NASCAR from the 90’s to the 2000’s

As NASCAR entered the 1990s, it was still successful as a sport. It definitely wasn’t a major sport yet, but it had good coverage. It had a lot of drama when it came to the championships and the drivers. 90 and 91, NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt won his fourth and fifth NASCAR championships. He also won his sixth and his seventh in ’93 and ’94. Winning four championships in five years is a great achievement in what was then NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series. In 1992, NASCAR driver Alan Kulwicki won the championship with 10 points!

The most exciting part of that championship race is that it actually made it to the last lap, literally. Alan leads just one more lap than NASCAR driver Bill Elliott, and he beats him by just one spot! Alan won the race and Bill was second. Alan calculated exactly on the lap that if he led one more lap, he would win the Championship, and that’s exactly what happened. It was, in most respects, the closest battle for the NASCAR Championship in the history of the sport. That final race, the Hooters 500, not only had the closest finish in NASCAR history, it saw the retirement of seven-time champion Richard Petty and the start of a career for up-and-coming Jeff Gordon.

Jeff Gordon was born in California and was born to compete. He competed in go-karts at age 5, and by his mid-teens he was dominating dirt track racing. He was always interested in the Indy car series and always wanted to race the Indianapolis 500 growing up. But that never happened. He was driving a Busch series car for Bill Davis Racing, capturing rookie of the year in ’91, and won a NASCAR record 11 pole positions in ’92. All in a Ford Thunderbird. In ’92, Jeff had his first start in the then-NASCAR Winston Cup Series driving a Chevrolet Lumina, for Rick Hendrick. Jeff was wrecked and ended up in the ’30s, but that wouldn’t be what would define his legacy.

In just two years, Jeff was always a contender in the different places that NASCAR visits. He earned his first win of what is now 83 races in the 1994 Coke 600. The following year, Jeff would win his first NASCAR Winston Cup Racing championship. But more was to come from this legacy and from the legacy of Dale Earnhardt.