Did you know that the ‘King of Talladega,’ Dale Earnhardt could have added one more win to his incredible record at the Alabama draft track? That forgotten victory would have happened back in May of 1991, in a race where ‘Handsome Harry,’ aka Harry Gant, scored his first-ever Talladega triumph at 51 years of age. He did this with only a little bit of help from another Oldsmobile driver hailing from Rockbridge Baths, VA. – Rick Mast.

Some might remember him as the pole winner of two very important races that truly helped shape the sport into what it is today. The 1992 Hooters 500 and the first-ever Brickyard 500 in 1994. Nevertheless, ol’ Darrell Waltrip will always remember him as the man who left him fuming in front of an alleged Bill France Jr. After all, tempers flared brighter back in the early 90s, especially after one would attempt to take on, complete, and conquer the phenom that we have come to know today as the treacherous Talladega Superspeedway.

Although Mast went winless throughout his incredible Winston Cup career, his legacy will forever be etched into the very high banks of Talladega’s 2.66-mile asphalt. But barely for the reasons one could realistically assume, and it all went down in that coincident race on May 6th, 1991.

The Rick Mast and Harry Gant quarrel that had Dale Earnhardt fuming

The 1991 Winston 500 was a white-knuckled affair straight from the start. Pole sitter Ernie Irvan started the race next to Gant in the front row, followed by the likes of Kyle Petty, Davey Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Ricky Rudd, Rusty Wallace, Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott, and Lake Speed, in that respective order. Around lap 72 of the 188-lap super spectacle, Irvan’s #4 Chevy triggered the Big One netting around 20 cars. This wreck resulted in Kyle Petty breaking his left femur, and missing out on more than ten races that season. 

But that is not where the real drama would kick off at that opportune Winston 500 race at Talladega. After Dale Earnhardt led a race-high 112 laps, both he and his draft buddy, Darrell Waltrip, were forced to pit to refuel with just 19 laps left. Consequently, this passed the lead onto Harry Gant who had decided to stay out, hoping for a gamble on a late-race fuel strategy.

As it all unfolded, the #33 car owned by Leo Jackson had pitted around 30 laps prior for a dash of gas. Once Earnhardt and Waltrip were fit for fuel, they rolled off of pit road chipping away at Gant’s lead by the second. Gasping through fumes on the last dozen laps with two rapid fast cars in the chase, the #33 team found an unlikely ally running all but a lap down in P10 – the #1 belonging to Leo Jackson’s brother, Richard. Driven by none other than Rick Mast himself.

As Mast would tell the story in recent discussions with Charlie Marlow on Kenny Wallace’s YouTube channel: “It’s my first year of Skoal which would have been ‘91, Bob Johnson was my crew chief. We actually had a good car that day… I think it was the race when Kyle Petty broke his leg I believe on the backstretch. I got mixed up in that wreck, and it screwed up the front of the nose of my car. So we’d come down Pit Road and my crew was trying to fix the nose right? and get it patched back together.”

Following the service, Mast would come off pit road a lap down, with an ample gas tank, and running at a loss of pace due to damage from the wreck caused earlier by Ernie Irvan. However, the man was hardly prepared for the forthcoming events that would take place when Gant’s fuel-deficient vehicle moved up alongside his own #1 Skoal Oldsmobile.

“And they come on the radio and tell me, ‘Rick. Harry is leading and he hadn’t pitted and it’s going to be close on gas. Would you get behind him?’ Just in case right? So I get behind him. The race ends. Harry wins the race. We go pull into the garage area and I’m down here talking to all the reporters. I got as many reporters in my garage as Harry’s got in Victory Lane, and I’m sitting there telling ‘em that I did not help Harry. I may have bumped him a couple of times, but I didn’t, you know, I didn’t actually help him, and all that. Basically, lying my a** off. And then there’s Harry up on Victory Lane on CBS TV saying, ‘I don’t know if Rick hadn’t been there to help me. I wouldn’t have got this…’ 

