[Dylan]

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Excerpt: Tim Richmond; 22 Years Later and Still Not Forgotten
Published on August 12, 2011 by Sal Sigala Jr.

Every 10-30 years, a young driver comes along who shakes up the NASCAR world, and more time than naught, it’s usually these types of drivers that come into the sport with some kind of a racing background.

Richmond had a “take no prisoners” type of driving style which showed in the way he handled the road courses.

During his eight years as a Winston Cup driver which didn’t start until the age of 21, Richmond visited victory lane 13 times, along with 78 top-10 finishes in the 185 starts hr made in the series. Richmond collected a career-high seven wins in 1986 while driving the No. 25 Folgers-sponsored Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Monte Carlo, to go along with his 14 careers poles, and his very first victory coming on a road course in Riverside, California.

The 1986 season would be his best year driving in the Winston Cup series, finishing third in points behind eventual cup winner Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Richmond’s life was loosely portrayed in the movie Days of Thunder by the character of Cole Trickle, and aside from stock cars he also competed in open wheel racing finishing ninth in the 1980 Indianapolis 500.

NASCAR to this day has not apologized for the brash and disrespectful way that Richmond was treated. In 1990, The New York Times reported that Dr. Forest Tennant, who was at that time the National Football League’s drug adviser, “falsified drug tests” that ultimately helped shorten Richmond’s NASCAR career.

Washington television station WJLA-TV, in early 1990, reported the sealed court documents and interviews showed Tennant and NASCAR, “allegedly used false drug-test results in 1988 to bar Richmond from racing.”

Richmond was one of their own, even though he didn’t fit the mold that NASCAR wants all of their drivers to follow, even though he was still a human being, breathing the same air as them, and also bringing money into their prestigious racing empire. Richmond would be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2002, an award that not even the France family could ever take from him.

NASCAR would put the final nail in his coffin by only writing one line about him, and not including a single picture of him anywhere in the annals of NASCAR history. For those who chose to support and follow his career…Tim Richmond has been dearly missed, maybe not so much by NASCAR, but by the fans and drivers who stood next to him through thick and thin.

22 years ago we lost one of our own, but even today he is still in the hearts and minds of those who remember the impact he made to the sport, both on and off the track.

URL: http://www.speedwaymedia.com/?p=15475