As you might imagine the case with important victories, NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip has absolutely no problem recalling even the finest details of his 1992 Southern 500 victory at Darlington Raceway.
It was his first win in that historical race after 19 tries.
And, as it turned out, it was his last Cup win ever. Number 84.
This weekend, seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson will compete in the tradition-laden Southern 500 looking for his 84th trophy, as well.
Yet even with the historical significance, it remains to be seen if after earning a victory circle grin Sunday, Johnson would have a story to tell that rivals Waltrip’s victory tale from a rainy Carolina Labor Day weekend 25 years ago — competing against a cast of NASCAR’s earliest Hall of Famers in front of a United States presidential and vice presidential candidate.
“It was an interesting day; we didn’t have the best car,” recalled Waltrip, who led only six of the 298 laps completed. “Seemed like sometimes you’re better off that way at a lot of race tracks — you don’t have the fastest car but things seem to work out.”
And that’s a rare understatement for this big personality whose Darlington win reads more like a fantastic fable than a news account.
Waltrip was declared the winner of the Southern 500 after a deluge of rain interrupted the afternoon. The field waited out a red flag for an hour and 51 minutes – time that then-45-year-old Waltrip used to sit in a lawn chair on pit road and sing, “I’m Singin’ in the Rain” during his rain-delay television interviews.
Famous for his “Ickey Shuffle” after winning the Daytona 500 in 1989, Waltrip was doing a rain dance at Darlington. And it was effective.
Even Waltrip — a winner at Bristol, Tennessee, the weekend before — concedes, he didn’t have the fastest car that day.
“Davey [Allison] had a fast car, Alan Kulwicki had a fast car,” Waltrip recalled. “There were a number that were a little bit better than us; we were just fair, mediocre. We could keep up but didn’t lead much. If you asked people, ‘Does DW have a chance?’ they’d probably have said, ‘No.’
“A number of times I had a car to beat in the Southern 500, had really good cars and something would go wrong. Just different things at different times and nothing really panned out. So ’92 that was really interesting.”
To say the least.
Harry Gant led the most laps (91) but that fall day at Darlington, it was young hotshot Davey Allison with $1 million on the line as part of the Winston Million program that had dominated headlines entering the race.
For any driver who won three of four designated races at the sport’s most iconic tracks – Daytona, Talladega, Charlotte and Darlington – then-series sponsor R.J. Reynolds was willing to deliver a cool $1 million check. Bill Elliott won the million-dollar prize money in 1985 – earning his “Million Dollar Bill” nickname – and seven years later, it was Allison’s shot after winning the Daytona 500 and Talladega’s spring race.
He led 72 laps at Darlington and looked strong, but with rain approaching, he and race leaders Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett pitted for fuel, confident they would have time to settle the win before the rain came. Waltrip assumed the lead and chose another strategy – to stay out and push his fuel window.
And then the rain arrived.
“My good friend [Allison’s crew chief] Larry McReynolds — and this is one of the funniest stories ever — he sent a guy down to the NASCAR hauler to look at the radar because Davey had a shot to win the Winston Million,” Waltrip recalled with a laugh. “They were in their pit window. So the guy comes back and says, ‘We’re good to go, brother. Bring him in anytime.’
“So Davey pitted and most everybody did except us. We didn’t go to the radar, we just used common sense and you could feel it coming, it was going to rain at any minute.
“So we stayed out, stayed out and sure enough, we stayed out long enough the rain came down and it poured out, it was like torrential rains and eventually they called the race.”
If the important – and improbable — victory wasn’t enough to make Waltrip smile, he eagerly shares the “rest of the story.”
“Larry went back up to that crew guy and says, ‘Man, what happened? You said we were good to go.’ The guy says, ‘Larry, I do not understand what happened. I looked at that radar and it was green everywhere. It was perfect.’
“Larry goes, ‘Green everywhere? You dummy, green means it’s getting ready to rain.'”
After waiting nearly two hours, NASCAR called the race and Waltrip finally secured the Southern 500 win to check off his personal ambition list. And, he concedes, he celebrated the unlikely turn of events with a vintage Waltrip-quip. He still laughs at the audacity of his interview.
“I did a rain dance, all the dumb things just to kill time and then they came to me on TV and said, ‘How much gas you got left?'” Waltrip recalls. “And I said, ‘You can go ask Davey, but I think he’d tell you, about a million dollars worth.'”
For his part, Allison was gracious in disappointment.
“We gave it all we had,” Allison told reporters at the time. “We didn’t do anything wrong. When things like this happen, all you can say is, ‘We did the best we could possibly do.’ And we ran good.”
These days, Waltrip – a 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee and longtime announcer on FOX Sports NASCAR broadcasts – looks back on the afternoon with reverence and a smile.
“I just had a tendency to put my foot in my mouth so many times,” he said. “I’d finally won the Southern 500. Little did I know it would be my last win because when you win races year after year after year, you don’t think about that being your last win. It was 1992 for heaven’s sake. But from there on, I had chances at winning but I never won another race after that.”
Waltrip acknowledged that Johnson also earning his 84th career win in the Southern 500 Sunday (tying him with Waltrip and NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Allison on the wins list) would be not only coincidental but appropriate – a historical win in a historical race rich in storylines and legends.
“With [NASCAR Hall of Famer] Cale [Yarborough] living there and me and Bobby [Allison] both having pretty good success at Darlington, that’s a driver’s track, a hard track to win,” Waltrip said. “That would be pretty thrilling for him.
“Look, it’s just a matter of time. He’s got 83 wins, he’ll soon have 84 and he may end up with 100, who knows? You know he’s going to do it, it’s just a matter of when and where. Darlington would be a great place for him, and for me and Bobby both.”