“Would Have Won 200 Races” – How Bobby Allison Lost Out on Being the NASCAR GOAT to Richard Petty

Richard Petty is a driver who absolutely deserves to be considered a NASCAR legend. With seven Cup Series titles, 200 NASCAR Cup wins, 712 Top 10s, and 123 poles, very few can match him. In a similar vein, Bobby Allison amassed an impressive 85 wins, out of which, 10 came from his Junior Johnson and Associates days.

Speaking of Junior Johnson and Associates, the team had amassed 139 victories over the course of their tenure. In 1995, Johnson sold his racing team and retired at the end of the 1995 season. Apparently, 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.”

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How did Bobby Allison perform in his career?

Allison was fairly successful in his NASCAR Cup Series career, winning the 1983 Cup Series title. At the time, he was racing for DiGard Motorsports. When he raced for Junior Johnson and Associates, he finished 2nd in the 1972 championship, which was pretty impressive. This was because that season was his NASCAR Cup Series debut campaign.

Bobby Allison drove for various teams, including Penske Racing, Bud Moore Engineering, DiGard Motorsports, and more. He even established his own racing team and drove for the organization for a few years. As mentioned before, he clinched his one and only Cup Series title with the team. However, Junior Johnson obviously felt that had he held onto Allison for longer, he could have won more races and maybe even a title or two.

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Unfortunately, fate played out the way it did, and Richard Petty now boasts of a record 7 Cup Series title. Nobody would be able to touch that particular tally until Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson, much later. Whether Allison could have been the driver to snatch those 200 race wins instead of Petty is a story of what could have been.

Do you think Bobby Allison would have carved out a niche as the original GOAT of NASCAR instead of Richard Petty? Let us know in the comments section.