Alan Kulwicki era
Terry's team did not run a race in 1984, but would return for another part time effort in 1985. Terry hired Alan Kulwicki, a driver in the ASA Series who had also made several starts in the Busch Series. The team switched their engine supplier to Ford and fielded cars #32 and #38 for the Wisconsin native in five races toward the end of the season, with a best finish of thirteenth at Charlotte. Terry then decided to go full time for the first time in 1986, with Kulwicki piloting the #32 and sponsorship from the restaurant chain Quincy's Steakhouse. After Kulwicki failed to qualify for two of the first three races, including the Daytona 500, Terry renumbered the car to #35 for the spring Atlanta race. Kulwicki would record his best career finish thus far shortly thereafter at Martinsville, finishing fourth. However, the team failed to qualify at Talladega, then ran poorly at Dover and Charlotte. After sitting out the spring races at Riverside and Pocono, Kulwicki returned at Michigan. He then avenged his DNQ at Daytona by running tenth at the 4th of July race, and would later record a top ten at Bristol.
After that race, Kulwicki and Terry agreed to have the driver purchase the team outright, and the newly renamed AK Racing moved its operations to Kannapolis, North Carolina. With the team now under his stewardship, Kulwicki ran the last nine races with eight finishes inside the top twenty. His best finish was seventh in the fall Dover race, with the worst being 27th in the season finale at Riverside. Despite missing six races and finishing behind Michael Waltrip, who ran all but one race (the Daytona 500, which like Kulwicki he failed to qualify for) in the series points, Kulwicki's performance was enough to earn him Rookie of the Year honors for 1986.
1987-90
For 1987, Kulwicki would renumber his car to #7, which he would run for the rest of his career. After Quincy's left as sponsor, Kulwicki signed on to carry Zerex Antifreeze on the car going forward. He won three pole positions and finished 15th in points. In 1988, Kulwicki won his first race career race at Phoenix International Raceway. In celebration, he drove the now-famous Polish Victory Lap. He won once more in 1990 at North Carolina Speedway and finished in the top ten in points for the first time, but lost his sponsorship after the season once Zerex's parent company decided to focus solely on promoting its Valvoline brand of lubricants.
1991
After rejecting overtures from Junior Johnson to drive for his team in the offseason, Kulwicki attempted to sign with Kraft General Foods for 1991, where he would carry its Maxwell House Coffee brand on the #7. Johnson, who had also tried to sign Kulwicki in 1990 but was unable to, retaliated by usurping him and taking the Maxwell House sponsorship for himself. This left Kulwicki sponsorless as the season got underway, and although he was able to gain sponsorship from the U.S. Army for the Daytona 500 as a promotional effort surrounding Operation Desert Storm, it was only for one race and the team ran unsponsored for the next two races.
Then, at the spring race at Atlanta, Kulwicki caught a much needed break. Atlanta was regarded as the home racetrack for the Hooters restaurant chain, and they had sponsored Mark Stahl's #82 Ford for the first three races of the season. Stahl had yet to qualify for a race, and did not do so at Atlanta, either. Kulwicki, meanwhile, qualified the unsponsored #7 on the pole, and Hooters approached him for a one race deal to put their logos on his car. Kulwicki finished in eighth that day, and shortly thereafter both sides agreed to terms on a long-term sponsorship. By the end of the season, Kulwicki was fourteenth in the standings and won the night race at Bristol; although he finished four places lower in the standings, the team had secure sponsorship again and 1992 would prove to be even more lucrative.
1992
In that season, Kulwicki won at Bristol in the spring and then won his first superspeedway race when he won at Pocono in the summer. He became a championship contender, challenging Davey Allison and Bill Elliott (who, incidentally, had been signed by the same Junior Johnson who Kulwicki had declined to race for the year earlier) for most of the season and staying somewhat consistent while both of his chief competitors, who recorded more victories, also dealt with mechanical issues and accidents. Entering the season finale at Atlanta, Kulwicki trailed Allison by thirty points. Feeling he was truly the biggest underdog among the drivers who had a chance to win the Winston Cup that afternoon (in addition, Kyle Petty, Harry Gant, and Mark Martin were also mathematically eligible), Kulwicki got permission from NASCAR and Ford to place stickers over the first two letters in the car’s branding on the front grille, which caused it to read "Underbird".
In the race, Martin, Petty, and Gant fell out of contention early. Then, Allison crashed on lap 254 and suffered severe damage to his car, leaving Kulwicki and Elliott to determine the championship for themselves. Kulwicki, who had been battling gearbox issues all day, managed to clinch the five point bonus for leading the most laps in the race; he led exactly one more lap than Elliott, who entered the race ten points behind Kulwicki in the standings. Kulwicki came to the finish in second place behind the race-winning Elliott, clinching the championship and becoming the first owner-driver since Richard Petty, who was making his final start that afternoon, won his last championship in 1979.
