|| *Comments on the 1994 DieHard 500:* View the most recent comment <#41> | Post a comment <#post> Tweet 1. HomeDepot20TS posted: 04.24.2005 - 8:59 pm Rate this comment: (0) (6) I was all but cursing Ernie Irvan (I turned 8 that year so those were big words for me) because he didn't work with Bill Elliott to get around Spencer. 2. Mr. Etc posted: 07.14.2005 - 8:23 am Rate this comment: (2) (0) Well, what do you expect...Elliott would have dumped him because Elliott and Spencer were teammates, so Ernie had to settle for third (which sucked ass because he should have easily won that race) 3. larry posted: 09.14.2005 - 10:42 pm Rate this comment: (0) (3) hey Mr ETC Jimmy one that race and he earned it if Elliot dumped Jimmy he would of been punched in the mouth 4. je24go posted: 12.11.2005 - 7:16 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Punched in the mouth for not drafting with him? Stupid reason to get sp upset to punch someone, I'd say... 5. HomeDepot20TS posted: 02.24.2006 - 4:20 pm Rate this comment: (2) (3) Yeah but that'd figure with Spencer. He's okay as a TV commentator but as a driver, he's the biggest (no pun intended) proof to the point so far that you can stick any brainless sack of monkey shit in a car. And he isn't a pimple on Bill Elliott's ass either. 6. Thomas posted: 03.06.2006 - 9:23 am Rate this comment: (0) (2) HomeDepot20TS, you are a genius!!!!!! 7. HomeDepot20TS posted: 03.26.2006 - 2:21 pm Rate this comment: (0) (3) Thank you. 8. Miller4Prez6 posted: 04.18.2006 - 8:01 pm Rate this comment: (3) (3) This will be Jimmy Spencer's last Cup win, he is a never was 9. Steve posted: 05.22.2006 - 5:27 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) I just thought I'd mention that this was Jimmy's first Winston Cup front row start. He would later win his first pole position at North Wilkesboro in October. 10. Fenway posted: 10.08.2006 - 6:07 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) I think Spencer got a fairly bad reputation for some of his antics later in his career (Jimmy Spencer never forgets and his feud with Kurt Busch), but for most of the mid-'90's he was a fairly solid competitor. 11. Anonymous posted: 11.29.2006 - 9:10 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Isn't it funny that an annoying poster can make an average driver one of the most hated on the site? 12. Mr. Etc posted: 11.30.2006 - 7:24 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) You misunderstood my words, Larry. I meant Elliott would have dumped Irvan since Elliott and Spencer were teammates at the time, if Irvan had worked with Elliott to get around Spencer. 13. BP4EVER posted: 02.05.2007 - 12:24 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Loy Allen led some laps but blew up shortly after. 14. myself posted: 02.16.2007 - 8:04 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) My most vivid memory of this race occurred when Elliott first took the lead. Ole' boy hadn't won a race since 92', & when he took the lead, I swear before goodness, that I COULD NOT hear the CBS announcers over the roar of the crowd!!!! It was the loudest I'd ever heard a crowd over a TV set! 15. David posted: 06.08.2007 - 8:31 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) I believe this was the last 1-2 finish for junior johnsons team. 16. FHgrad99 posted: 08.19.2007 - 5:26 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) This wasn't Jimmy Spencer's first front row start in cup. He qualified 2nd for the May, 1993 race at Talladega. 17. JarrettFan44 posted: 08.22.2007 - 5:14 am Rate this comment: (1) (0) Geoff Bodine's 1994 DNF count number 9 18. Anonymous posted: 09.03.2007 - 8:20 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) 10th DNF for John Andretti 3rd DNF for Greg Sacks 19. Anonymous posted: 09.09.2007 - 7:14 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Earnhardt qualified on the pole and was looking like he would sweep the Talladega races in '94, but he blew up early on. 20. RaceFanX posted: 11.29.2007 - 8:12 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Why did Tim Steele quit? They run out of tires. This was also the last Cup start for the ARCA legend. He'd attempt the Brickyard in 97 and was on the verge of a Cup deal in the fall of that year before a vicious wreck testing at Atlanta. 21. Freshgeek posted: 06.10.2008 - 1:28 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Can someone confirm the MOV for this race? I saw one clip from this race that was said to be the finish and Spencer beat him by a good 10 car lengths. 22. Clayton posted: 07.01.2008 - 10:28 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Here's your Margin of victory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1e3MpfVPGY&feature=related 23. Thomas posted: 09.01.2008 - 2:47 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) The best command I've ever heard was for this race. Former astronaut Buzz Aldren, "Drivers, energize your groundcraft." You can bet none of the drivers involved have ever forgotten that command. 