Alan Kulwicki

They called it the Polish Victory Lap. After winning a race, Alan Kulwicki would drive his car around the track in the wrong direction, waving to the fans who had embraced this unlikely champion from Greenfield, Wisconsin. It was unconventional, just like everything else about the man who proved that an independent owner-driver could still conquer the Cup Series. Kulwicki won the 1992 championship by the slimmest margin in NASCAR history at that time -- just 10 points over Bill Elliott -- doing it his way, with his own team, his own resources, and a stubborn refusal to sell out to a bigger operation. He had five career wins and 24 poles across 207 starts, and his engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee made him one of the most analytically minded drivers the sport had ever seen. He arrived in Charlotte in 1985 with a racing car on a trailer and little else, an outsider who did not fit the Southern mold of a NASCAR star. But Kulwicki earned the respect of the garage through sheer competence and an obsessive attention to detail that wrung every tenth of a second out of equipment that bigger teams would have discarded. On April 1, 1993, just months after claiming his championship, Kulwicki died in a plane crash en route to Bristol Motor Speedway. He was 38 years old. The sport lost one of its most original minds, a champion whose legacy extends far beyond the single season that crowned him. Alan Kulwicki proved that in NASCAR, heart and brains could still beat money.

Written by Richard R. Glover, NASCAR Reference