Tim Richmond - All But Forgotten (Cont.)

by LIZ CLARKE, Charlotte Observer — 1994

LIFE AT FULL THROTTLE

Richmond never did fit stock car racing's mold. He had a personality for every pair of sunglasses, every hat, every pair of snakeskin boots and Italian loafers he owned. "I'd love to meet the man that knew me," he once said. Winning racing was Richmond's adrenaline, but he fed on anything fast, from a Harley-Davidson with a suicide clutch to helicopters, speedboats, water skis and airplanes.He ran in wildly different circles that rarely intersected: bikers, actors, musicians, truck drivers and a millionaire businessman named Bob Tezak, his first major sponsor, who's in federal prison today for pleading guilty to two counts of arson. "The WRFX rock-n-roll crowd loved him. Girls loved him. Cool guys loved him," said Ed Clark, Atlanta Motor Speedway executive vice-president and general manager. "I don't know if the blue-collar guy that worked at Cannon Mills, if that guy ever fell in love with him, but that guy's girlfriend did."

Richmond had his own ideas about how a Southern stock car ought to be driven. Never mind that he grew up in Ashland, Ohio, had a prep school education and got a Trans Am 455 with a bow on top for his 16th birthday to go with the Corvette that he already had. To many in stock car racing, Richmond's long hair, Hollywood friends and parade of gorgeous girl friends were enough to arouse suspicion. "In one sense, it was always there because he was different," says Chip Williams, a former NASCAR spokesman. "A guy that good-looking, that cool, that much fun - he knew people in the movies and hung exit sideways with all four tires off the ground. Earnhardt brought out his best."

Harry Hyde was Richmond's crew chief on the Rick Hendrick-owned number 25 Folgers car in 1986-87. "He'd rather race Earnhardt as eat," says Hyde. "He just enjoyed the heck out of racing Earnhardt. He'd pull up under Earnhardt and just sit there, lap after lap, they're side by side. He'd come on the radio and say, 'That's all it'll do. I can't go any faster.'

"And I'd say, 'Well, are you in a bind sitting there?'

"He says, 'No.'

"I says, 'How long can you stay there?'

"He says, 'All day.'"

Richmond never won a Winston cup championship, but had a tuxedo custom-made for the occasion, with a silk shirt patterned like a checkered flag. He pictured his race team riding up the East Coast from Florida on a cigarette boat to collect its trophy. He even charted the course to a dock on Long Island where they'd hop into a limousine for the ride to New York's Waldorf-Astoria. "He was going to start at the top and go from there," Hyde says. "He wasn't going to wait for anybody else to decide the course he took. He was going to decide himself."

That cocky streak never sat well with NASCAR, a family business run with a firm hand by President Bill France Jr. Stock-car racing is as much a culture as a sport, and successful drivers play both games well. There's a way to behave: As assembly-line as the cars they drive, and every-day as the products they sell. There's a way to dress. And a way to speak, so pervasive that drivers who know better suddenly forget basic grammar when TV cameras start rolling. But Richmond was Hendrick's only choice when Procter and Gamble offered its Folgers brand for a new race team in 1986. "At first they were a little reluctant," Hendrick says, "Because they were conservative and he was flamboyant. But I basically said if you won't take Tim Richmond, I'm not interested." Jimmy Johnson, the Folgers team manager, remembers the first time he met Richmond - about 10 a.m. in November 1985 at Richmond's Bahia Mar boat slip in Fort Lauderdale. "He was sitting on top of the most beautiful Chris-Craft houseboat with this little old tiny bathing suit, with imported beer and a whole big plate of crab legs beside him," Johnson says.

ALWAYS A SHOWMAN

The Hendrick ride signaled Richmond's entry into the sport's elite, and he turned up at the 1986 season-opening Daytona 500 in a $1,000 Armani suit, a new, shorter haircut and a man's purse slung over his shoulder. "Everybody just looked at each other when he walked in," says Carolyn Wax, who handled his publicity. "Everything stopped." He wrecked in his first race, a 125-mile qualifier, and hurt his leg.

That night, after typing up a press release about Richmond taking time off to recuperate, Wax glanced over her balcony at the party in the hotel lobby. "There he was, in all his glory, dancing with a cane," Wax days. "He may have had a short life, but I guarantee you, nobody lived it any harder."

Women loved him, and he'd stage pre-race shows just for them: Unzipping his driver's suit and puffing out his bare chest, then, in due course, pulling his fireproof vest over his head and zipping back up. "He was like doing a strip tease," Johnson says. "It was downright lewd, and people would just go crazy. "In classic Richmond fashion, he was late for his first major Folgers appearance, an 8 a.m. tour of a New Orleans coffee plant. The night before, he was spotted entertaining two women at the hotel bar. The next morning, country singer T.G. Sheppard was at the plant on time. So was Hyde. No Richmond. Wax sent someone to his hotel, and a housekeeper found him sound asleep. He finally arrived at the plant without apology, peered out from under his dark sunglasses and said, "Well, if that Folgers coffee can wake me up, it can wake anyone up!"

