Circle of Triumph: The Bobby Allison Story

This biography is a much more in depth biography of Bobby's personal & racing life, up until his younger son, Clifford's fatal accident. There is a small black & white picture section. Combine this book with his later book "Bobby Allison:A Racer's Racer" which covers the rest of his career, and has many color pictures & a CD, and you will have a better understanding of Bobby's career,including his missing win. Bobby claims an 85 career total. NASCAR, with their inconsistent rules claims 84. I vote for Bobby's version.

This man had an uphill climb right from the get-go,and it seems that EVERYTIME he got almost to the top, SOMETHING or SOMEONE would chop him off at the knees.Then he would start all over again. The WORST thing a father can do is bury a child... HE did 2, plus a couple of close friends along the way AND if that ain't enough.. his wife leaves him! HE starts climbing again. GET the book!

No NASCAR driver showed greater grit and determination than Robert Arther Allison. Born in Miami in a large family, Bobby Allison learned competitiveness right away. He started racing in Hialeah, Florida under an alias, and his mother's first sight of his racing came when he tumbled down the frontstretch right in front of her.Ben White, of Winston Cup Scene, authors this overdue look back at a stock car career filled with triumph - and ultimately destroyed. He includes voluminous quotes from Bobby Allison on the entirety of his career.Allison, his new wife Judy, and their year-old son David Carl moved from Miami to Hueytown, Alabama in 1962 to race on that state's rich short track circuit. Bobby was soon joined by younger brother Donnie, and the two built a race shop that soon became famous throughout the sport. It was in Alabama that Bobby struck up a friendship with Charles "Red" Farmer, perhaps the state's greatest short tracker, and a future winner of Daytona's Permatex 300 for superspeedway Late Model Sportsman cars. Bobby and Donnie would also take under their wing a happy-go-lucky pipe fitter who competed against them, named Neil Bonnett.Bobby Allison competed in NASCAR's Modified Tour and finished high in points several times, but his goal was the Grand National Series. He began competing there almost immediately with his own equipment, and in 1966 at Oxford, Maine, he drove a well-worn Chevrolet to his first Grand National victory. He won several more times that year and early in 1967, but then came the first big break. Holman-Moody was the primary raceshop for Ford's Grand National efforts, and with Richard Petty driving his Plymouth to 27 wins that year, Ford went berserk looking for a driver who could stop him. Fred Lorenzen recommended Bobby Allison, and at the tail end of the 1967 season, Allison won at Rockingham and at Ashville-Weavervile, NC. The win at Ashville came after a heated car-banging duel with Petty - but the first of such showdowns.By 1969 Allison had left Holman-Moody and joined up with Mario Rossi of Dodge. Campaigning Rossi's #22 Dodges and those fielded out of his own Hueytown shop, Bobby ran for the Grand National title, but finished a frustrating second to Bobby Isaac in 1970.Along the way, Bobby had acquired sponsorship from Coca-Cola, and it proved vital over the next two seasons. The withdrawal of the factories from NASCAR injured the sport greatly, even though in 1971 Winston cigarettes came on board with a series sponsorship package that would eventually overcome the recession caused by the factory withdrawal. Without the factories, Allison left the defunct Rossi team and was very hard pressed to campaign his own cars. Finally, in May of that year, Ralph Moody of Holman-Moody came calling again, and Bobby took his Coke sponsorship into what would prove to be one of the strongest rides he'd ever had. Bobby rocketed to nine wins in the Holman-Moody Mercury