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Wallace brothers swap racing stories at charity event
03/24/2006

By JEFF BOBO

BRISTOL, Tenn. - As Bristol Motor Speedway began to grow and expand throughout the 1990s, one of the biggest attractions that put people in the track's new grandstands was the fierce rivalry between Rusty Wallace and Dale Earnhardt.

That rivalry spawned a lot of classic stories, some of which Rusty and his little brother Kenny Wallace shared Thursday night at BMS during a charity event to benefit the National Storytelling Association in Jonesborough.

BMS hosted one of the most famous races of all time in 1995 when Earnhardt wrecked Terry Labonte as he crossed the finish line, and Labonte drove his crashed car into victory lane.

Rusty told a story Thursday about the beginning of that race, and the end of that race. He said Earnhardt felt threatened by the success of the young upstart Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt and Rusty were starting that race nose to tail, with Gordon on their outside.

"Dale Earnhardt used to hate Jeff Gordon," Rusty Wallace said. "He learned to like Jeff Gordon because they started doing business together - selling T-shirts - but he still had this thing that really burned him up for a long time because he was the man and then this kid comes along and starts beating him up. So we were getting ready for driver introductions, and he's got me back behind the stage. He said, ‘This kid's on the outside, you and me are on the inside, so let's just hook up, blow this cat off and hang him out to dry.'

"At Bristol, if you don't get on that bottom lane pretty quick you can get stuck on the top and go to the back. He said, ‘Look. This punk don't deserve this. You and I will hook up, and we'll drive off.' I said ‘OK, fine.'"

Six laps into the race, Earnhardt plowed into Rusty's back bumper and knocked him into the wall. Rusty said he drove the next 494 laps "mad as a hornet," and after the race he went looking for Earnhardt.

"(After the race) Earnhardt stops off of turn four, and the crowd's down there all high-fiving each other - the rednecks are all jumping up and down going ape sh-- because it's the biggest thing that happened in a long time," Rusty said. "I walked down to him, and somebody gave me a bottle of water because it was hot, and I just wanted to get to him and say, ‘Hey, what happened? We had a deal.' I said, ‘Hey Dale' and he kept waving at everybody like, ‘I'm the man, I'm the man.' This went on for what felt like forever, and I couldn't get his attention, so I took that bottle and I went ‘Boom!' and hit him right in the head.

"I couldn't have hit that shot again in a million years, and he turned around and boy, the match was on then."

Kenny started another Dale Earnhardt story which Rusty finished. In was the late 1980s, and Kenny was racing in the American Speed Association at St. Paul, Minn., on Labor Day.

The Sunday before Labor Day, the Cup series was at Darlington running the Southern 500. Kenny said he watched that race on TV with Rusty right on Bill Elliott's tail the entire race. Kenny said he just knew Rusty was going to win that race, but in the end Elliott prevailed in a close battle.

After that race, several drivers including Rusty, Bobby Allison, Harry Gant and Earnhardt got on a plane and flew to St. Paul to make an appearance at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds and attend the ASA race the next day, which was an important stock car race in the Midwest at the time.

"Earnhardt looked at me and looked at Rusty and said, ‘I told Rusty all he had to do was knock the sh-- out of Elliott and spin him out, and he'd have won the Southern 500 - fans would have forgiven him in about a month,'" Kenny said. "I went, ‘Oh my gosh. It's true.'"

Rusty had another story to tell about that same event. He said they were all sitting in the plane heading to St. Paul, and Earnhardt was saying, "I wouldn't have put up with that. I would have knocked him off the track and won that race."

Rusty said that after Earnhardt had said that, Bobby Allison leaned over and told him, "I respect you for racing that guy clean like you did. Don't listen to that idiot," and Allison waved his hand at Earnhardt as if to brush him off.

The Wallace brothers told a lot of stories Thursday evening, and most of them didn't involve Dale Earnhardt. Some of the biggest laughs came when Rusty told about the antics of Kenny as a little boy helping Rusty with his short-track career in the early years in Missouri.

One night they raced in Fort Smith, Ark., and loaded up three carloads of crewmen to drive the next day to St. Louis to get ready for another race. Kenny was about 8 years old.

They stopped in Springfield, Mo., for breakfast, and about 100 miles out of Springfield they were stopped by the police.

"The cop said, ‘Hey, you left somebody back there,'" Rusty said. "I said, ‘What are you talking about?' He said, ‘You left somebody named Kenny Wallace back at this restaurant.' I said, ‘No I didn't. He's in the car behind us.'"

Rusty and the officer looked in the car behind them, and they said Kenny was in the car in front. Kenny wasn't in the third car, either.

"Kenny went in to use the rest room, and they had the toilet paper roll with the springs on the side, and he kept pulling the paper, and it kept breaking off," Rusty said. "He said he pulled and pulled and pulled, and it broke and broke and broke, and the whole time this toilet paper is breaking off I'm in the truck and we're gone. We thought he was there."

Kenny walked from the restaurant to the highway and started walking home, but he was walking in the wrong direction.

"I was walking to Florida," Kenny said.

Fortunately the police were kind enough to drive Kenny 100 miles to where the police had stopped Rusty's team.

"He chewed my a-- out," Kenny said.

"I said, ‘Don't you ever go to the bathroom without telling me,'" Rusty said. "If I'd made it home Mom would have killed us."

Published: March 24, 2006
Contact this Times-News contributor- JEFF BOBO