in the Cup Series, has been well documented, with no less than three books dedicated to his career.

Bobby knew he was nearing the end of his driving days. That Daytona 500 victory was the 85th -- and as it turned out, final -- checkered flag of his career. But when he led Davey to the finish line, it was almost as if father appeared to be passing the racing baton to son.

It was one of the most popular finishes of NASCAR's biggest race that anyone could remember.

"It was a magic moment," contends Jim Hunter, then the head of NASCAR's public relations division and now vice president of corporate communications for the organization. "Bobby always had a special relationship with Davey -- because Davey grew up hanging around the shop, hanging around Bobby's racing friends. When you do that and you're a good kid like he was, that really makes a dad proud."

Asked if he was rooting for anyone in particular that day, Hunter chuckles and adds: "No, not really. Well, yeah, I was. I was rooting for Bobby -- because I have a son and I'm about the same age as Bobby, and I wouldn't have wanted my son beating me.

It was hard, though, for anyone to root against Davey Allison under any circumstances, even those that cropped up unexpectedly that day. Bobby had raised the kid right. On that, everyone could agree.

"Bobby brought him up the right way," says Red Farmer, a member of the famed "Alabama Gang," along with Bobby, Bobby's racing brother Donnie, and Neil Bonnett. "Bobby would have him out in the garage, sweeping floors."

Hunter remembers one time when he and Jim France, brother of Bill France Jr. and also a high-ranking NASCAR official, went to see young Davey compete in one of his first races at a half-mile track in Birmingham, Ala.

It didn't go very well. Attempting to drive what Hunter describes as "an old beat-up car that Bobby had made him fix up himself," Davey crashed out of the event early. Bobby was there, too, watching.

Bobby Allison turned to Hunter and France, and shook his head.

"Well, he's gonna learn some good lessons, because now he's gotta fix it. I'm not gonna help him," the elder Allison said.

Hunter smiled. He knew the truth.

"Even though he said that, I'm sure Bobby probably did help him fix that car," Hunter contends years later. "There always was a special bond that I noticed there. Davey had so much respect for his dad, and Bobby loved him -- although in the racing world, you had to look for signs of affection in other ways than guys hugging. You could just tell the way Bobby looked at Davey, the way he treated Davey."

Marc Serota/Getty Images

Bobby Allison

Hunter knows the Allisons well. He covered NASCAR as a journalist at newspapers in Columbia, S.C., and Atlanta before joining NASCAR's front office in the early 1970s.

One of Hunter's first jobs upon joining NASCAR was to drum up interest and support for Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Ala. The track opened in 1969 amid controversy, resulting in a boycott of the first Cup race there by most of the sport's top drivers. Hunter needed to generate some positive publicity for the place. The track isn't far from Bobby Allison's adopted hometown of Hueytown, Ala., and Hunter often enlisted the support of the "Alabama Gang" to help him out.

"Bobby and Donnie and Neil Bonnett and Red Farmer helped build fan interest and support in Talladega," says Hunter. "After whatever you want to call that first race in '69, when the drivers boycotted, I went with Bobby and the Alabama Gang all the time. Any time I needed help with promotions or trying to get some publicity, they were there -- all of 'em. I had some great times with Bobby.

"I would set up a road trip, and we would go to places like Cincinnati, or St. Louis, trying to drum up publicity for the race and sell tickets. Places west of Talladega where maybe you wouldn't normally sell tickets."

An avid pilot, Bobby often would fly Hunter wherever he wanted to go. And sometimes he flew him places where maybe Hunter didn't want to go.

"I remember Bobby flew me under the arches in St. Louis. I didn't know he was going to do it," Hunter suggests.

There were some other tense moments in the air, too.

"We would come back into Talladega sometimes after one of those trips. And that little airport in Talladega, at the time, didn't have any lights," says Hunter. "If it was a clear night, you could come in there and see. But we were coming in there sometimes and I'd be like, 'Holy [crap]!' But he would fly right in there and right back out, and go on to the airport in Birmingham."

Bobby Allison was fearless in the air and on the track, and occasionally would inspire fear in others when off it. That was where he differed most from his Davey.

"Davey was just such a -- how do you put this? -- he was just so nice to people," says Hunter. "When Bobby was competing, Bobby always had that little mean streak to him. He could be surly with the media. Davey was never that way."

But once he knew you and respected you, Hunter discovered that Bobby was a great friend to have. That was true even with some of those who competed the hardest against Bobby on the track, such as Richard Petty. Over time, even as they feuded on the track, members of their respected families became close -- including Petty's wife, Linda, and Bobby's mother, Kitty, who passed away on March 6 at the age of 101.

"All the time we would be out there fightin' each other or beatin' on each other or whatever, they'd be sitting in the garage area, sewing, or just talkin' about the family, talkin' about the grandkids," remembers Petty. "So it didn't bleed all the way through to everybody."

Hunter and Petty and Bobby recently got together with others for a media event at Daytona prior to the 50th running of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 17. Hunter took the opportunity to pull Allison aside.

"Do you remember flying me under the arches in St. Louis?" Hunter asks.

Allison looked at his friend and grinned.

Then replies: "Yeah, I remember. But I don't think we were supposed to do that."

AP

NASCAR burst onto the scene in 1979, when CBS televised the Daytona 500 -- and Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough duked it out after the checkered flag.

There are other great memories from those days. While they haven't come flooding back to Allison, they have arrived in his brain like unscheduled but wholly welcomed visits from old acquaintances.

