For Rusty Wallace, it was "just racing." For Darrell Waltrip, the "Tide Slide" was a bitter pill to swallow. What happened in the 1989 The Winston left the fans roaring their disapproval, a pair of pit crews trading punches, and two of NASCAR's stars embroiled in a finish that remains controversial to this day.

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A field of 20 cars -- 14 race winners from the previous two seasons, five additional previous race winners and Winston Open winner Sterling Marlin -- took the green for the first segment, with Terry Labonte and Dale Earnhardt on the front row. But it didn't take long for Wallace and Waltrip to show that they were the class of the field.

Wallace went to the front on the first lap and won the 75-lap first segment, prompting Waltrip to respond during the break by saying, "We need to win a segment now and start on the pole in the 10-lap [shootout], and see which one of us is going to win."

A hard Lap 3 crash involving Richard and Kyle Petty landed the son of the seven-time Cup champion in the hospital for observation after Kyle complained of neck pain.

At the start of the second segment, Wallace led Waltrip, only to see D.W. make a quick pass on the backstretch early on to take the field and cruise to an easy victory in the 50-lapper.

"We accidentally got the right-front tire on the right rear that last pitstop and it threw the stagger off," Wallace said. "He's tough. There's no doubt about it. It's just going to be a dogfight to the very end. I'm going to have to run 10 perfect laps and hopefully get up alongside him on the restart.

"It's just pedal to the metal and see what happens."

What happened next was one of the most memorable finishes in the history of NASCAR's All-Star event. Waltrip took the lead on the final restart but Wallace kept the leader in his sights and closed the gap significantly on the backstretch with less than two laps remaining. As the two leaders headed into Turn 3, Wallace went to the inside to make the pass.

Two cars went into Turn 4, but only one came out headed in the right direction. The right-front quarterpanel of Wallace's No. 27 Pontiac tapped the left rear of Waltrip's No. 17 Chevrolet, and D.W. went spinning out of control into the infield grass in a cloud of smoke.

Wallace went on to win, while Waltrip recovered and passed several cars to finish seventh. Several members of Darrell's crew expressed their displeasure with Rusty by kicking at his car as it passed on pit road, setting off a flurry of fisticuffs between the two teams. And Wallace didn't look back until he was in the relative safety of Victory Lane, knowing that Waltrip was in the mood for retaliation.

"I saw him coming," said Wallace. "I just kept the pace going."

As a large portion of the 84,000 in attendance booed Wallace's celebration, a disgusted and livid Waltrip got out of his car

"He knocked the hell out of me," Waltrip said. "I guess I made a big mistake by letting him get up there too close to me in the first place."

Wallace said the spin was just a racing incident.

"I didn't intentionally spin him," he said. "When we touched, he was gone.

"This ain't a place for gentlemen on a Sunday drive. I think a driver in The Winston had better be ready for a paint change. That's what this race is about."

NASCAR officials let the results stand without penalty, and a steaming Waltrip had one last parting shot for Wallace.

"I hope he chokes on the $200,000, that's all I can tell him."