24. Jeff Wagoner posted: 03.16.2009 - 2:14 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Jeff Purvis and Brad Teague are both listed as starting 40th. Not sure who was where,it's been awhile since I've watched this race. 25. webmaster posted: 03.16.2009 - 3:17 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Purvis apparently started 30th; the error has been fixed - thanks! 26. murb posted: 04.14.2013 - 10:06 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) According to his comments during a 2001 rain delay (at Michigan I think), Wally Dallenbach wore his wife's underwear in this race. He said it was a race at Talladega where he finished 8th, so this must be it, lol 27. gearhead15 posted: 05.06.2013 - 8:53 pm Rate this comment: (1) (1) murb, Wally's wife Robin is still the best stock car racer in that household. Robin was a contemporary of Mark Martin and won lots of short track races before moving over to the IMSA Kelly Challenge ranks. She even made a couple of Cup starts for JD Stacy in the early '80s. 28. wrank fakefield posted: 05.30.2014 - 7:17 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) This race was run on the 25th anniversary of the moon-landing. That's why Aldren was the grand marshall. There was a cool piece during the CBS broadcast asking drivers where they were when the moon-landing happened, and Rusty Wallace talked about watching it with Ken Schrader on the Schrader's couch after coming home from a race track. ANd Dallenbach said he didn't believe the moon-landing actually happened, just to bookend the wife's underwear story in the tales of Wally Dallenbach weirdness. 29. 23andJoe posted: 06.19.2014 - 11:06 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) #44 crew chief: Tony Gibson 30. STP posted: 12.19.2016 - 9:38 pm Rate this comment: (0) (1) A Tony Stewart fan bitching about Jimmy Spencer's attitude. That's hilarious. 31. Jimmie Jameson posted: 01.25.2017 - 5:19 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) To the back: #42 Kyle Petty (missed driver's meeting) 32. Anthony posted: 04.16.2018 - 9:14 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Most recent victory for McDonald's in NASCAR. If Kyle Larson wins today, it will be the first time in a long time that McDonald's goes back to victory lane in nearly 24 years!! 33. Greg9ChaseFan posted: 06.05.2018 - 9:13 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Just one of many Rusty Wallace blown motors in 1994 that cost him yet another title. Rusty just couldn't hold onto motors in his career. 34. @Statscrash posted: 11.15.2018 - 7:27 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Most recent points race, Bill Elliott won a qualifier at Daytona in 2000 driving his McDonalds car. 35. John 1994 posted: 12.11.2018 - 10:15 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) From Tom Jensen's "An Inside Look At The Bad Things Winston Cup Racers Do In Pursuit Of Speed" "More importantly, "He knows how to catch these guys, and if they do enough, he'll get 'em," Baker said. At the 1993 Daytona 500, Nelson did just that, when virtually every car entered failed inspection. Competitors soon got the message that there was a new sheriff in town. It wasn't long, though, before Nelson saw how complex life was on the other side of the badge. Or how tough the challenge to his rules could be. Such was the case in 1994, when NASCAR and Nelson had yet another run in with Junior Johnson. At the time, Johnson's driver was an energetic, inexperienced, and occasionally reckless youngster named Jimmy Spencer, who was nicknamed "Mr. Excitement" for his wild, aggressive driving. But Spencer enjoyed little success with Johnson's team, and his sponsor, McDonald's, was rumored to be leaving the sport. NASCAR desperately wanted to avoid McDonald's departure. To lose a big-name like McDonald's would be bad for business, and many believed NASCAR would do almost anything to keep the fast-food giant in the sport. Out of nowhere, Spencer suddenly won back-to-back races at Daytona and Talladega in mid-1994, two restrictor-plate races where a resourceful man like Johnson could work his magic. Though never proven, the prevalent rumor at the time was that Johnson's Ford carried an illegal intake manifold, much like the one Hoss Ellington had come up with a decade earlier, which allowed the car to make extra horsepower. The theory was that NASCAR knew the car was illegal but looked the other way, hoping a couple of victories would convince McDonald's to stay in the sport. In the end, McDonald's stayed as both a car sponsor and, more importantly, an "official status" sponsor, which means the hamburger chain paid NASCAR a seven-figure annual sum to be able to call itself "the official fast-food of NASCAR." Cheating, by Tom Jensen The conspiracy theorists argued that their point was proven the following February at Daytona. The manifold that was on Spencer's car in 1994 when it won the only two races of his career was declared illegal at the 1995 Daytona 500, when car owner Johnson was fined $45,000 and his crew chief Mike Beam was hit with a $10,000 penalty for not having the inset portion of the intake manifold welded on. Incensed