Davey Allison’s life in racing ended in a helicopter crash that initially appeared to be a tragic pilot error. But the legal battle that followed suggested his family believed something else was behind the fatal accident. Born David Carl Allison on February 25, 1961, in Hollywood, Florida, he was the eldest of four children of NASCAR legend Bobby Allison and his wife Judy. Growing up in Hueytown, Alabama, Davey joined forces with his uncle Donnie, along with racers Red Farmer and Neil Bonnett, forming one of NASCAR’s most beloved teams, known as “Alabama Gang.
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Davey’s first real race came in 1979 at Birmingham International Speedway, where he won in just his sixth start. By 1983, he moved to the ARCA series, announcing himself with two victories at Talladega Superspeedway. In 1984, he was named ARCA’s top rookie and married his first wife, Deborah. He dominated the 1985 ARCA season with eight wins, four of them at Talladega alone, before making his Winston Cup debut in the 1985 Talladega 500, finishing a strong tenth.
In qualifying for the 1987 Daytona 500, Allison made history. Behind the wheel of his legendary No. 28 Thunderbird, he became the first NASCAR rookie to start from the front row at that iconic event. But what should have been one of his happiest days nearly became his worst nightmare.
On May 3, 1987, during the Winston 500 at Talladega, Davey watched in horror as his father’s car hit debris, blew a tire, and launched into the air toward the catch fence. Davey, who was leading the race, saw the terrifying scene in his rearview mirror. Bobby Allison miraculously survived, and NASCAR officials decided to resume the race. As darkness fell, Allison surged past Dale Earnhardt to take the lead just as officials ended the race, securing his first Winston Cup victory.
Bill Elliott admitted afterward, “I don’t feel like I could have beaten Davey. ”
The 1988 Daytona 500 produced one of NASCAR’s most unforgettable moments. Fifty-year-old Bobby Allison beat his son Davey to the finish line, making them the only father-son duo to finish first and second in the Great American Race. Davey laughed afterward, saying he had dreamed of racing to the wire with his father, “The only difference is I wanted him to finish second.
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By October 1988, Allison’s season and marriage were deteriorating. Team ownership changes and a turbulent season put enormous strain on his personal life. He and Deborah divorced quickly during the offseason, and he finished the season eighth. Allison began 1989 with the newly formed Robert Yates Racing team, debuting at the Daytona 500.
Early in the race, a crash with Geoff Bodine sent Allison’s car flipping across the sand barrier. Afterward, the two drivers reportedly exchanged words in what witnesses described as a brief scuffle. Amid the turmoil, Allison found happiness with a new love, a woman named Liz from South Carolina, whom he met in 1988. They married during the 1989 season, and their daughter Krista Marie arrived shortly after.
At Bristol in 1990, after a weak qualifying run sent Allison’s team to the back of the garage, crew chief Robert Yates made a bold late-race call. Allison held off Mark Martin to win by just eight inches, one of the narrowest victories in NASCAR history. Yet he remained inches away from parking his car forever. Problems with the team deepened at Dover, where Allison’s car proved so difficult to handle that he called on fellow Alabama driver Hut Strickland for help.
Tensions escalated, and Allison issued an unusual public threat: he would leave the team entirely if something didn’t change. After Allison finished last at Atlanta, Yates departed in early 1991, replaced by Larry McReynolds. The change was immediate, with McReynolds becoming what close team members called “the third leg of the triangle. ”
At the 1991 Daytona 500, Allison won the pole and led into the late stages.
Victory seemed only laps away. Then fate intervened. Dale Earnhardt spun in the final laps, turning the track ahead into a maze of debris Allison couldn’t avoid. With a heavily damaged car, he limped home fifteenth.
His time at Daytona was coming, but not yet. He managed a hard-fought top-ten at Watkins Glen, then won back-to-back races at Rockingham and Phoenix. That same season, he and Liz welcomed their second child, a son named Robert Gray. For the first time, things were improving.
On February 16, 1992, fourteen cars crashed in a massive wreck on lap 92, triggered by Bill Elliott, Sterling Marlin, and Ernie Irvan. Using every ounce of skill, Allison threaded through the debris, led 127 laps, and crossed the finish line first, joining his father in an exclusive club of Daytona 500 champions. But he couldn’t avoid every crash. A brutal wreck at the Food City 500 at Bristol left Allison with a bruised shoulder and two broken ribs.
