PHOTO: David Taylor, Allsport
SEASON IN REVIEW
St. Louis, Missouri driver Kenny Wallace scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1998, scoring three last-place finishes in thirty-one starts during a thirty-three-race season. Wallace beat David Green in a bottom-five tiebreaker, 10-5.
Wallace was competing in his eighth season on the Cup Series tour, a career that started just one year after his first full season in the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series in 1989. One year after his Cup Series debut at North Wilkesboro, North Carolina driving for his brother Rusty on April 22, 1990, Wallace was tabbed to drive in relief of an injured Kyle Petty for two races, finishing a strong 13th in the Coca-Cola 600 in Concord, North Carolina on May 26, 1991. Team owner Felix Sabates took note and, in 1993, hired Wallace to debut a new second team, a #40 Dirt Devil Pontiac, as Petty’s teammate. Wallace made every race that year and finished 23rd in points, but lost Rookie of the Year to Jeff Gordon.
Wallace and Sabates parted ways after 1993, but another driver injury jump-started his career. This time, it was in relief of Ernie Irvan, whose life-threatening crash in practice at Brooklyn, Michigan on August 21, 1994 stunned a Robert Yates Racing team still reeling from the death of Davey Allison the year before. As Irvan began his long road to recovery, Wallace was tabbed as the relief driver, scoring seven top-fifteen finishes in just ten starts, including a season-best 4th at Martinsville, Virginia on September 25, 1994.
As Dale Jarrett took over driving duties in the #28 in 1995, Wallace turned to his Busch Grand National Series team owned by Fil Martocci, with whom they finished 4th in the series standings on the heels of three wins. Wallace and Martocci struggled in the move to Cup in 1995, however, their #81 TIC Financial Ford failing to qualify for nine races, including the Daytona 500, and finishing no better than 18th at Dover, Delaware on June 4, 1995 - the day former teammate Kyle Petty scored his final Cup Series victory.
Wallace stayed with Martocci through 1996 and 1997 and gradually improved, missing just one race both seasons and scoring four Top Tens. In 1997, Wallace scored two poles, one each at Martinsville, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee. Square D Electronics, which came on board as Wallace’s sponsor in 1996, re-upped for the 1998 season, when the team would join the other Ford teams in upgrading to the new Taurus model.
Despite a career-high seven Top Tens in 1998, the season was another struggle, resulting in a 31st-place finish in the point standings. Wallace missed the Daytona 500 for the first time since 1995, one of two DNQs that season, and scored thirteen DNFs, including three last-place finishes. The first last-place finish came in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis on August 1, when his #81 Square D Ford lost the engine after 65 laps. The other two occurred in consecutive races one month later - the MBNA Gold 400 in Dover, Delaware on September 20, where another engine let go after two laps, and the September 27 running of the NAPA AutoCare 500, where his car overheated after 150 laps. That Martinsville race saw several drivers overheat as well, including race winner Ricky Rudd, who won a race for the sixteenth consecutive season despite his air conditioner failing in the opening laps.
The next season, Wallace and Square D moved to Andy Petree Racing to debut another second team, this a #55 Chevrolet. The two years Wallace raced for Petree were two of his best as he scored four of his six career top-five finishes and another six Top Tens. On July 11, 1999, Wallace and Petree scored a career-best 2nd-place finish to Jeff Burton at Loudon, New Hampshire, a finish he’d equal at Rockingham, North Carolina on November 4, 2001, where he drove in relief of still another driver - Steve Park - winning the pole and trailing Joe Nemechek while driving Dale Earnhardt, Incorporated’s #1 Pennzoil Chevrolet.
