Catchfence

NASCAR is supposed to be better now than it used to be. Right? Not when some of its backbone drops out.

Such is the case with the announcement that Morgan-McClure Motorsports will not campaign in 2008, the announcement made by team owner Larry McClure while co-owner Tim Morgan gave the official word to his crew guys just before the second round of Daytona testing was to get underway. Larry McClure called it “a very hard day for me,” which is an obvious understatement since his team was one of those little guys who took down the big bullies on the biggest tracks for most of the 1990s.

The McClures and Morgan began as Chevrolet dealers from Abington, VA, and in 1983 purchased G.C. Spencer’s team. They bought a Chevrolet from A.J. Foyt and hired Mark Martin to drive the car in a handful of Winston Cup Grand National races that summer; Martin finished in the top ten at the Talladega 500 that July.

For 1984 Lennie Pond drove the McClure Chevy at Daytona but soon gave way to Sportsman ace Tommy Ellis. The car ran the full season and at Talladega in July flexed genuine muscle, staying in contention for all 500 miles and finishing in the top ten amid a huge battle between Dale Earnhardt, Buddy Baker, Terry Labonte, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Lake Speed, Harry Gant, and Bill Elliott.

As the sport began to grow in expense with the beginning of the technology revolution of the 1980s and ’90s, Morgan and the McClures had to expand their little team to keep competitive. Tony Glover, a Petty Enjterprises crewman, was hired as crew chief, and the team acquired Folgers Coffee sponsorship for 1985 and Joe Ruttman drove their Chevys, but for 1986 they needed factory help and got it from Oldsmobile, which was stepping up their NASCAR effort after a token effort the previous two seasons.

The McClures talked to Sterling Marlin, the 1983 rookie of the year, about driving their car, but Marlin turned them down, eventually going to Hoss Ellington’s Chevrolet. Rick Wilson, a Florida racer who’d won Daytona’s ARCA race a few years earlier, was hired to drive the car and as he began posting some top-ten finishes the team got sponsorship from Kodak Film. The Talladega 500 that July allowed Wilson to flex muscle as he battled for the lead, a battle that involved Bobby Hillin Jr., Tim Richmond, Rusty Wallace, Bobby Allison, Kyle Petty, and others in a frantic fight over the final laps. On the final lap it all fell apart as Bobby Allison got nailed by Sterling Marlin entering One; Allison shot backwards into Wilson, Petty, and Jim Sauter and the ensuing wreck knocked out five cars.

1988 was a pivotal year for the McClures as they ran Hoosier Tires in Part One of the Goodyear-Hoosier war and began running strong on a more consistent basis. Wilson led over 100 laps in the World 600 but was just one of many to crash in an epidemic of wrecks.

Then came Daytona. Pushing Bill Elliott, Wilson worked his way into second on the Firecracker 400’s final lap; in Three of that lap he stormed alongside Elliott and the two briefly fused together to the stripe, Wilson losing by inches. He got into another frantic finish a month later at Talladega as Sterling Marlin shot from third into second at the white flag and tried Dale Earnhardt; Earnhardt chopped him off, got clipped, and Ken Schrader stromed past all of them as Wilson went after Earnhardt and the two raced nose to nose to the stripe, before Geoff Bodine squeezed between them into second and Earnhardt edged Wilson for third.

1989 was another pivotal year, as engine builder Sheldon Pittman, a horsepower legend with Hoss Ellington, joined the McClures. Wilson parlayed several strong runs in 1989 into a 1990 deal with Rahmoc Racing, an ill-fated effort that helped cost Wilson a Winston Cup career. For 1990 the McClures hired Phil Parsons for their Oldsmobile but Parsons withdrew from the ride after three races, and needing a driver they decided to hire Ernie Irvan, a California short tracker who’d moved to Charlotte and worked welding in seats at Charlotte Motor Speedway to help pay for his short track racing. Irvan started 30th at the Atlanta 500 and stormed into a finish of third, but the next week at Darlington he lost ten laps on repairs after a spin; he foolishly fought race-leader Ken Schrader nose to nose for several laps before breaking loose in Four; the ensuing melee injured Neil Bonnett, who suffered amnesia and was forced out of the driver seat for nearly four years.

Irvan shook off the melee and won the pole at Bristol, then began finishing high almost every race – high enough that Chevrolet picked them up into their factory effort and they debuted a Chevy at Talladega in July.

Numerology alert – Irvan’s fourth race in the Chevy was the Volunteer 500 at Bristol, and he won, the debut win for both himself and the Morgan-McClure team.

But it was just the beginning, for Pittman worked to get more power out of the team’s restrictor plate engines and it paid off at the Daytona 500 of 1991, where Dale Earnhardt had parlayed a massive horsepower boost in his own plate motors into a virtual monopoly on the plate tracks in 1990 and overwhelming favorite status for 1991; Irvan shot down that aura of invincibility with some seven laps to go and held a slim lead as Davey Allison fought Earnhardt nose to nose for second, a battle that with three to go collapsed in virtually identical fashion as Irvan’s melee at Darlington the previous season; astonishingly Earnhardt nursed a badly damaged Chevy home fifth in the 500 while the wrecked cars of Davey Allison and Kyle Petty lay motionless with drivers stewing over the shocking turn of events.