Most drivers would have skipped the next event, but not the newly crowned Daytona 500 champion. The following weekend at North Wilkesboro, Allison beat Rusty Wallace and Geoff Bodine to take the checkered flag despite his broken ribs. At Martinsville, he crashed again, reinjuring his ribs and adding a bruised lung to his medical record, yet he kept racing. He went to Talladega and won the Winston 500, his third career victory at that track, driving the same car that had brought him Daytona glory.
At the Winston All-Star race in May 1992 at Charlotte, promoted as the first-ever night race at a superspeedway, Allison surged to the lead on the final lap and raced across the finish line for a stunning victory. Then disaster struck. Moments after securing the win, Kyle Petty’s car hit Allison’s, slamming it into the outside wall amid a shower of sparks. It would be the worst crash of his life.
The impact rendered Allison unconscious. His condition was so severe he had to be airlifted to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed a concussion, a bruised lung, and leg injuries. His beloved car, nicknamed 007, was reduced to wreckage, beyond repair.
When Allison regained consciousness, he described a terrifying experience. He said he rose above the wreckage, looked down at his shattered car, and watched emergency crews moving below. He described being drawn toward a bright light before darkness overtook him, then waking up in a hospital bed. But only one thing mattered to him.
When he opened his eyes, crew chief Larry McReynolds was at his side. Allison’s first words were, “Did we win? ” McReynolds smiled and answered, “Yes, we won. ”
The experience shook Allison deeply, and he vowed to put his faith and family above everything else.
NASCAR fans, however, were not so quick to forgive. After the Charlotte crash, Kyle Petty feared for his own life. Petty later recalled angry fans hurling insults and objects at him as he walked through the grandstands to the press box. Yet when Petty called Allison in the hospital that Monday, Allison spoke no harsh words.
Petty said, “Davey and I were competitors, but there was never any animosity between us. ”
Tim Brewer, crew chief for Bill Elliott’s team, stepped forward without hesitation and offered Allison a backup car, telling him to keep it as long as he needed. Throughout June, Allison and his team carried it everywhere as a precaution. Allison repaid the kindness with a dominant performance.
Just one week after leaving the hospital, he finished fourth in the Coca-Cola 600. Then he took the pole at Michigan and led 158 of 200 laps to win. By midseason, he led Bill Elliott by forty-six points and Alan Kulwicki by 134, dominating the standings since the first race. Then disaster struck again.
On July 19, 1992, at Pocono, Allison had led 115 laps and was working his way back to the front when Darrell Waltrip’s car clipped his left rear coming out of turn two. Allison’s car shot toward the infield grass, flew into the air, and flipped eleven times before slamming into a guardrail. No one in the stands expected him to survive. The crash was so horrifying that everyone feared the worst.
Over the radio, Mark Martin told his team to prepare a body bag because it seemed impossible Allison had survived. Waltrip, who won the race forty-nine laps later, said he felt sick looking at the wreckage. Miraculously, Allison survived, but he left Pocono with a severe concussion, a broken right arm, a broken wrist, and a shattered collarbone. His determination to race remained intact.
Despite his injuries, Allison showed up the following week at Talladega. When he appeared wearing dark sunglasses, a reporter had to ask why. Allison was hiding two badly bruised eyes and told the reporter, “You can see it, but it’s an ugly sight. ” Fitted with a special brace and adhesive straps, Allison prepared to race.
Then came news far worse than any crash. On August 13, 1992, his younger brother Clifford lost control of his car during a Busch Series practice session at Michigan. His car hit the concrete wall driver’s side first between turns three and four. Clifford survived the initial impact but died on the way to the hospital at just twenty-seven years old.
Instead of slowing down, Allison sped up. Only three days after his brother’s deadly crash, Allison prepared to race at Michigan, the same track. Unshaken, he drove to a fifth-place finish in the Champion Spark Plug 400, then rushed home to Hueytown to bury his brother. How he found the will to continue was something only Allison could answer.
With the Winston Million bonus within reach at the Mountain Dew Southern 500 in late 1992, Allison led 72 laps and seemed poised to compete for the win. But rain fell with 69 laps remaining, ending the race early and freezing the field. Darrell Waltrip, who had gambled by skipping his final pit stop, sat in the lead when officials called the race. Allison’s chance at the bonus evaporated, and his rival began to gloat.
