Turning Iron Into Gold: Terry Labonte 1996 Champion (Restored NASCAR VHS)

[Music] the ice man quiet cool calm he excels in a competitive pressure cooker with minimal show of emotion terry labonte the boy racer who became champion a quarter prodigy whose dad guided him from the texas bull rings to the big leagues of winston cup and there the iceman made his mark winner of the 84 championship but racing success is a fleeting thing through the early 90s labonte was the forgotten man winless struggling by 1996 though he was back and the nickname evolved the iceman became the iron man his metallic gray cars commemorated a record achievement 514 consecutive starts more than richard petty 18 years of uninterrupted performance in the most demanding sport of them all the final chapter in the comeback story includes a gripping battle with his hot young teammate courage in the face of his own adversity and through it all labonte piled up points in characteristic style calmly quietly and with relentless consistency in the end this soft-spoken veteran placed his mark on a most memorable winston cup campaign 1996 the year the iron man took home the pot of gold [Music] the story of terry labonte's 96 winston cup championship actually begins at the end of 1993. when ricky rudd left rick hendricks moldy cars stable to form his own team hendrick made a surprise decision he chose labonte as rudd's replacement even though the ice man hadn't won a race in four years going down the list we knew ricky was leaving terry's name popped up and it just so happened i was going to winston to north wilkesboro to the race and uh and terry had uh running billy hagin's car with no sponsor had just had a lap on the field and and i watched him and i had been been looking at his numbers and i watched him save his time i just that whole race i watched terry labonte and uh he got out of the car and i thought terry was older than he was and we contacted him he was uh he was really hungry for the ride and it was so nice to see a guy that eager to to get in the car and boy what a great day that was for us so when i had the opportunity to drive for rick hendrick i knew that was a chance of a lifetime to go down there i knew i could join a team that i could get back in cars and have a chance to win races and have a chance to win the championship and i really never dreamed it would all come true but you know it did no one was more pleased with the hendrick labonte marriage than terry's new crew chief gary dehart years ago dehart ran a little business building race car parks first time i ever met terry i had no idea who he was he'd just come carry an aluminum radiator an oil tank or something into my shop and wanted me to weld it point and the ice all i've ever done was fabricate so that's the first time i really ever met terry so we kind of struck it off right off the get-go you know that relationship grew when dehart went to work as a fabricator for terry's old car owner billy hagan in other words gary helped build the cars with which terry won his first championship back in 84. hendrick motorsports reunited the old friends backed by a powerhouse team labonte enjoyed instant success his first year at the wheel of the five car he won three races his career was reborn i'll tell you what we did we kind of picked our best tracks the tracks that i felt like were some of my best tracks the team's best tracks and that's where we went and tested we wanted to really try to turn in a good run maybe try to turn that into a win and we did that at wilkesboro i think like the seventh race end of the year and so it paid off for us and that was exciting i mean that was fun to to get back in victory lane and uh you know run up front all day and we beat all the guys that were the guys that were winning races it's like nobody fell out of the race you know we outran them so it was really a good feeling in his second hendrick season labonte was overshadowed by his young teammate nascar's brightest star jeff gordon claimed the winston cup giving rick hendrick his first title after 11 years of trying labonte had a decent 95 season three more wins and sixth in the points and the stage was set for 96. hendrick motorsports had finally learned what it takes to be a championship team terry knew exactly what he needed to get back on top i tell you what the thing that we really looked at is we knew we had a good team a competitive team we could go and we could run good but we weren't consistent you know we could run good one week and win the race and we could be terrible the next week and so this time this year we concentrated on the tracks that we weren't very good at we went to some of those and tested and really put a lot of effort into those places and even in my mind i went to dover delaware and i i could not run dover with the concrete and i made up my mind i'm either going to qualify good or i'm going to wreck and uh we qualified good and we ran good in the race finished second one of them we had a flat tire on the other one but we did a lot of things differently at some of those places and we worked a lot harder i think and just tried stuff when we got there and really worked hard every practice and it paid off for us primed for the title and racetrack ready texas terry and the kellogg's gang charged into the 96 season and fell flat on their faces terry led the most laps in the season