Bobby Allison now has 85 wins in the NASCAR Cup Series.
NASCAR announced Wednesday that Allison would have an additional win added to his career total from the 1971 Myers Brothers Memorial 250 at Bowman Gray Stadium.
Allison was never officially recognized as the winner of the race, despite finishing first. The race at the North Carolina short track featured cars from both the NASCAR Grand National – currently the Cup Series – and the Grand American Series.
Allison drove a Grand American Series Ford to victory and drivers in Grand American cars finished in eight of the top 10 spots. In today’s terms, that’s as if NASCAR were to run a race with both Cup Series cars and Xfinity Series cars and drivers in Xfinity Series cars would dominate the top 10.
One of the drivers in a Grand National car was Richard Petty, the winningest driver in NASCAR history. He was not exactly enthusiastic about the mixed field and was not the only one.
Because the field included both types of cars, NASCAR had never officially recognized a winner of the race until Wednesday.
“For 53 years, the Myers Brothers Memorial was the only race hosted by NASCAR that did not have an official winner,” NASCAR Chairman Jim France said in a statement. “As we started preparing for the upcoming Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, the topic of the race came to the fore again. We felt it was right to officially recognize Bobby’s victory and honor him as an 85-time NASCAR Cup Series winner. We are grateful for Bobby’s lifelong contributions to NASCAR.”
NASCAR will host the season-opening Exhibition Clash race at Bowman-Gray in February.
The win moves Allison, 86, into a solo fourth place on NASCAR’s all-time wins list. Petty tops the list with 200, while David Pearson is second with 105 and Jeff Gordon is third with 93 wins. Allison tied for fourth with Darrell Waltrip with 84 wins. Jimmie Johnson is one win behind Waltrip in sixth place with 83. He is tied with Petty and Earnhardt for the most Cup Series titles ever with seven.
Allison is the only one-time Cup Series champion among the five winningest drivers in Cup Series history. He won the 1983 Cup Series title after Waltrip won the Cup Series the previous two seasons.