1993
Kulwicki started out the season with three top tens and two top fives, two of which were on the short tracks of Rockingham and Richmond. These were bookended by a 26th place finish in the Daytona 500, where he fell three laps down, and a 36th place finish in his return to Atlanta, where the "Underbird" car (which the team brought to the track) crashed out. The team finished sixth at Darlington, then began heading to Bristol, where Kulwicki was the defending race winner.
Blountville
On Thursday, April 1, Kulwicki was returning from a promotional appearance at a Hooters restaurant on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was scheduled to fly from Knoxville to Tri-Cities Regional Airport in Blountville, Tennessee that night, and boarded a Swearingen Merlin III twin-engine turboprop he leased from Hooters owner Bob Brooks. Two Hooters executives were also aboard the plane.
The plane departed Knoxville at 8:58 PM local time and was cleared for landing thirty minutes later. One minute after that, radio contact was lost with the pilot, and shortly after that, the aircraft began a rapid descent that was later determined to have been caused by icing conditions that triggered shutdown of its engines. It crashed and burst into flames nearly six miles outside of the airport, killing Kulwicki and the three others on board.
After Kulwicki's death
As per his will, Kulwicki left the team to his father, Gerald. The elder Kulwicki did not have any interest in running the team, so after consulting with his attorney, the team was placed under the stewardship of Felix Sabates, the owner of Team SABCO, while a buyer was sought. Crew chief Paul Andrews and the crew informed Gerald Kulwicki that they had no intention of stopping their work, as his son would have wanted them to continue as normal. Therefore, the day following the race at Bristol, the AK Racing shop reopened for business and began preparing for the team's intended return at Martinsville in two weeks' time (the Cup Series was off for Easter weekend). As far as the driving duties were concerned, Kulwicki had decided that, if anything was to happen that would result in him being forced to give up the seat, he wanted Jimmy Hensley, the 1992 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, to replace him in the #7.
Almost immediately, several problems arose. At the time, Hooters was also sponsoring Loy Allen Jr. in both the ARCA and Busch Series. Representatives from the company, including Hooters chief executive Bob Brooks, as well as Allen and his father Loy Sr., met with Sabates and Gerald Kulwicki for five hours on April 12, 1993. Brooks broached the idea of having Allen take over the car, with Sabates rejecting it believing that Allen could not perform well in the #7. This infuriated Allen's father, who accused Sabates of wanting to sabotage his son's career; Sabates countered by saying Allen had not developed enough as a driver, citing as an example his hiring of Kenny Wallace that season to drive for his own team after years of running in lower series to develop. He said the only way Allen would be the driver was if his father made him an offer to by the team, which Sabates would be willing to accept if it was sufficient enough.
Hooters responded by claiming that Sabates' actions were in violation of the contract the two sides had signed after the Atlanta spring race in 1991. The contract stated that if Kulwicki was forced out of the #7 for any reason, Hooters would have final approval over any replacement driver he might have considered to take over the car. Sabates countered by saying that the clause only allowed Hooters a "reasonable refusal" of a replacement. Hooters then suggested that the team not run any races for the remainder of the year, which was rejected as it would have denied them a significant appearance fee of over $200,000. They also suggested that either Brooks or the team's race crew purchase the team, which Sabates would not consider. Meanwhile, Sabates had been fielding offers for the team but found that many of the potential buyers were not interested in buying the team and running it, instead only being interested in its real estate.
He did, however, receive eleven offers to keep the team running, four of which were from drivers who were looking to follow in Kulwicki's footsteps and become owner drivers. Bill Elliott, the runner-up to Kulwicki in 1992, had expressed interest, as had Ricky Rudd, whose contract to drive for Hendrick Motorsports in the #5 Tide Chevrolet would be expiring at the end of the season. Two of the Bodine brothers were also interested; Brett had been driving the #26 Quaker State Ford for King Racing, while Geoff, a former series champion, was driving for Bud Moore Engineering in the #15 Motorcraft Ford. Sabates informed Brooks of these potential sales in an attempt to keep Hooters as sponsor, only to be told that none of those four drivers would be good representatives of the brand.
On top of all of that, there had been lingering tension between Kulwicki and Hooters executives before his passing. The contract the two sides had agreed after the 1991 spring Atlanta race was for the rest of the 1991 season and the three that followed. Negotiations for a renewal were not going particularly well, and it was reported that Kulwicki was courting Anheuser-Busch to move its Budweiser sponsorship from Junior Johnson's team to his for 1994 and beyond. In addition, Hooters felt that once their arrangement would expire, they would not be able to pay Kulwicki enough to keep their spot as his primary sponsor as they felt other sponsors would flock to AK Racing and offer more money to carry their branding on the #7.
With Sabates not willing to budge on Allen, the tension from negotitating, and Brooks' grief over losing his son in the plane crash playing factors, Hooters announced that it would be pulling their sponsorship from the team after Bristol on April 12. They did so without informing Sabates first, as he found out secondhand through a local reporter. He later said that Hooters' decision had a significant impact on the team's value, and as a ripple effect it caused Rudd to withdraw his interest. (Rudd still managed to start his own team for 1994, bringing his sponsor with him and launching Rudd Performance Motorsports.)