opening daytona 500 only to fall victim to a freaked misfortune an airborne piece of plastic bag sucked into the intake killed the engine's power arguably the best car in the field finished 24th at rockingham a week later labonte again set the pace until the engine blew he finished 34th forget those preseason expectations terry was 30th in the standings the lowest point ranking of his entire career i couldn't believe it you know and and jeff gordon my teammate was in worse shape than i was you know and here we are thinking we're on top of the world and we go down there and we're neither one of us are i'm 30th and i think he's 40th or something in points and rick hendrick had a meeting and sat down and talked with everybody just kind of cheered everybody up and said hey you know we're running good i think jeff and i running first and second when we fell out of rockingham you know and uh so he just kind of reassured everybody that don't worry about it you know and then it wasn't anything that anybody was doing just just something that happened so we went on and i think jeff won the following week and then we went a few weeks after that so you know kind of got back on the right track you're scratching your head thinking what's wrong here you know we've got to get more consistent something's wrong here so we we set out the rest of the season to finish the race and we looked at that like if we're with qualified tenth and and a quarter quarter of the way into the race we're fifth and we look at the cars in front of us and say these cars are better and we're only a fifth place car then we concentrate on folks who focus ourselves on trying to finish that race fit you know you just got to do what you can do you know if you said you're a fifth place car and you want to go out there and win the race you're not spent out wrecked so we we kind of looked at it a little conservative and and tried to save the rest of the year kind of like had two bad races right off the start and then we took the attitude like we're going to save the rest of the year a change for the better began at richmond terry sat on the pole the team kicked off a string of five straight top 10 finishes but a different story now kept the iceman in the glare of the media spotlight the iron man countdown had begun with each passing race melvani moved closer to the winston cup record of 513 consecutive starts terry's first full winston cup campaign was way back in 1979 through 18 seasons in a dangerous business he never missed a race cherry tended to downplay the significance of the mark while the media talked about little else i think one thing that made it so big was there was really no stories going on in racing at the time except that one so it drew a lot of attention and of course the fact that it was richard petty's record and not many of his records ever get broken and then the deal with cal ripken the year before when he broke lou gehrig's record and got so much media attention on that kind of the comparison between the two so it really uh it really drew a lot of attention and at times it probably distracted a little bit from our team but we just like really concentrated on not letting us that bother us and try to go on and do our job terry tied the mark at north wilkesboro kellogg marked the occasion with an iron gray paint job and the guy who set the record gave the new iron man his dude guess who just walked up the stairs have you said anything to richard petty about uh about tying his record of 513. he said it was okay but dale eman came over to try to break my arm the other day how about it king how does it feel to see that record tied after all these years well you know i feel good about it you know like i told terry them if nothing else they know richard petty had a record so you know somebody's breaking i can't see anybody i'd rather see break it than terry richard petty's got a lot of records and this is not one of them that i was uh that you would wish you were breaking i wish he had a couple more i wish i could break you'd take 200 wins that 200 wins would be pretty neat i'd get a little excited if he got close to 200. i might i might have dale break his horn now that espn piece makes a key point labonte doesn't want to be remembered simply for showing up every week i said a year before that i said the thing that makes me feel good about it is with i'm i'm with the team that we can go there and i feel like we have a chance to win the poll i feel like we have a chance to win the race so that made it mean a lot more than if we went there and we struggled and we just we're just somebody in the race and sure enough we went to wilkesboro and we won the poll in the race you know i mean i've never agreed would have done both but we did it all in the same weekend [Music] [Applause] from victory lane at north wilkes burrow terry was off to camden yards for the ceremonial meeting of the iron men a photo op born of old-fashioned all-american dependability and while terry may downplay the consecutive start record it certainly impresses his car owner who sees it as evidence that his driver is tough enough to deal with trouble when it comes and also smart enough to avoid it in the first place that's unbelievable i think there are a lot of factors in that you know you look at he's won a championship and he's he's he's he's run up front so he hadn't been just one of