How Much Can One Man Bear?

There is no record of Job hating another man so much that he feared his own soul would wind up in hell. Allison long harbored such a hatred for fellow driver Darrell Waltrip.

Job never begrudged a monarch his throne, but Allison still leaks resentment of Richard Petty's 200 career wins and his status as the king of stock car racing.

Job did not tell prophets to kiss his ass, but that's literally what Allison told Junior Johnson, the car owner famous for his innovations, in 1972 (otherwise Allison, not Petty, might be known today as NASCAR's king), and it's figuratively what he told owner Roger Penske in 1976 (otherwise Allison might have been so successful in Indy Cars that he would be as celebrated for his diversity as A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti).

And Job never beat up a peer with his fists. That's what Allison did to Cale Yarborough in 1979 in the most notorious ending ever to a Daytona 500.

These incidents may all be in Bobby's past, but emotionally they are in his present. His peeves and grudges abide as blessed distractions from his sorrow.

When Johnson sold his racing team and retired at the end of the 1995 season, after 139 victories with various drivers, he told his employees, "If we'd been able to keep Bobby Allison, we would have won 200 races, and Richard Petty wouldn't have."

As it turned out, "I won for 10 different teams," says Allison, only half proud that he quit so many owners. He was, says his brother Donnie, 57, a former driver who works with Tri-Star Motorsports, "his own worst enemy."

The alltime NASCAR wins list reads: Petty, 200; David Pearson, 105; Waltrip and Bobby Allison, 84 each. "Eight-five," says Allison. "I've really got 85." Allison won a race at Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1971 in a now defunct class of car, the Grand American, that was sometimes used to fill out insufficient Winston Cup fields at backwater tracks. Petty finished second that night, but in a Winston Cup-class car. Because NASCAR officials deemed Allison's nimble little Grand American Mustang to have had an advantage over the heavier Winston Cup cars on the tiny quarter-mile oval, they later took the official victory away from him and awarded it to no one. Allison, however, believes Petty got the win, and if NASCAR were to restore it to Allison, Petty's total victories would fall short of the magical 200.

"Now who in the world would take one of the king's 200 wins away from him?" asks Allison with delicious irony in his voice. "Who in the world would do something that vile?"

Twenty-five years have passed since Petty called a truce in their war on the track. From 1967 to 1972 they had wrecked each other repeatedly, intentionally, in races across America. "Now," says Petty, "at least we can joke about it."