1992 Champion Spark Plug 400
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Race 19 of 29 in the 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season | |||
Michigan International Speedway grandstands; picture taken in the 1990s
|
|||
| Date | August 16, 1992 | ||
| Official name | Champion Spark Plug 400 | ||
| Location | Michigan International Speedway, Brooklyn, Michigan | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility 2.000 mi (3.218 km) |
||
| Distance | 200 laps, 400 mi (643 km) | ||
| Weather | Mild with temperatures approaching 72 °F (22 °C); wind speeds up to 8 miles per hour (13 km/h) | ||
| Average speed | 145.056 miles per hour (233.445 km/h) | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Alan Kulwicki Racing | ||
| Most laps led | |||
| Driver | Bill Elliott | Junior Johnson & Associates | |
| Laps | 73 | ||
| Winner | |||
| No. 33 | Harry Gant | Leo Jackson Motorsports | |
| Television in the United States | |||
| Network | ESPN | ||
| Announcers | Bob Jenkins, Ned Jarrett, Benny Parsons | ||
The 1992 Champion Spark Plug 400 was a NASCAR Winston Cup Series racing event that was held on August 16, 1992, at Michigan International Speedway in the American community of Brooklyn, Michigan.
Harry Gant would set a record for being the oldest winner of a NASCAR Cup Series racing at 52 years and 219 days. Oldsmobile would get their final victory as an active manufacturer and would be sidelined in favor of Pontiac (who left NASCAR after 2003) and Dodge (who left NASCAR after 2012). Davey Allison would die within months of this race while his younger brother and Clifford would eventually be killed in a racing accident in 1992.
Then-current IndyCar driver Lyn St. James was the grand marshal of the race who shouted "Gentlemen, start your engines!"
Michigan International Speedway is a four-turn superspeedway that is 2 miles (3.2 km) long. Opened in 1968, the track's turns are banked at eighteen degrees, while the 3,600-foot-long front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at twelve degrees. The back stretch, has a five degree banking and is 2,242 feet long.
Approximately 13% of this 200-lap race was run under a caution flag; each green flag lasted for an average of 30 laps. There were four accidents in this event; a total of nine different cars were involved in the wreckage. Greg Sacks was credited as the last-place finisher on the fourth lap due to three-car pileup that also took Jimmy Means out of the race and severely affected Bobby Hamilton. It took nearly two hours and fifty minutes to decide the race; Harry Gant would defeat an aging Darrell Waltrip by a distance of nearly five seconds. Gant would never win a NASCAR Cup Series racing event again after this one. The win turned out to be entirely based on fuel mileage; as Gant was barely running in the middle of the racing pack before somehow picking up speed and acquiring the first-place position.
...
Wikipedia