The 1991 Daytona 500 is best remembered as a Morgan-McClure Motorsports introductory party. The Abingdon, Virginia-based team, which had only won once before, took the win with Ernie Irvan.
But while Irvan and the Kodak team were understandably excited, that wasn’t the story of that crisp February day.
There were a lot of unknowns leading up to the race, as adjustments to the rules had made pit stops in early 1991 different than they had been before.
At the time, there was no speed limit on pit lanes. Each and every one of them had the right to run down pit lane as if their pants were on fire to get to their pits as temporarily as possible.
Something like that could have disastrous consequences. The 1990 season saw two separate accidents on pit lane with caution. The worst of the two came in the season finale at Atlanta Motor Speedway, when Ricky Rudd spun and crashed into Bill Elliott’s team. killing rear tire changer Mike Rich.
After Rich’s death, big adjustments were expected for the 1991 Daytona 500. It is illegal to recklessly replace tires for any reason, even if a tire was punctured. However, everything else is fair game. CBS Sports’ Ned Jarrett explained the new regulations before the race began.
These new regulations are in addition to stricter things like blending line regulations. This surprised several drivers in the race.
A rules replacement here was permanent without delay. This was the first NASCAR Cup Series race with pit signs displayed on posts on the wall, replacing the status of team members in pit lane with the pit sign you might not forget if you watched Days. from Thunder. Before the replacements, this user was perhaps the most vulnerable member of the pit crew, as cars at Daytona International Speedway passed them at a hundred mph while they stood there, unprotected.
Have the new regulations affected the race? Yes, substantially.
Drivers who couldn’t change their tires to yellow meant they had to brake just for fuel or not brake at all on yellow and make all their brakes green. Drivers involved in minor incidents with minimal damage to the steel sheet were excluded from the hunt. because they won a one-lap penalty for turning their tires yellow or because they punctured tires while trying to wait until they could legally replace them. Or both.
Hut Stricklin, who ran well at the start, realized this after a spin on lap 67. He went from the lead to five laps less. Under existing rules, he would still have had to upgrade his windshield (half of which exploded from the start). car in a spin), but he may have stayed on the lead lap or almost.
After the sixth yellow flag of the race, 103 laps were made under the green. With a combination of multiple pit stops and multiple methods in play, several groups were not comfortable with 4 tyres. Had he finished the race (he crashed on lap 198 with Dale Earnhardt and Davey Allison), Kyle Petty would have run the 500 on the same left-side tires.
Had the lap 184 crash involving Richard Petty and Robby Gordon occurred down the stretch, the race would have come down to a war between Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip and Kyle Petty as Irvan would have had to refuel late. The yellow flag saved him.
Earnhardt was considered the favorite to enter the race. He had won the Busch Clash, won in his Gatorade Twin 125 and scored the three hundred points on the Goody the day before. It didn’t take long for him to take the lead, either.
Things went wrong in the second round. In one of the highlights of his racing career, Earnhardt cleared a seagull with his car on the backstretch. The bird hit the Chevrolet Goodwrench directly in the oil cooler inlet, causing overheating problems. As a result, Earnhardt spent much of the early part of the race looking to fix that.
A penalty at the start of the 103-lap race for violating the mix line ruined his day. With 250 miles directly under the green, he did his best to catch up, but since almost everyone was running alone, there wasn’t much. Maybe it just does. He eventually managed to finish in the top five on his new tyres, but was 10 seconds off the lead.
Gordon-Petty’s yellow flag opened the race and put 12 cars in contention. That figure almost immediately dropped to single digits when Rusty Wallace crashed shortly after the reboot and took four other people with him, including Waltrip.
Irvan took the lead for good on the final restart over Earnhardt. As Earnhardt fought a handling issue, Allison tried to take second away. All of a sudden, Earnhardt broke loose exiting turn 2 on lap 198 and took Allison with him. With no overtime provisions, the race ended under caution, giving Irvan the win.
The 1991 Daytona 500 was likely the biggest victory in Irvan’s career, but he more or less fell into it, despite having a fast car. He chose an alternate pit strategy as compared to Kyle Petty that allowed him to take the lead when Petty gave up a 19-second lead to make his final stop with 31 laps to go. The caution on lap 185 kept him up front and put him on the same strategy since everyone else pitted there as well.
Crashes, mechanical messes and a pit strategy resulted in a very sensible five that was quite a bit for the time. Irvan beat Sterling Marlin, who matched his career-best result at the time. Joe Ruttman, returning to the Cup full-time for the first time. Rick Mast finished fourth, while Earnhardt drove his broken-down Chevrolet to fifth. They were the only drivers to finish on the first lap.
Even with a disappointing finish, the 1991 Daytona 500 ushered in a new era of restrictive plate racing in NASCAR. Yes, Earnhardt remained a man for the rest of his life. However, it ended up being Morgan-McClure’s introductory party. .
After the Daytona 500, Morgan-McClure has become one of the most powerful groups at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway. Irvan won four races with a restrictive plate in the No. He has been a factor, though his competitive habit led to several accidents, such as the Big One at the 1991 Winston 500 at Talladega.
After Irvan’s departure to join Robert Yates Racing, the team didn’t miss a beat. They hired Marlin and won in their debut with him at the 1994 Daytona 500, then repeated the following year. The cars were perfect and the engines and exhaust systems may have been better.
Morgan-McClure asked Runt Pittman to build engines at that time. He was famous for locating the strength in the limited engines that kept Irvan and Marlin on the hunt. In 1995, Pittman and the rest of the team developed the X-Pipe exhaust. This caused Marlin’s car to let out a high-pitched moan when no one else did. This design has temporarily become popular for cars with restriction plates, but it is no longer used. In 24 races with restraining plates between 1991 and 1996, Morgan-McClure motorsports won nine, five at Daytona and four at Talladega.
NASCAR used the pit rules from Daytona for the first five races of the year. Bristol Motor Speedway saw teams with odd starting positions allowed to pit first under yellow and change tires, then the even cars on the second lap. Spinning out or contact on pit road was punishable by a five-lap penalty. A week later at North Wilkesboro Speedway, the odd-even rules were ditched in favor of a setup similar to 1990 with the drivers responsible for safe driving in the pits and strict enforcement of drivers pitting within their pit boxes.
Eventually, speed limits were instituted on pit lanes starting with the Winston 500 at Talladega, the ninth race of the year. These speed limits have been in effect ever since. To acclimate drivers to speed, the driver’s car would carry the box down pit lane to race for the rest of the season at the speed limit. This practice disappeared at the end of the season, but returned in 2020 when NASCAR held races without training.
Phil Allaway serves 3 main roles in Frontstretch. Es the administrator of the site’s FREE email newsletter, which runs Monday through Friday and on weekends. He ensures the honesty of TV stations with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and is the site’s sports car racing host. editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.