RELATED: See more Darlington throwback schemes
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Thirty-five years after he walked away from the sport, Bruce Hill walked back in.
At Kansas Speedway of all places.
“If somebody would have told me back then that there would eventually be a speedway in Kansas I would have told them they needed a straightjacket,” Hill said Friday.
They didn’t race at Kansas when Hill, now 66, debuted in NASCAR’s premier series at the end of 1974. Or Las Vegas, or Texas, Chicago, Sonoma or Loudon, New Hampshire.
Hill was considered an outsider, specifically a Yankee — from Kansas.
“I had to laugh,” Hill said. “I had never been called a Yankee, but I was pretty far north, I guess.”
The 1975 Rookie of the year is on hand this weekend as a guest of Sprint Cup Series driver AJ Allmendinger and the No. 47 JTG-Daugherty team. Allmendinger will run a throwback paint scheme later this year at Darlington Raceway honoring Hill for his rookie accomplishment.
The original paint scheme actually came from Johnny Ray, another name some fans might not recognize, but if you’ve seen the semi rig steamrolling its way around Talladega Superspeedway towing the American flag during pre-race festivities, well, tip your cap to former racer Johnny Ray.
Hill made 100 starts in NASCAR’s premier series from 1974 through 1981, earning three top-five and 21 top-10 finishes.
“I was like a lot of guys back then that ran out of money and had to get out of it and couldn’t stand to go back without being involved in it,” he said. “It’s been a fun experience, brought back a lot of memories.”
His first start came at the end of the ’74 season, in a car he had purchased from owner/driver Bobby Allison. The leader of the Alabama Gang had signed on late that year to drive for team owner Roger Penske.
“It was the 12 car, the Coca-Cola (sponsored) car,” Hill said. “We decided since we were in Kansas it didn’t matter where we were going to go race, it was going to be a long trip. We saw we could still make it to a race at the end of the year in Ontario.
“So we went out there and made the field. There were 80-some cars there, that’s the way it used to be with all the West Coast guys there. I thought ‘Uh-oh.’ We were still running the big blocks; that’s when they were making the switch (to small blocks). We had to run a restrictor plate and that thing would quit running halfway down the straightaway. There was nothing you could do about it. Those small blocks were flying by me.”
But Hill persevered and was running inside the top 10 late in the race before blowing a tire and finishing 13th.
“That’s when I realized, ‘I think I can do this,’ ” he said.
His final race came at Michigan International Speedway. He finished 33rd, completing only 21 laps before being sidelined by driveshaft issues.
Today, Hill stays busy raising quarter horses at his home in Topeka, Kansas. He may no longer be racing, but he’s still involved in horsepower.
“Part of the experience this morning has been seeing people that I haven’t seen for about 35 years,” he said. “… I just hadn’t seen these guys in a long time.
It’s been a neat deal just talking about the history of the sport. Some people really follow the history and some maybe not, but there is a lot to it. A lot of people have been involved through the years that a lot of people don’t know about.
“This is a cool deal.”