The team ran the next race at North Wilkesboro with Bojangles Fried Chicken as sponsor; over the course of the rest of the season, the team would carry sponsorship from The Family Channel, Matchbox Toys, Hanes, Purolator Filters, Cellular One, the U.S. Bobsled Federation, and the Carolina Opry, with The Family Channel eventually becoming the primary for most of the second half of the season.
On May 12, it was announced that the winning bid for the team was made by Geoff Bodine. Arrangements were made for him to run the team's day-to-day operations while continuing to drive the #15 car in the interim. As mentioned above, he was able to secure the Family Channel's sponsorship for much of the rest of the season, and his work with the U.S. bobsled team helped secure its sponsorship for several races toward the end of the season. With the exception of the road course events, which were run by Tommy Kendall, Hensley continued to run in the #7 until the fall race at Dover, scoring his best finish at the Bristol night race.
After that, having secured his release from Moore's team, Bodine assumed the role of owner-driver and ran the rest of the season. In his first race in his new role, Bodine finished in 30th place. His best finish would be in the fall Rockingham race that the #7 had finished twelfth in the year before; Bodine came home in tenth, recording his eighth top ten of the season across both Moore's team and his new team. The team ran its final race as AK Racing at the season finale at Atlanta; Bodine, who had finished third in the 1992 event, finished 39th after a crash.
Aftermath
Bodine would rename the team as Geoff Bodine Racing for 1994 and beyond, procuring sponsorship from Exide Batteries after he lost the Family Channel sponsorship to Roush Racing's #16 Ford. He would record three victories in 1994, but inconsistency dropped him to 17th in the final standings. Bodine drove for his operation until 1997, when he sold it to Checkers Drive-In founder Jim Mattei. The team was later sold again in 2000 to Jim Smith, who merged it with his Ultra Motorsports operation, and then again in 2005 to Robby Gordon, who changed the team's name to Robby Gordon Motorsports and ran it as an owner-driver until 2012 when he shut down his NASCAR operations.
Paul Andrews would stay with the #7 until the end of the 1996 season. He then went over to be the crew chief for Michael Kranefuss' #37 Ford driven by Jeremy Mayfield, then followed both of them to Penske Racing the next year after Roger Penske bought Kranefuss' team. In 1999 he was hired away from Penske by Dale Earnhardt to be the crew chief for his team's #1 Chevrolet, where he guided Steve Park to his two career Winston Cup victories. In 2002, Andrews replaced Frank Stoddard as Jeff Burton's crew chief for the #99 Ford, but was let go after four races in 2004. He then worked with Kyle Petty and Bobby Labonte at Petty Enterprises, Michael Waltrip at his own owner-driver team, and last worked with Scott Speed in 2012.
Tony Gibson, another member of Kulwicki's championship team winning crew, would find more success after he left Kulwicki. He was a part of Jeff Gordon's last three championship teams as a car chief, then eventually became a crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., Ryan Newman, and Kurt Busch, leading them all to race victories.
All of the three other drivers who sought to buy the team after Kulwicki's death would eventually join him as owner drivers. Ricky Rudd would run his team as an owner-driver until the 1999 season, after which he lost his longtime sponsor Tide; he then closed the team and was signed to replace Kenny Irwin Jr. in the #28 Texaco-Havoline Ford for Robert Yates Racing, where he would run from 2000 until 2002.
While Brett Bodine would not become an owner-driver until 1996, he and Junior Johnson made an arrangement for 1995 where Bodine would take over for Bill Elliott in the #11 car while running the team's operations. This would lead to Bodine buying Johnson out at the end of the season and starting Brett Bodine Racing, where he fielded the #11 until 2003; coincidentally, Hooters would sign to sponsor the car for its final season.
Elliott, meanwhile, would buy into Charles Hardy's race team for 1995 and later purchase Hardy's stake the next year. The team would become Bill Elliott Racing, fielding the #94 Ford sponsored by McDonald's until the end of the 2000 season. After that, Elliott sold the operation to Ray Evernham, who had started his own team that season in a part-time fashion in preparation for a full time launch in 2001 as the then-flagship team for Dodge's return to NASCAR; Elliott would drive for Evernham full-time until 2003, then temporarily resurrected his own team in 2004 on a limited basis before closing it again.
As far as Loy Allen Jr. was concerned, Hooters did indeed sponsor him in the Winston Cup Series beginning in 1994 with his ride with Tri-Star Motorsports in the #19 Ford. After he qualified in the pole for the Daytona 500, he failed to qualify for twelve of the next thirty races and finished 39th in points with a best finish of eleventh at the Coca-Cola 600. Allen and Hooters then moved over to replace McDonald's and Jimmy Spencer in Junior Johnson's #27 Ford for 1995, but Allen would be released after five races and replaced by Elton Sawyer for most of the remainder of the season. Allen would then suffer an injury in 1996 at Rockingham that derailed his racing career, and he was out of NASCAR after the 1999 season.