MAGIC ON THE TRACK

It took half the 1986 season before Richmond and Hyde clicked on the track. They were magic from then on, winning seven races, finishing second four times and taking eight poles. Buddy Barnes, a friend and former crew member, remembers driving his boat up to Richmond's Lake Normal home that summer and finding him on the dock a grin broad enough to split his face, holding a checkered flag he'd just won. "He was waving it back and forth, and said, 'This is what it's all about. This is the breakfast of champions,'" Barnes says.

It was September when Harry Hyde first noticed something was wrong, around the time Richmond won Darlington's Southern 500. "He looked awful bad, and he was taking antibiotics," Hyde says. "It looked to me like he had the flu or a cold. After Darlington he got all right. I thought he was all right. But by Rockingham and the last two races, I could tell he was ... down. It was in his face and eyes." At NASCAR's December awards banquet, Wheeler thought he looked awful. "I could tell it was somthing worse than stress; he said he was exhausted," Wheeler said. "He was extremely disturbed about what he looked like." Within a week, Richmond was in the Cleveland Clinic, diagnosed with AIDS.

Hendrick had never heard of AIDS before Evelyn Richmond, his mother, called to explain. "I didn't know what she was telling me," Hendrick said. "It was like my first time ... I was confused. I didn't know what it actually meant - what the prognosis was. The more you found out - the more you just ... it hurt and it killed you." Richmond spent Christmas and New Years in the hospital, dwindling from 171 to 148 pounds. Rumors about drug use had dogged him since his Indy Car days. Most friends say they never saw drugs around him. Others say he never used "needle drugs."

When Richmond missed the 1987 Daytona 500 with what was reported to be double pneumonia, the rumors flew. Some said cocaine addiction. Others said AIDS. Kyle Petty didn't believe them any more than he believed Richmond had pneumonia. He thought it was cancer. Richard Petty, stock-car racing's King, felt then and now it was drugs. "There's a question in my mind about drugs - that at the time he was driving that race car, he was pumped up," Richard Petty says. "Whether he was or he wasn't, I'm always questioning that. I always will."

Richmond's return to racing in spring 1987 triggered a media frenzy. Hyde scheduled a secret practice at Darlington to see whether Richmond was physically able to come back. Word leaked out and reporters showed up with stopwatches. So Hyde slipped four left-side tires on to give the car an added edge.

Newspapers reported the next day Richmond was back, setting track-record speeds. Next came an endurance test at Rockingham. Richmond tried to run 500 miles, but couldn't last more than 127. Hyde covered again, telling reporters, "Tim wanted to go on longer, but I pulled him in." Richmond was too weak to run Charlotte's Coca-Cola 600 in May, so he flew to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 instead. Linda Vaughn, racing's most famous beauty queen, got a call at her Indianapolis apartment shortly after midnight. He'd been partying and had to see her. "He fell into my arms, and his eyes rolled back, and he said, 'What can I do? What can I do to make it up to you?'" says Vaughn, a longtime friend. "That's when he told me what was wrong. And I said, 'Go back and kick ass and take names, because you are a racer.' He had a deep, dark lonely side. He was like a little lost boy sometimes. He always used to sing, 'I Want You to Want Me, I Want You to Love Me.' He used to drive me crazy with that song."

RETURN TO VICTORY LANE

Richmond had an edge when he returned to racing. "Testy", some said. "Not your normal Tim."

"He was never accepted when he came back," Richard Petty says. "Everyone knew he had trouble." Meaning AIDS? "Yep. It was just one of those things. Whether it was true or not, everybody said that's it, and so everybody kept their distance."

His first full-length race since the diagnosis was the Miller 500 at Pocono Raceway in June, 1987. Just before the start, Earnhardt walked over and slapped him on the back. "You ready to get it on?" Earnhardt asked. "Yeah!" Richmond said.

And when Richmond won the race, he cried so hard he couldn't see the checkered flag. Earnhardt, Kyle Petty, and Bill Elliott drove alongside to offer congratulations, and Richmond cried all the more. He made an extra victory lap to compose himself, but it didn't do any good. In Victory Lane, Richmond couldn't utter a word-- just hugged his mother, whipped a towel in the air and started pouring beer everywhere.

For Johnson, the team manager, there'll never be a moment like it. "I've got a 5-year-old son," Johnson says, "and if he becomes a race driver and wins a race, it'll still be second to Tim winning that race. Nothing would ever top that for me."

Richmond won the next race, too, at Riverside.

Barry Dodson, Richmond's former crew chief with the Number 27 Old Milwaukee Blue Max race team, watched from the California hills above. Dodson's own team had fallen out of contention early, so he jumped into his rental car to find the best view of Richmond coming through the road course's turns. He was afraid it might be his last chance.

"He wouldn't just run through them like an old lady," Dodson says. "He'd sashay through there, slinging the car into the corners, passing on the inside of Turn 8."

It was Richmond's last win.