Other than full-season runs for Bill Davis Racing (late 2002-2003) and Furniture Row Racing (2006-2007), Wallace continued to be one of NASCAR’s most prolific - and productive - relief drivers. Wallace replaced Kevin Harvick following a one-race suspension at Martinsville, Virginia in 2002, ran the final two races of 2005 for Kurt Busch following an alleged incident between Busch and Phoenix-area law enforcement, and in the summer of 2007 filled in for injured veterans Kyle Petty and Ricky Rudd. Wallace stepped away from NASCAR racing following his last Busch Grand National Series start at Iowa on August 1, 2015, where he came home 15th, two years after his last Truck Series start and seven after his last in Cup.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Like Wallace, David Green scored three last-place finishes for a team struggling to make the adjustment from Busch to Cup Series competition. Green, the Busch Grand National Series champion in 1994 and runner-up in 1996, brought owner Buzz McCall’s Caterpillar-sponsored team to the Cup Series in 1997, but finished just 37th in the point standings. In 1998, Green scored six DNFs in just fifteen starts, eventually moving to the Larry Hedrick team by the end of the year. Green ran all but two races again in 1999, scoring his only career pole in the inaugural event at Homestead, Florida on November 14, 1999, but has made just five Cup starts since then. Green has since stepped away from racing and become a NASCAR official.
The 1998 season began on February 15 with Dale Earnhardt picking up his first and only Daytona 500 victory in his twentieth attempt. Finishing last that day was the first of three rookies to do so in 1998 - Busch Grand National Series regular Kevin Lepage - whose #91 Little Joe’s Auto Chevrolet lost the engine after 78 laps. Later in the season, Lepage would replace Ted Musgrave as driver of Roush Racing’s #16 Ford in which he’d score a career-best 5th-place finish at Darlington, South Carolina in 1999 and Fort Worth, Texas in 2000. Lepage has made 207 Cup Series starts, but none since 2007, and has since stepped away from NASCAR.
Kenny Irwin, Jr., who replaced Ernie Irvan as driver of the famed #28 Texaco / Havoline Ford, also scored his first last-place run. Irwin trailed the March 29 race at Bristol, Tennessee when he crashed in Turn Four after 88 laps. Kenny Wallace finished right behind Irwin that day in 42nd. Both Lepage and Irwin would finish last once more before the season ended, at Rockingham, North Carolina and Talladega, Alabama, respectively. In his two years with Robert Yates Racing, Irwin scored three poles, three top-five finishes, and ten Top Tens. However, after finishing no better than 19th in points, he was replaced by Ricky Rudd in 2000 and moved to the #42 BellSouth Chevrolet made available by the departing Joe Nemechek. It was in this car that Irwin scored a 4th-place finish at Talladega, Alabama on April 16, 2000, one spot short of his career-best 3rd in the 1999 Daytona 500. Tragically, it was also in this car that he was killed in a practice crash at Loudon, New Hampshire on July 7, 2000.
Connecticut driver Jerry Nadeau, an accomplished road racer, qualified outside-pole on the road course at Sonoma, California on June 28. It was the best-ever start for the short-lived #13 FirstPlus Financial Ford owned by Bill Elliott and Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, but in his earnest to beat polesitter Jeff Gordon up the hill, Nadeau cut the corner too short and drove through the grass. The detour ultimately broke his track bar entering the high-speed “Esses” and he plowed into the embankment on Lap 14, ending his race. Other than a bit tongue, Nadeau was uninjured.
March 1 saw the first NASCAR race held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada. Finishing last that day was 1995 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Hut Stricklin, whose #8 Circuit City Chevrolet fell out with electrical problems after he completed 150 laps of the Las Vegas 400. It was the sixth last-place finish of Stricklin’s career.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) David Green [5 B5s], Kenny Wallace [10 B5s] (3)
2nd) Kenny Irwin, Jr., Kevin Lepage, Rick Mast, Morgan Shepherd (2)
3rd) Brett Bodine, Gary Bradberry, Jeff Burton, Derrike Cope, Wally Dallenbach, Jr., Bill Elliott, Steve Grissom, Ernie Irvan, Bobby Labonte, Randy LaJoie, Dave Marcis, Ted Musgrave, Jerry Nadeau, Robert Pressley, Ricky Rudd, Ken Schrader, Billy Standridge, Hut Stricklin, Dick Trickle (1)