those careful guys that right that rides around um but he's one of the smartest racers i've ever seen terry jumps down on the inside they make contact with the rear but on goes into the wall and terry gets it completely sideways but yet saves it that was unbelievable terry knows exactly where he needs to be on the racetrack at all times and i think you can talk to jeff gordon and jeff will tell you he's learned a lot watching carol about it terry knows how to win and he knows how to be in position to win he knows how to take care of his equipment and he knows how to spot trouble and i think that's number one number two he's a he is a tough cookie because he was in a lot of pain in phoenix and he he drove with an awful lot of pain and you know he's just not one guy to complain whoa whoa whoa now hold on hendrick terry's ability to drive through the pain does reinforce his iron man reputation but you're getting way ahead of the story here there were a lot of races between the north wilkesboro record and phoenix in the fall and terry had a lot of catching up to do for example in the record-breaking 514th start in martinsville virginia he used up the brakes on a car otherwise good enough to win the race and settled for 24th position with the iron man hoopla behind them though terry and his team went on a tear reeled off another terrific run of consistency in eight races he finished no lower than seven and within that string driver and crew chief also revealed their sense of humor at the expense of terry's father bob and an unsuspecting fit reporter it happened at loudoun new hampshire well it was kind of a joke there really a little bit of a joke there uh we had a pretty good car in practice and we'd ran the bush rights up there and i finished second in the busch race and i my dad called me on the radio and he said how's how's the car i'm here i'm running second or leading or something i said well we got the wrong shocks on it boy he just like really got a little mad at me because because he felt the shocks you know and so sunday in the winston cup race sports announcer come up and said why are we running so bad and i made the comment and and i made the comment about this because of what terry's father had said to me just a day or two early about they made the wrong shock decision they made their own spring decision well that's what i told the announcer the guy that was interviewing me at that time i said we had the wrong springs on the car the wrong shops on the car and just everything brought the wrong car and it's my fault and he kind of scratches ahead and he walks off he walks off but just a few minutes later thanks to an unusual sequence of pit stops and yellows the five car was out front and the reporter came back and now he come awesome you're leading the race while i go you just about left and he looked at me said was this all a plan and i said yeah it was all a plan you know it was all luck well what title contender doesn't need a little luck right and rumor has it that terry pays the pit reporters not to talk to his dad during the races but hey there's a much larger issue here labonte's sixth place loudoun finish gave him the winston cup point lead 18 up on dale earnhardt it was the first time in 11 years that labonte had led the chase for the big prize was he overjoyed nah we got the standard mid-season answer well you know it really at that time the season really sure it was good to be on top of the points i'd much rather been leading the points than behind but we still had a lot of races to go yeah sure enough pocono a week later produced a disappointing 16th place finish and a week after that for only the second time in the season terry failed to finish it all he was just barely a victim of that now famous talladega crash that hurt dale earnhardt earnhardt in the four car went right across in front of my car and i thought i thought i had it missed and the tire off dale earnhardt's car came back across the track and i centered it right in the center of my car and it got hung under the front of my car the front tires were off the ground and so when i my first reaction was i miss a wreck oh good and then it's like something's wrong i mean i can't turn the car and it won't stop and i'm just standing on the brakes trying to get it to stop and i'm going down and down across the apron to turn one i thought i'm gonna go straight up the track and hit the wall head on and finally i got it slowed down when i went back up on the apron the tire came out now i thought i was going to turn over because it came out the back of the car just rolled under the car and the car went off in the infield stuck in the mud terry wasn't saying a whole lot and he he said he run over something he didn't know what it was and i didn't know how much damage it was what hurt us more than anything he couldn't drive the car on back around and had to bring the car back on on the truck so we lost a lot of laps fortunately it was getting late in the day because of rain delays and whatnot they were almost ready to call the race and that situation we had to look at we just have to get the car out there as quickly as possible but waiting for the wrecker was only half the problem a pinched oil line was starving the engine with only a few laps left there wasn't time to fix it race went back to green we went out there and ran it and blew the engine up we'd