by what he perceived as the ever-increasing influence of politics and corporate interests in the sport, as well as the ever-closer scrutiny cars were receiving in inspection, Johnson would sell his team at the end of 1995 and retire to his farm in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Other racers were equally incensed that the team was able to get through inspection in 1994 with the same manifold that was declared illegal in 1995. "They (NASCAR) let him win two races for McDonald's," said John Bickford, the stepfather of four-time Winston Cup Champion Jeff Gordon and the man who managed Gordon's career until mid-1995. "There was a perception that NASCAR overlooked the Junior Johnson team and allowed McDonald's to win two races so they stayed in the sport and they maintained an official status. Jimmy Spencer won his two races, and if you go back and look at the videotape, he just hammered them. It wasn't like it was his slick ability to handle the air, as Dale Earnhardt was known for or Bill Elliott or now Jeff Gordon, who are some of the best drafters and users of air in the industry. But it was Jimmy Spencer, Mr. Excitement's style to motor by everybody. Yeah, right. He had an extra 30 horsepower on everybody. He had a slider manifold." A slider manifold is something of a catch-all nickname that refers to several types of illegal, movable devices designed to boost horsepower by improving airflow, usually in a restrictor-plate motor. These include restrictor plates with machined center sections that slide back and forth via a driver-controlled cable to allow extra air into the motor, carburetor spacers that are machined to slide back and forth in their entirety on the mounting studs (again, these are driver controlled), and movable internal plenums hidden deep inside the base of the intake manifold. NASCAR has always maintained that Johnson's car was legal when it won the two races and that it made absolutely no concessions or did anything wrong to encourage McDonald's to remain in the sport. Johnson and Spencer are a little more forthcoming. "I probably only got caught legally one time. That was at Daytona in 1995," Johnson said. "We got caught with a manifold that we knew NASCAR had let scoot through on another car (Spencer's, the year before). We got caught at Daytona with it. I told the crew to put the regular manifold on the car regardless of how it ran, and they got behind and didn't take it off and went through inspection and they (NASCAR) caught them." "When I came to drive for Junior, he said, 'You're going to win on the speedways because I'm going to build you a car,'" Spencer said. "We had an opportunity to win all four superspeedway races that year, and it was because of the car Junior built. He knew how to make these cars go fast and how to get the edge and things like that. Junior was one of the best at it there ever was. He was hard work. Junior would try to figure out ways of winning races. To say that he won a lot of races cheating, no. He'd work hard trying to make the most horsepower he could make. He'd work hard trying to make a car body the best it could be, at Daytona or wherever we went." 36. Scott B posted: 12.12.2018 - 11:37 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) "They (NASCAR) let him win two races for McDonald's," said John Bickford, the stepfather of four-time Winston Cup Champion Jeff Gordon and the man who managed Gordon's career until mid-1995. Am I the only one who thinks this is hilarious considering the reputation the #24 team had? Take a seat, Mr. Bickford. 37. Bryan posted: 07.24.2019 - 9:01 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Today marks 25 years ago that jimmy spencer got his 2nd cup win july 24th 1994 at Talladega AL usa #27 McDonalds Ford july 24th 1994 ----- july 24th 2019 == 25 years ago way to go Jimmy... only 1 year spent in the car 1994 was a great year and now july 2019 === 50 years ago the 1st man was on the moon .... it was great to see buzz at the race 25 years ago too .... Make PA Proud Jimmy PA rules !!!! Well GOD BLESS THE USA 38. Anonymous posted: 07.24.2019 - 10:00 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) John Bickford was right though 39. SweetRich posted: 02.16.2020 - 5:01 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) The Commentators For The Race Were Ken Squier, Ned Jarrett And Richard Petty. The Pit Road Reporters Were Mike Joy, Dick Berggren And David Hobbs. 40. Spen posted: 02.23.2021 - 2:08 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) This was the tenth time in 1994 that Ernie Irvan led the most laps. The modern era record for that in a season is 14, set by Bobby Allison's 1972 and Cale Yarborough's 1976. If Ernie hadn't been hurt, he could very well have set a record there. 41. RyanC2888 posted: 04.16.2021 - 11:57 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Final time Ernie Irvan would lead the Winston Cup points standings. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Post a comment:* Your comment may not appear immediately - all comments must be approved by the moderator. Name: Comment: