Every professional sport has a set of guidelines, rules and regulations that the participants must adhere to.
Failure to do so can result in penalties, including disqualification in one form or another. Every sport has disqualified competitors, teams and organizations at some point, often for a wide range of offenses.
NASCAR racing is no different. The disqualification of Alex Bowman‘s car following the NASCAR Cup Series race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL may have felt seismic at the moment it was announced due to the playoff implications. But it pales in comparison to another that still looms large more than three decades later, primarily because it changed who won the race at a time when that just didn’t happen.
NASCAR founder Bill France was not keen on disqualifying winning cars. He believed that the people who paid to sit in the stands to watch the race deserved to leave the track comfortable that they had seen the actual winner awarded the trophy.
If winners were constantly being stripped of their victory hours or even days later, France felt like it opened up the possibilities for people to speculate that the winners were being determined behind the scenes, not on the track. He didn’t want to do anything that might erode the integrity and authenticity of the sport.
This led to fines, point deductions and crew suspensions becoming more prevalent. A winning car that failed post-race technical inspection or committed driving infractions during the event would be permitted to keep the victory.
Richard Petty‘s 198th career win at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1983 came with clamoring for the win to be taken away after his car was discovered to have an illegal oversized engine and improper tires. Points and money were taken, but the finishing order stood.
Then came the day when all of that changed.
On June 9, 1991, the Cup Series made its third visit to Sonoma Raceway. Tommy Kendall was filling in for the injured Kyle Petty and found himself out front late. Second-place Mark Martin was pressuring Kendall, and the two made contact while running side by side. Martin spun, and Kendall faded with a cut tire.
That handed the lead to Davey Allison with Ricky Rudd pursuing and just three laps to go. Coming to the white flag, Rudd dove into Allison in the final corner and sent the Texaco No. 28 spinning. Allison recovered to hold second while Rudd took the white flag and appeared to be cruising toward his…
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