run i think we made two or three laps and gain some positions and that's the key in a championship battle every position every point is critical those two or three laps put the five car in front of those cars totaled in the wreck every one of those positions worth a few points meanwhile teammate gordon won at talladega that day took the trophy took the money and took the point lead but you see 96 was a year in which it was tough to stay on top a week later brickyard 400 attention focused on the injured earnhardt until early in the race the hometown hero the former winner gordon cut a tire and slammed the wall third place for labonte put him back in the driver's seat that was one of the places that we were worried about we were we really put a lot of effort into that place we had not finished in the top ten there before so we wanted to have a good run are there days like that when when third feels like winning it was a win to us yeah that was a win for us indy launched the kellogg's crew on yet another streak four consecutive top five but there was a problem gordon rebounded from his indy crash as dramatically as he bounced off that brickyard wall no matter what terry did jeff did more when the five car ran fifth 24 finished third when labonte took third gordon won and then the kellogg's team stumbled overheating at darlington terry finished 26th while jeff won the race in the space of a month gordon had chopped 130 points off labonte's post indianapolis lead and the 24 team took the lead a week later at dover gordon scored his eighth win of the year third straight on that track while labonte cut two tires lost two laps for each and finished 21st the trend was clear so imagine what terry was thinking a week later in the early laps at martinsville a little 10 cent clip snap out of the back of the master cylinder the clutch master cylinder that and the rod fell in the floorboard when terry came on the radio and said well you guys get ready for a good pit stop because we're going to need it uh the clutch rod's landing in the floor four tires for terry labonte but more importantly one crewman diving in the passenger side window they had the clutch rod assembly ready for when terry came in they're going to have to push him off pit road he's going to try and beat the pace car but he probably won't make it once we decide that we want to try to fix it andy little andy he's the smallest guy we've got on the team you know i'm really glad andy graves only weighs about 140 pounds you know we pick him up i pick him up and we stuff him down and you know terry gets back he got he gets his legs out of the way he gets the steering wheel off the car and we stuff him down in a hole with a pair of vice grips and uh we we fix it you know it's just a it's a we didn't fix it but we put a band-aid on it terry sits in the car they're trying to snap up the window now they're gonna have to push the car away jerry robert presley on his wing labonte rolls down pikro this time he beats the pace car out wow from there labonte drove his heart out finished second a moral victory except the guy who beat him again was jeff gordon i cannot believe we we had ran as good as we did had tough luck like we did overcame that made our lap back up and still finished second to the guy that's leading the points the guy that we're racing in the points here of all people he won the race you know but that was the way it went that's the way it went that's the way it had gone for weeks this thing was shaking down to a team-mate battle for the championship once we got about halfway through the season then then we knew you know it's it's earnhardt and terry uh that that we're gonna have to race and then late in the season i mean we knew that it was terry and you know it's like man we'd have him on the run say martinsville i mean here we are you know going to win the race terry is having problems next thing i know he's second you know and i'm racing him for the win so uh those guys that you know they did an excellent job that terry never quits the team never quits and gordon meanwhile never seemed to quit winning he did it again the following week at north wilkesboro it was his third straight and a remarkable 10th win of the year the kellogg's crew faced a hard reality with four events left jeff had a 111 point lead something had to change charlotte was at a kind of a pivot point for us because we felt like well if we do any better points than what we are right now we wanted to step our program up so we stepped our program up i think we worked harder at charlotte than probably we ever have and really kind of hit on something on our chassis and that thing was fast we should throw the cards where they want to lay you know we'll go for what's out there and that's what we did we went after charlotte and we won it man good enough to labonte the racer the charlotte win was big to labonte the aspiring champion it was huge gordon hit the wall finished 31st blew a 111 point lead and after the celebration and the press box interviews were over rick hendrick gained an insight into labonte the main he gave his driver a ride back to his motorhome his mom his dad his wife and his two kids were standing there and they were kind of hugging each other and and talking about and we were all we were and i was watching that and i and i thought this is like old like a like a friday a saturday night