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DiGard Motorsports

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DiGard Motorsports

DiGard Racing was a championship-winning race team in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series that had its most success in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The team won the 1983 Winston Cup championship with Bobby Allison at the wheel.

The team was started in 1973 based in a racecar garage near the Daytona speedway. In its history, the team fielded cars for Donnie Allison in 1973 and 1974 before replacing him with Darrell Waltrip in August 1975. Waltrip posted the team's first win in October 1975 at Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway. In 1976 the team negotiated with Stokely-Van Camp's and acquired Gatorade sponsorship, but after a 1976 season where they won just one race and fell out of over ten races, the team opened a shop in Charlotte, NC and closed down the Daytona shop; with closer access to parts suppliers the team became a consistent winner in 1977.

But following the 1983 season where Bobby Allison won his and the team's only Winston Cup championship, the team fell from the top echelon of the sport and had its last Winston Cup start in 1987. Allison won twice in 1984, but the team struggled in 1985; when DiGard entered a second car at the 1985 Firecracker 400 and won under Greg Sacks, Allison quit the team. Robert Yates, who later founded his eponymous championship-winning NASCAR team, was an important member of the DiGard team as its primary engine builder from August 1976 to January 1986. Yates abruptly left DiGard in 1986 before the Daytona 500. Robin Pemberton also was part of the team.

The team was founded in part by Mike DiProspero and Bill Gardner, who were brothers-in-law. The team name came from combining their last names: DiProspero and Gardner. Donnie Allison, already established on the circuit, was their first driver. After failing to qualify for the 1973 Daytona 500, the team made its debut at the 1973 Richmond 500, finishing 25th.

Allison had an invested stock in the team, and at the 1974 Daytona 500 he led 41 laps but a backmarker's blown engine with eleven laps to go blew out both front tires; Donnie finished sixth. He won two poles and finished second at Nashville, but failed to finish eleven races; the 88 nonetheless ended 1974 finishing third at Martinsville, fourth after leading forty laps at Charlotte, and sixth at Rockingham.

The team held an open house for media at their Daytona shop before the 1975 500 and team president Bill Gardner stated the team had spent one million dollars in the 1973–74 seasons.

But the 1975 season began badly with another engine failure, this time in the 500. Donnie Allison managed only four top ten finishes in the first half of 1975 and in July that year Donnie Allison was let go, Jim Gardner - Bill's brother and the team's secretary-treasurer) - was given more authority in running the team. Darrell Waltrip was named the new driver.

Waltrip drove twelve of the last thirteen races in the 1975 season, posting the team's first victory, at Richmond. The Gatorade brand then signed on board as a sponsor beginning in 1976. For the 1976 season Waltrip won at Martinsville and posted ten other top five finishes but only finished fourteen times. Long time crew chief Mario Rossi and engine men Carroll “Stump” Davis and Keith Harlan were fired that August, and engine builders Marion “Ducky” Newman and Robert Yates were hired.

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