It got worse for Petty in May as Irvan got into a ferocious fight for the lead at Talladega and a gigantic melee exploded in which Chad Little center-punched Petty’s Pontiac, breaking Kyle’s leg. Team owner Felix Sabates was livid at Irvan, but it was the Summer 500 at Pocono that turned the garage area decisively against Irvan; in another gigantic battle for the lead Hut Stricklin forearmed Irvan out of the lead in the Tunnel Turn but Irvan drilled him back in Three and Richard Petty got launched over several cars in the ensuing ten-car melee.

Under fire from NASCAR officials and the rest of the garage area, Irvan issued a public apology in Talladega’s drivers meeting the following week, and followed that up with a win at Watkins Glen. It set the pattern for Irvan’s career with Morgan-McClure – he won Sears Point, Daytona, and Talladega in 1992, then won Talladega in May 1993, but was dissatisfied with the smallness of the team with teams like Robert Yates and Hendrick Motorsports getting noticably bigger.

When Ford offered Irvan a spectacular deal to take over Robert Yates’ #28 in the late summer of 1993, a public contract squabble ensued between Irvan and McClure that ended in a costly buyout; McClure then fired Irvan after the Volunteer 500.

McClure now targeted Sterling Marlin from his Chevrolets, and Marlin was now ready to take the seat. He responded by winning the 1994 Daytona 500. The team struggled with consistent strength the rest of the season but had a secret weapon for 1995. It was actually two secret weapons – the first was Chevrolet’s new Monte Carlo, the most controversial racecar seen in NASCAR in decades, a car whose success and a pivotal rules concession for the 1995 season would set off an engineering and rules malestrom that changed the sport enormously.

The second secret weapon for the #4 Chevy was the opening of a new Morgan-McClure shop near the Charlotte area, closer to parts suppliers. Marlin debuted the #4 Monte Carlo with a third “secret” weapon – new racing tailpipes fused together for an extra power boost, which produced a curious high pitch instead of the low growl common to NASCAR engines. This package won the 1995 Daytona 500, and Marlin now began finishing in the top ten every race, winning at Darlington, then winning the Talladega 500 en route to a spectacular third place in 1995 points.

But fear that other, bigger teams would raid his personnel caused McClure to move the team back to the Abington, VA area for 1996. The team thus began struggling in 1996, blowing up while leading the Daytona 500 and unable to match the consistent muscle of the year before. At Talladega Marlin found that magic again, forced to dead last on three seperate occassions and passing the entire field under green all three times en route to his ultimate statement win.

He won the rain-shortened Firecracker 400, but at the Talladega 500 old enemy Ernie Irvan got into the batle for first; he slammed Marlin and Dale Earnhardt together and the two Chevys hammered the trioval wall, bounced into traffic, and Earnhardt got by far the worst of it. For Marlin it began a slide out of competitive contention, as a superb effort at Indianapolis disintegrated when Kyle Petty’s blown tire slammed him into the wall and then into Marlin’s path, followed by a wreck at Michigan. Marlin salvaged the top ten in 1996 points, but a more ominous change hit the team in October, as crew chief Tony Glover was released after agreeing to join Felix Sabates’ organization.

Amid this, the sport was seeing a rise of multicar teams, spurred by NASCAR limits on testing and the resulting success of Hendrick Motorsports and Robert Yates Racing. McClure pondered expanding to two cars for 1997 but nothing came of it; instead veteran crew chief Tim Brewer was hired for 1997, a hire that was considered a blockbuster at its announcement but which turned out to be a fiasco. Brewer never fit with the McClure organization and was gone by July.

Marlin left after 1997 and Bobby Hamilton joined the team after three successful seasons with Pety Enterprises. The tandem struggled in the early part of 1998 but ex-Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Gary Dehart joined the etam as a manager and helped the team with setups; it paid off in a spectacular win at the Virginia 500 at Martinsville.

It would be the McClure team’s final win, as lack of resources kept them out of contention year after year, and a revolving door of drivers ensued after 2000. The loss of Kodak sponsorship after 2003 ended an iconic partnership and pointed the way toward the team’s final disillusion nearly ten years after its final win.

Chevrolet had stated before the 2008 season that the team would continue, using RCR engines. The irony here is that Chevrolet lifted not a finger to help the team get out of its competitive pit. The other irony is that NASCAR advertised its Car of Tomorrow in part as a project that would help small teams like Morgan-McClure remain competitive; McClure’s closure is a graphic counterpoint to this argument.

The McClures were a small scrappy team that rose to prominence just as the sport was starting to choke on mega-teams; for too few seasons the #4 Chevrolet was able to shoot down the mega-team cars and win. With the team now effectively finished, another part of the sport’s true self goes with it.