race back in south side virginia or or south boston when the family's in the infield and the guy just won the race and he's standing there you know and i said this i told linda said this is something special look at them i mean they're a unit they're a family they're happy they're together and it's all um kind of in their own quiet kind of way celebrating this thing and uh you know so that was that just that's what terry labonte is all about well rick read that one just right scenes of racetrack togetherness have been part of terry's life for as long as he can remember i grew up around it you know my father was always involved in it and he worked on a friend of his out of stock car and he worked on it so i was kind of always he'd always like let me come out in the garage and had a hammer knock the dents out of the car you know that they raced on saturday night and so when you were how old oh i was little i mean i was five years old and it was a short hop from swinging that hammer to twisting a steering wheel terry's first racer was a quarter we went out there and watched a quarterback they had a quarter track and he said do you think you'd like to have one of these maybe and run it then i'd look and i said yeah i'd like to run that but i wouldn't want to do it with all these people here so he looked at me kind of funny he said what do you mean i said well i want to come back when there's nobody here and drive it and so he did he had a friend that had one you know that we were out there with and they went back out there during the week and they let me run it around the tracks but there was nobody nobody there well that opened the door to a great racing career but hey racing wasn't the only thing the lebanese did together when terry was eight he wanted to play football i support him in football you know went football practice went to all the games finally wound up coaching the team done that for about five years and i never did try and point them in this way whatever they wanted to do was fine with me i just kind of laid down some guidelines for them and be sure they didn't hit the fence on either side of the road we were lucky because i played football for a while youth league football and my parents were involved in that and they supported us whatever we did 100 and bobby was the same way he played soccer well mom and dad were there at the soccer field with him every game so it's just that was just the way our folks were you know whatever we did was fine with them but they just wanted us to do it the best we could and they would support us and do anything they possibly could to help us and they always did that and today as labonte lives in the vast lane of winston cup so many years so many miles so many races away from his texas roots the core of his life has not changed i don't consider my successes whether they win or lose i consider my success successes the attitudes they have and the way they bring up the way they treat their wives and bring up their kids you know i consider that success winning the race is success up your kids ride is something else too clearly family is the foundation of labonte life racing is the family calling and late in 1996 the family cheered as terry labonte headed into a dramatic racing showdown with only three events left he and gordon were neck and neck in an unprecedented teammate battle for the championship the press engulfed the hendrick motorsports camp the most frequently asked question how would these two teams deal with each other how much would they be willing to help each other the most help we get from those guys is we know jeff gordon's going to go to charlotte he's going to run good that kind of sets our priority on what we need to go for we need to go over there and run good also so their ability to be good at what they do makes us have more incentive to want to go out and do better so i say they help us a lot they help us a lot on that aspect round one of the three race shootout went to la body he finished third and rocking him through gordon's uninspired 12. the kellogg's crew appeared to have captured the momentum but phoenix the next to last race changed the picture dramatically just 10 minutes into friday's first practice session terry's throttle hung wide open the kellogg chevy slammed hard into the turn three wall the car was a write-off worse yet the body suffered a painful fracture in his left hand and i thought right then i said i don't believe this i said this this is not good right now i mean this is like the worst thing that could happen right here running for the championship when i got to the racetrack and terry was in the uh hospital and you know that look on your face of of finding your child in an emergency room has just been a wreck i know how it feels now because he was slumped over and he looked up at me and he didn't didn't say anything he just looked back down and and boy his hand was you know it was horrible looking and he was in a lot of pain it's a lot of bad thoughts went through my mind wow are we giving this championship away you know don't let this happen you know this can't happen you know i'm not a very religious person but i am religious enough that that i understand sometimes things are taken out of your hands and you gotta ask for someone else to help you out while i was asking that person to help me out yeah things look grim but this team