For instance, Allison eventually recalls winning the annual Daytona fishing contest in 1988, held on Lake Lloyd in the infield at Daytona International Speedway the Saturday morning prior to the 500, and also remembers "a big party at Park Seafood Restaurant."

That is why he still watches the tape of the 1988 Daytona 500.

"I still hope that memory will come back," laments Allison. "Because what happened, when I had that incredible memory loss, when I first realized I was still in the world after Pocono, I had been conscious the whole time. I wasn't really in a coma. I just wasn't connected. And when I did realize I was in the world, I had almost zero memory.

"I knew who [wife] Judy was. I knew who my mom and dad were. I knew who the kids were -- Davey and Donnie and Clifford and Carrie. But I didn't know if I had run short tracks or long tracks; I didn't know what state I was in; I didn't know what year it was."

Slowly, as the weeks faded into months following the Pocono accident, that began to change.

"My memory started coming back to me. What would happen, somebody would make a comment -- and it would light up a whole picture for me," says Bobby.

That is why he still watches the tape.

"I just keep thinking, 'Maybe somebody will say the right thing, and that memory will come back to me, too,' " he says.

So far, it hasn't.

It took Allison years to recover after the wreck at Pocono -- emotionally, physically, even financially. He had an insurance policy with NASCAR worth $500,000 if he suffered injuries during an event, but ran through that like it was cascading water.

"People say, 'Yeah, well, he's Bobby Allison. He won all those races.' If he had a salary, it was a tenth or less than what these guys are making now. It's not even close," says Hunter. "And we at the time [in NASCAR], the accident insurance policy for a participant was half a million dollars. You go through that in a hurry when something like that hits. I'm sure his doctor's bills were well over a million dollars. His doctor bills far exceeded whatever the coverage was.

"I know that, in the end, Bobby worked something out with HealthSouth -- because they helped him rehabilitate, and they were located right there in Birmingham. I think he did some advertising and some promotional work for them, and that's how they got out from under all that. But his accident decimated him financially."

Bobby was a wreck emotionally as well at first. He separated for a time from Judy, but eventually they got back together and he credits her for being the "rock" that helped him get through those and other difficult times that arrived in startling and brutally cruel waves during the next few years.

Clifford, their youngest son and also an aspiring driver, was killed in August 1992 during a practice session at Michigan International Speedway. Just 11 months later, in July 1993, Davey died from injuries suffered when the helicopter he was piloting crashed while attempting to land at Talladega Superspeedway.

Somehow, Bobby made it through and still manages to smile when he talks about what he can remember of racing's supposedly good ol' days.

"I think Judy has really helped him," says Hunter. "I was so happy that they got back together, because they were apart. They split for a while and then they got back together. That was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. I think she helped him find his way, and vice versa.

"When you lose two sons, I don't care what we say or anything else -- you cannot put yourself in other people's shoes. One would be enough, but two? Oh my gosh. ... And then to have Bobby hurt like he was and virtually incapacitated. He couldn't do anything to earn any income for at least two years."

All the Allisons have left of their precious sons are the memories. And for Bobby, even those are splintered, some remaining just out of his fevered reach. Yet in the long run, it hasn't left Bobby bitter so much as a little bewildered. He said he refuses to give into bitterness and anger, knowing it can eat a living person alive.

So instead he lives. And yearns to remember everything, including every little detail of the 1988 Daytona 500.

That is why he still watches the tape.

"[The year of] 1988 racing is nearly all gone. All NASCAR Cup racing doesn't exist in my mind," says Allison. "I remember we ran the 24-hour race earlier that year at the end of January. My son Clifford and another guy and I ran that race. We didn't do well, but we had a lot of fun. We went to Australia and almost won in Australia. I remember that. I did a little race at an old Texas track in College Station, which we won. And I remember that.

"Now, why do I remember that? That was like the middle of April. And I don't remember any races between Daytona and that race. I don't remember Rockingham or Richmond, Charlotte or Atlanta ... any of the races. None of 'em. I don't remember any of 'em."

Hunter says Bobby has unwillingly been bookends on some of the best and worst memories the sport has ever bestowed upon anyone.

"This sport is full of the highest highs, and lowest lows," says Hunter. "When Bobby won the 1988 Daytona 500, that was one of those days where it was a high not only for the Allison family, not just for Bobby and Davey, but for everybody in the sport to see that happen. The same way when Davey had the helicopter crash, that was a low low. When Neil Bonnett was killed, and Dale Earnhardt obviously, those were low lows.

"But that day in Daytona, you couldn't have found anyone who was unhappy with that finish. Even if they were fans of someone else, it was OK with them for that race to end up the way it did. To have that erased from Bobby's memory is really tragic."

Bobby's frustration about that is evident at times. But he still has the tape. It may hold a clue, a key. So when the mood strikes him, and when he thinks he can take watching it for more than a few minutes, he pulls it out and inserts it into his VCR once again.

"I've probably watched it all the way through three times," he says. "And I've probably watched 10 or 15 minutes of it 30 times. And then I get up and turn it off. It does nothing for me."

But he still believes that someday perhaps it will.

"Maybe it will come back," he says. "Most of the other things that I ended up remembering, somebody gave me a little piece of and somebody helped a little bit, and then the memory would come back at least enough that I can rely on it. I've always been hopeful someday somebody will say something on that tape that will trigger something."