Allison, Bobby

Bobby Allison, byname of Robert Arthur Allison, (born December 3, 1937, Miami, Florida, U.S.), American stock-car racer who was one of the winningest drivers in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) history and a member of one of the most notable, and most tragic, families in racing. A NASCAR champion in 1983, he raced competitively at NASCAR’s highest level for a quarter century.

Allison took up racing in high school against the wishes of his parents. After high school he went in search of better racing than could be found in South Florida and made his way to Alabama. Allison, his brother Donnie, and friend Red Farmer formed the roots of the “Alabama Gang,” a group of drivers that operated out of a shop near Birmingham.

Allison stepped up to the Grand National (now Sprint Cup) Series in 1965 and achieved his first victory in 1966. Although he won only a single championship, his 84 race victories placed him third on NASCAR’s all-time list at the time of his retirement. (There is some controversy about two more potential wins: one involved the sanctioning of the race, and the other involved possibly illegal engines used by the drivers who beat Allison.) He also won the Daytona 500 on three occasions (1978, 1982, and 1988).

Allison was involved in several key moments in NASCAR history. He was a part of the fight between Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500, which, through its live television broadcast in the United States, helped catapult the sport to national prominence. And in 1987 at Talladega Speedway in Alabama his car went airborne and tore off a long swath of fencing, injuring many spectators. In response NASCAR mandated that racers use restrictor plates—devices that, by restricting an engine’s air intake, limit its horsepower and, thus, the car’s speed—on its superspeedways (Talladega and Daytona), which is a rule that remains in effect today.

One year after the Talladega incident, Allison suffered a career-ending wreck at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania that left him with severe head injuries. That was only the start of Allison’s racing tragedies. In 1993 both of his sons died in separate accidents—Clifford in a practice accident in Michigan and Davey in a helicopter crash at Talladega. The next year, Neil Bonnett, another member of the Alabama Gang, died in a Daytona 500 practice.

Bobby served as a race-car owner for several years in the 1990s with little success. Almost all of the members of the Alabama Gang were enshrined in various Halls of Fame, with Allison earning induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011.