stayed focused the crew rolled out a top flight backup car the hendrick brain trust in town early for a team member's wedding worked the phones arranging the best possible medical help and also started looking at options when we started talking about a backup driver terry said i don't need to drive and i said well you know you we ought to have somebody standing by he said i'll be okay i mean that and that that was that was really tough because he'd been up we were up that night till like 12 o'clock and then the next day he had to qualify and he we got a shot in his hand and went out and qualified and uh you know typical terry labonte you know he qualifies about 27th and uh the car's off pace about three four tenths he said he said we're okay okay okay indeed terry put on a brave face for his owner but inside he had some serious doubts if you would have told me i'll give you 10th place right now you just go home i took it and left you know but we went out there sunday with our backup car and led the race wound up finishing third and at one point we had a chance to win it so what we turned that into what was almost a disaster you know into a weekend where we left there and we came out ahead of gordon and actually increased our point the key to that performance was an injection of anesthetic that deadened the key nerve in terry's broken hand but here's the real measure of the man while others stood in awe of what he had accomplished terry focused on the bad set of tires he got on the last pit stop he felt they cost him the win terry was hot he said you know we just we just got bad you know we got a bad set of tires there at the end we had that race one you know and i was thinking after all we've been through you know destroying the car thinking that you weren't going to be able to drive or even qualify the car to come out and run third and you still have your points still you i'm i'm happy how about you but uh that's the kind of fire that he's got and he's uh he is he is he's he's got an intensity that nobody sees but when he gets in the car and when it comes down to to having a goat you can see it there and then you can see how this point he is if it doesn't go like he wants it to go it's frustrating because you don't have a chance to win every race every week and that was an opportunity we had to win and we could win that race right there because our car was good enough and that was taken away from us something by something we didn't have any control over and that really makes you mad if you think terry was disappointed consider the frustration of his rival gordon and his crew chief ray everham jeff finished fifth they fell 47 points behind it was kind of an inside joke around here ray brought up the comment that you know they didn't run good you know i don't want to say this but he told jeff he said let a one-armed man and a backup car beat us today and so the stage was set for a dramatic series finale the battleground atlanta motor speedway one of terry's favorite tracks dale jarrod had an outside shot at the title but even the ford fans could see this fight was between the teammates my biggest fear going in the end of the year you know we wanted to be first and second but what i didn't want to happen was lose that chemistry we built in the organization and i could see that if we weren't careful that could come apart so i was a basket case you know so i had a meeting before atlanta i had all the crew chiefs and drivers and all the support people both both team together and we we i said look you know guys there's a reason we're first and second we work together we've got a lot of talent here you guys have done a super job now somebody's going to lose somebody's going to atlanta and somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose all of the drivers got uh jeff and terry got up in that meeting and the crew chiefs and said you need to loosen up and enjoy this thing you worked hard for this you need to enjoy we're fine we're this is going to all work out in fact all was not fun two weeks from phoenix i felt like my hand was a lot better i was showing everybody you won't believe how good my hand is until i made the first lap and i was i knew it was in trouble when the pain returned the team again called in the cavalry a doctor flew in to administer the dreaded anesthetic and terry didn't get much practice but his qualifying effort didn't seem to suffer he put the car inside road two younger brother bobby meanwhile took the pole enabling terry to cut a five-point deal over a lavoni family dinner on saturday night so i told him when i left i said now look i need to lead a lap i'm starting right behind you i said so if we can take off there i said let me leave he said okay you know i mean i knew he would you know and he said yes sir no problem you know and so sure enough we uh we took off there and i was running right behind him he motioned me by so i led a few laps there and motioned him back by you know because his car was running awful good those bonus points were critical because of championship arithmetic if gordon won the race labonte needed eighth or better to quench the crown for diehard and the crew it would be a very long day you know how you know how long the dover race usually is we always say it's really long well the atlanta race is about twice that long i believe i walked five miles on top of that tool