Waltrip was ruthless. Lying beside his car under a colorful umbrella, he joked that the rain showers were worth a million dollars to him. Allison’s eyes fixed on the same dark sky as he bitterly remarked he could see blue sky to the west. He hoped the weather would improve but feared the worst.
This wasn’t the first time Waltrip had gotten the better of Allison. The tension between them ran through the entire Allison family. Waltrip had displaced Donnie Allison from his ride back in 1975, and his long-running feud with Bobby Allison, Davey’s father, was legendary. Bobby once lifted his foot off the throttle mid-race to force Waltrip into the wall after repeated contact.
As the elder Allison put it, “We were friends, but he didn’t want to be. ”
The 1992 Hooters 500 at Atlanta carried historic weight. It was Richard Petty’s farewell race, Jeff Gordon’s debut, and the closest championship fight in NASCAR history. Allison ran steadily in the top five, needing only to hold his position to clinch the title.
But a spin by Ernie Irvan’s Chevrolet on lap 286 left Allison nowhere to go. A full season of heartbreak was summed up in one unavoidable collision. Thanks to Allison’s crash, Alan Kulwicki won the 1992 NASCAR Cup Series championship. Shortly afterward, Allison saw the bigger picture.
Kulwicki died tragically the following year in a plane crash. Allison confided to a close friend that he understood why he hadn’t won that championship, hinting that fate had intended the title for Kulwicki before his death. Allison’s own end was eerily similar and frighteningly close. He began the 1993 season slowly, finishing 28th at Daytona and 16th at Rockingham.
The following week, he sped up with a win at Richmond. It was his nineteenth and final Winston Cup victory. The championship seemed distant but possible. He just had to avoid a crash on and off the track.
On July 12, 1993, Allison sat behind the controls of something entirely different. He climbed into his recently purchased Hughes 369HS helicopter, heading to Talladega Superspeedway. His original passenger, Hut Strickland, had fallen ill, so Allison stopped to pick up his old friend Red Farmer instead. It was meant to be a simple flight to watch his friends Neil Bonnett and his son turn some laps.
But fate had other plans. Allison was a professional on the track but an amateur in the air at best. When he attempted to land in a fenced parking lot at Talladega, disaster struck. The helicopter’s nose suddenly rose and slammed into the ground.
Investigators later confirmed Allison had logged only 54 hours of helicopter flight time, 45 of them in a smaller helicopter. He had fewer than three hours of experience in the Hughes 369HS he was flying that day. Neil Bonnett rushed to the crash site to help. He managed to pull Red Farmer from the wreckage, but extracting Allison was a different story.
The NASCAR star was unresponsive, and it took paramedics arriving before rescuers could free him. He remained unconscious, clinging to life. Allison never regained consciousness after the helicopter crash. Surgery to relieve pressure on his brain failed, and there seemed little hope anything else would succeed.
The following morning, July 13, 1993, a neurosurgeon at Carraway Methodist Medical Center in Birmingham delivered the worst news. Davey Allison was gone. He was just 32 years old. The National Transportation Safety Board’s report, released in March 1995, placed full blame on Allison’s inexperience.
Investigators cited his erroneous decision to land downwind in a confined area surrounded by tall obstacles. They said Allison failed to account for the tailwind. No evidence of mechanical failure was found. The Allison family saw it differently.
In January 1994, Allison’s estate filed a $25 million lawsuit against McDonnell Douglas, the helicopter manufacturer, alleging a manufacturing defect. A metallurgy expert testifying for the family claimed the magnesium assembly socket contained air bubbles since leaving the factory. The judge ultimately ruled against the estate, noting Allison had removed other safety features. However, McDonnell Douglas reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount in 1996 without admitting fault.
No amount of money could compensate for what NASCAR fans had lost. Mario Andretti, Roger Penske, Mark Martin, Darrell Waltrip, Bill Elliott, and Rusty Wallace were among thousands who gathered to pay their final respects. Four thousand more people lined up to view Allison’s closed wooden casket at his funeral in Bessemer, Alabama, where the Reverend Lewis Gardino told those assembled, “Davey has beaten us to heaven. What a great race to win.
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Even from the grave, Allison kept setting records. He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1998, the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2019, and the American Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2021. His widow Liz perhaps best captured his lasting impact: “He had a way of connecting with people, and fans felt they were truly part of Davey, part of his team.
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