According to the NASCAR rulebook, the car leading the race for a win must cross the start-finish line under its own power on the final lap, without assistance from foreign forces. Mast had tried to be as sneaky as he could be on the last laps, disconnecting the nose of his vehicle to Gant’s rear just at the right intervals to avoid the watchful eyes of NASCAR. Regardless, his efforts went in vain, considering this off-the-book strategy did not amuse the man who finished right behind Gant on that day at Talladega – Darrell Waltrip. With the issue now raised to the top suits, Mast, Gant, and the teams were summoned to the infamous NASCAR hauler, or as Mast called it, “the red truck.”

He chronicled, “So I go in the red truck, and there sits Darrell. Darrell finishes second to Harry… Dick Beaty’s in there. He’s like the competition director at the time. I think Mr (Bill) France Jr was in there, three or four NASCAR people. And my team and Richard Jackson, we go in there. But Darrell’s just… raising holy hell you know. ‘Rick, you pushed him on the last lap and you can’t do that. Harry’s got to be disqualified,’ and on and on. And they’re asking me and all I’m doing is saying, ‘Just watch the TV cameras, that’s all I can tell you.’ Because I kind of figured out, at the time: I don’t think that they really got good shots of what we were doing…” 

Waltrip’s frustrations seemed to meet no end, but then an unexpected development emerged in the background of this comedically confusing scenario. It appeared that an intimidating presence had chosen to intercept all the action, courtesy of a lost Talladega triumph. As per “Forty Years of Stock Car Racing: Forty Plus Four,” car owner Richard Childress of Dale Earnhardt’s P3 finishing #3 Chevy Lumina had his own objections: “Waltrip’s spoiler was less than the 30 degrees allowed, we ought to get the win.”

Rick Mast detailed it best, “About that time there’s a knock on the door and open, it’s Jeff Hammond. Jeff is Darrell’s crew chief. Jeff says, ‘Darrell I need to see you out here.’ Darrell says, ‘What?’ He says, ‘We got a problem. I need to see you.’ He said, ‘I’m busy right now.’ He says, ‘Yeah, I know Darrell, but we’ve got a problem. I need to talk to you out here.’ Darrell: ‘Talk to me in here if you want to talk to me.’ Jeff: ‘The car, our car is in inspection, and our spoiler is too low.’ So we have a minimum degree on the rear spoilers… If you lower the spoiler at Talladega or Daytona, you’re gonna go faster, dude. But I mean, it’s like 100 horsepower. Lower that spoiler two or three degrees.”

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He then explained how one of Darrell Waltrip’s crew members “hit the spoiler and knocked it down to make it faster” at some point in the race. Mast also emphasized how it was something that “wasn’t unheard of” at the time. Yet, the tempestuous situation would receive its due climax of high-speed competitive humor, thanks to Darrell Waltrip.

As Rick Mast narrates, “Darrell sits there for, I’m going to say a good seven or eight seconds. Dead Silence, didn’t say a word. Finally stands up. He looks at everybody and grins and says, ‘You know. Harry’s a hell of a driver… I’ll see y’all next week.’ And walks out the door because what was going to happen, if they disqualified Harry they were going to have to disqualify Darrell right? And Darrell knew that…” 

With a chuckle and a heart of gold shining through all the mischief he made in his younger years, the evergreen Rick Mast would admit to conclude in a heartwarming disclosure: “Really, Earnhardt’s the one who should have won the freaking race. He finished third, right? He’s the one who should have won the race…”

All the same, Dale Earnhardt would go on to win 4 races, en route to his 5th Winston Cup championship later that year. The P10 finish would end up becoming Rick Mast’s second-best outing at Talladega, as he settled at 21st in the points standings when all was said and done. Harry Gant? 1991 was his best statistical season adorned with a series-high four race wins that year and finishing fourth. As for Darrell Waltrip, he placed eighth in his first season as an owner-driver after four years at Hendrick Motorsports.