SEASON IN REVIEW
Woodbury, New Jersey driver Donald Keith “D.K.” Ulrich scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1980, scoring three last-place finishes in eleven starts during a thirty-one-race season.
Ulrich, an owner-driver for much of his career, was competing in his tenth season of NASCAR Cup Series competition. In 1979, he scored a career-high five top-ten finishes and finished 12th in points, shaking off a costly wreck in the Southern 500 at Darlington, South Carolina on September 4, 1978. Ulrich was fined and suspended for the final eight races of the 1978 season, adding insult to a literal injury following a grinding mid-race crash. The penalty came after officials had discovered nitrous oxide tanks in the back of his destroyed Chevrolet.
In 1980, Ulrich scored a season-best 10th-place finish at Bristol, Tennessee on August 23, but scored seven DNFs in his other ten starts. He raced his familiar #40 in nine of the eleven starts, changing his team to “Juarez Racing” in the Ontario, California finale where his #4 came home 37th out of 40 cars. The other start was in Bill Hollar’s #99 Hollar Auto Parts Chevrolet at Dover, Delaware on May 18, scene of the first of his three last-place finishes. Ulrich exited the race after just two laps with engine failure. Three races later in the Warner W. Hodgdon 400 at Riverside, California on June 8, Ulrich’s own #40 Midwestern Farm Lines Chevrolet failed to complete a single lap when another engine let go. According to a humorous interview with Perry Allen Wood, Ulrich looked under the hood after stopping on the backstretch, and was invited to drink with some fans, so he hopped the fence and left the track.
Finally, a loss of oil pressure two laps into the Holly Farms 400 on September 21 resulted in the third last-place finish, breaking a three-way tie with Neil Bonnett and Harry Gant for the LASTCAR title.
Ulrich competed in nine more seasons as a Cup Series driver, scoring a career-best 4th at Dover, Delaware on May 17, 1981 behind first-time winner Jody Ridley, who scored owner Junie Donlavey’s only Cup win that day. After that time, Ulrich scaled back as a driver to focus on becoming full-time owner. In 1986, Ulrich famously let Richard Petty drive his #6 Chevrolet when Petty failed to qualify his #43 for the May 25 running of the Coca-Cola 600 in Concord, North Carolina. Petty lost his primary car in a practice crash and was not allowed to run his back-up Pontiac due to a short-lived NASCAR rule on the use of back-up cars. With STP decals on Ulrich’s #6, Petty qualified 37th but fell out after 123 laps due to engine failure. Ulrich remained as a team owner through 1995, running competitive teams for then-rookies Tim Richmond in 1981, Ernie Irvan in 1988, and Ted Musgrave in 1991.
Ulrich made his 273rd and final Cup start on the same Dover track as his best finish on May 31, 1992. Invited to fill out a short field by driving a second Aroneck Racing Oldsmobile alongside Jerry O’Neil, Ulrich’s #85 finished next-to-last after he quit 21 laps into the race.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
At Richmond, Virginia on September 7, 1980, J.D. McDuffie scored his 20th last-place finish when his 370 Bailey Excavating Chevrolet broke a cylinder head after 44 laps of the Capital City 400. This allowed McDuffie to take sole possession of the record for the most last-place finishes in NASCAR Cup Series history. During his career, McDuffie would extend this record by twelve more finishes, setting an all-time record for Cup Series last-place runs that stands to this day.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) D.K. Ulrich (3)
2nd) Neil Bonnett, Harry Gant (2)
3rd) Dick Brooks, John Callis, Dave Dion, Bill Elliott, Bill Elswick, Steve Gray, Kenny Hemphill, Bruce Hill, Tommy Houston, Henry Jones, Dick May, J.D. McDuffie, Junior Miller, Rick Newsom, Randy Ogden, Bill Osborne, Baxter Price, Don Puskarich, Bobby Sands, Jim Sauter, Buck Simmons, Travis Tiller, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough (1)
