AK Racing

AK Racing was a championship-winning NASCAR Winston Cup Series team. It was originally owned by Bill Terry before he sold it to rookie driver Alan Kulwicki, who controlled and raced for the team until his death in 1993. Kulwicki won five races as an owner-driver. Until Tony Stewart won the championship in 2011, he was the last owner-driver to win a Cup Series championship, which he won in 1992.^[1]

The team debuted at the 1982 Cracker Barrel Country Store 420 at Nashville Speedway USA with Bob Jarvis driving it as the No. 32 Clinomint Buick, finishing 28th out of 30 cars. Two races later, the No. 32 ran again at the World 600, with Bosco Lowe qualifying 40th and finishing 16th. Lowe drove the car in the Daytona 500 the following season, finishing 39th after a crash. Tommy Ellis drove their next race, bringing the Big Daddy's Buick to a 15th-place finish at Charlotte. Butch Lindley drove the final race of the 1983 season for the team at Martinsville Speedway, finishing 25th after suffering rear end problems.

The team was inactive until 1986, when it fielded a full-time car driven by rookie Alan Kulwicki. The car was now the No. 35 Quincy's Steak House Ford. After 14 starts, Terry sold the team to Kulwicki. After winning Rookie of the Year honors, Kulwicki changed the number of the car to No. 7 and got sponsorship from Zerex. Kulwicki won three pole positions and finished 15th in points. In 1988, Kulwicki won his first career race at Phoenix International Raceway. In celebration, he drove the now-famous Polish Victory Lap. He won once more in 1990, but lost his Zerex sponsorship. After beginning 1991 with no sponsor, he got a one-race deal with Hooters after their regular driver, Mark Stahl, failed to qualify. Hooters then signed up to sponsor the No. 7 full-time and Kulwicki won three races over the next two seasons. The peak of the team's success was 1992, when Kulwicki became the first owner-driver since Richard Petty did so in 1979 to win a Winston Cup championship. Entering the Hooters 500 (coincidentally, Petty's final race) as one of six drivers with a chance, Kulwicki finished second behind race winner Bill Elliott and led the most laps, enabling him to win the Cup by 10 points over Elliott. The car that won the championship carried the "Underbird" branding, which Kulwicki was able to do after obtaining permission from Ford to do so.

Kulwicki died in a plane crash five races into the 1993 season while flying back from a sponsor event. Under his ownership, the team won five races and recorded 75 top ten finishes with the last victory coming at Pocono Raceway the year before.

As per his will, Kulwicki left the team to his father, Gerald. The elder Kulwicki did not have any interest in running the team, so after consulting with his attorney, the team was placed under the stewardship of Felix Sabates, the owner of Team SABCO, while a buyer was sought. As far as the driving duties were concerned, Kulwicki had decided that, if anything was to happen that would result in him being forced to give up the seat, he wanted Jimmy Hensley, the 1992 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, to replace him in the #7.

Almost immediately, a problem arose. At the time, Hooters was also sponsoring Loy Allen Jr. in both the ARCA and Busch Series. Representatives from the company met with Sabates and Gerald Kulwicki and put forth the idea of having Allen take over the car. Sabates was not interested in having Allen drive the car and repeatedly rejected the overture. This, combined with the enormity of the loss from the plane crash, led Hooters to discontinue their sponsorship.

Meanwhile, Sabates had been fielding offers for the team but found that many of the potential buyers were not interested in buying the team and running it, instead only being interested in its real estate. He did, however, receive several offers from drivers who were looking to follow in Kulwicki's footsteps and become owner drivers. One of these offers was from Geoff Bodine, who was driving the #15 Motorcraft Ford for Bud Moore Engineering at the time.

On May 12, 1993, Bodine announced that he had purchased AK Racing. An arrangement was made for him to run the day-to-day operations of the team while Bodine continued to drive for Moore. A series of different sponsors ran on the car in the interim, while Bodine eventually procured sponsorship from The Family Channel. Hensley continued to run in the #7 until the fall race at Dover, by which time Bodine was released from his contract with Moore and took over the car for the remainder of the season. The team officially became Geoff Bodine Racing for 1994.

• Bill Terry owner statistics at Racing-Reference
• Alan Kulwicki owner statistics at Racing-Reference