box that day the tread plates probably wore off where i wore it off but it was the longest day i have ever gone through in my life that long battle never lacked for drama thanks in part to jeff gordon i'll tell you something broke in the rear it's moving all over the place an inexplicably loose lug nut cost the rainbow warriors two laps changing the championship landscape for a little while if you can't make up those two laps he won't finish the top 20. so that took a lot of pressure off us so then he made those two laps up i thought put the pressure back on us now you know so we we were just continued to stay up there in the top five months today terry's race meanwhile was a microcosm of his season consistency was the key team stayed cool in the face of a potential crisis late in the race it appeared gordon had enough fuel to finish and the body did not we were concerned about that i was real concerned about that i was like mad about it i didn't say nothing but i was like i can't believe this this this can't be right so they told me to conserve fuel gary every time you count we need a little bit of help on fuel well that's kind of hard to do i mean you just can't conserve fuel run and still run 180 miles an hour hey carrick that last time we were running um the gas mileage was about the same when you ran when you're running normal so [Music] saving fuel huh now but it looks like if anybody makes it it'll be one or two terry and they're gonna be they're gonna be really stretching it but that looks like it'll be two of them at the most looks like now we're on four laps sure you think we'll be up four laps short soon that's what it looks like as so often happens a late race caution solved that fuel problem and also created a final bit of drama the five team took the time for a four tire stop briefly falling out of the top ten but running down cars that took only two tires terry easily worked his way back to a title clinching fifth place finish coming off turn four and i think that's when it hit me it's like man i can make it from here i knew i could make it from there you know and uh and we we crossed the line and we won it we were the champions the checkered play comes out and terry labonte has become the 1996 nascar winston cup champion congratulations man come on come on champ yes sir thanks buddy appreciate it thank you man good job awesome champ you guys did a hell of a job great year man of course the championship was only half the lebanese success story in atlanta brother bobby claimed his first win of the year thank goodness we've gone out as a winner here in atlanta we've uh did some uh there's some good things this weekend so that was great and uh terry won the championship and like i said that was the coolest thing i've ever done this was one of the most memorable victory celebrations in the history of the sport a heartwarming family success story the talented sons of bob and martha labonte sharing their moment of victory but by the time the victory parade began the champion was again the master of understatement he climbs up on his float you know and i'm we're standing up there and the champagne's going everywhere and he looks to him he said he said you know this kind of needed i said yeah but uh quite a guy i mean that victory lap with with bobby uh special and you know it's uh he is he is one special man and he is he's touched a lot of people here and a lot of people in racing and it's just really neat to see a guy that maybe everyone thought was over the hill or written off come back and and really do what he did it was good for me just to see the whole of bonnie family there bob and martha and and just to sit for them to sit back and see what they've done you know terry of course we feel very fortunate that he can go out and win a championship and when we hired him three years ago to do this job we felt like he could do the job and we've kind of all set out to kind of prove that point and we did now we got to go and win another championship and i don't know if i can wait 12 years so we need to do it again really soon like next year the year after how's that locked up in atlanta the championship prize was delivered in new york it's every racer's dream to sit at the head table at the waldorf astoria to collect the huge winston bonus and to officially accept the winston cup 1996 it was a memorable season the iron man broke the record then collected the gold and looking back on that wonderful family moment of victory in atlanta the ice man even showed a little emotion to win the championship and him win the race and then do the victory lap that was awesome i mean that was that was really really neat i'll never forget that i can see it now you're it's i still get emotional when i think about it because i don't know why i just do that's just that just doesn't ever happen you know one brother wins a race other guy wins a championship you make the victory lamp it's pretty neat

Channel: TheBenCrazy

Views: 3,854

Keywords: TheBenCrazy, TheBen, TheCrazy, BenCrazy, The, Ben, Crazy, racing, nascar, Old video, tape, VHS, Drivers, 90's, retro, upscaled, restored, VCR, Winston Cup, motorsports, Nascar moments, 1996, Stories, Story, Turning Iron Into Gold, Terry Labonte, 5 car, 1996 Nascar champion, Winston cup, championship

Id: u-8RXDuCCq4

Length: 39min 31sec (2371 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021