Photo Credit: Justin McFarland
Upon receiving the call that A.J. Allmendinger would be running his scheme as a throwback, Bruce Hill said he felt honored. Allmendinger will be carrying the Kansas’ racer’s paint scheme in this year’s Bojangles Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Labor Day Weekend.
“Well, I got a phone call out of the blue and I wondered who was calling from Charlotte,” Hill said. “I had come back in the house. I called her back and she’s been Jennifer Chapple has been great to work with.”
“She is the best. Jenn is the best,” Allmendinger replied.
Hill says he is happy to get back into the sport and be apart of it all over again as it had been 35 years since he had been in the garage area.
“I was thrilled,” Hill said. “I have not been, I was telling her this morning, it’s been 35 years or so since I’ve even been back in the garage area. I was like a lot of guys back then that ran out of money and had to get out of it and couldn’t stand to go back without being involved in it. So, it’s been an experience. It’s been fun. It’s brought back a lot of memories. The paint scheme, I was just thrilled when I saw the car, the paint scheme on the No. 47 Kroger/Kingsford Chevrolet looks great. I was thrilled with that. It just all worked out good. I’ve watched AJ, I didn’t know AJ until this morning, but I’ve watched him run. I think he’s a good aggressive driver and of course I will be watching him more often now.”
Allmendinger was happy to finally meet Hill and get some advice from him as he says any advice is good.
“I mean I will take anything I can get,” Allmendinger said. “It was fun to learn about Bruce and we were just talking walking in here something that is really cool, is the fact that we are both IKF (International Kart Federation) Grand National champions which I thought was pretty awesome. You don’t get a lot of that in the NASCAR series. A lot of the kids come from late models and stuff like that. To be able to meet somebody that is an IKF Grand National champion is a lot of fun.
“For me, I think it’s just pretty special for what NASCAR does for the ‘Throwback’ schemes. Last year it kind of happened so quickly we weren’t able to be involved in it. This year all of our partners, Kroger and Kingsford and on down the line allowed us to do this. To be able to have Bruce’s paint scheme I think is pretty awesome the way NASCAR unveiled that was really cool. We are going to go out there and try to make him proud. I was going to try to grow the mustache like he had back in the day. That thing was sweet by the way, but my baby face doesn’t grow a mustache that way. It would be a lot of fun. It’s cool and try to make Bruce proud. It’s going to be a fun event.
“I thought last year, just seeing all the cars was really cool just to be able for what I grew up watching and maybe some schemes that I had never seen before maybe just seen in a magazine. To be able to share that now is going to be a lot of fun and going to be really special. It is just going to be a fun weekend in Darlington.”
Hill said being back at the track after so long was seeing the people he hasn’t seen in 35 years was great.
“Part of the experience this morning has been seeing people that I haven’t seen for about 35 years,” Hill said. “I ran into Eddie Wood out there right before I met AJ and we talked for a long time. I just hadn’t seen these guys in a long time. It’s been a neat deal just talking about the history of the sport. Some people really follow the history and some maybe not, but there is a lot to it. A lot of people have been involved through the years that a lot of people don’t know about. This is a cool deal. I think Darlington had the foresight to do this and I’ve got to give them credit for that.
“It is actually my favorite track, but I don’t think it would work right now. I don’t think I would last very long. I might be fast.”
Hill said he is proud of how NASCAR has changed. He is specifically shocked by some of the places they run races now for example Kansas Speedway.
“Yeah, it will be really neat,” Hill said. ” I watched the car anyway because of the number. I didn’t know anybody involved with the team which now I do. They’ve definitely got a fan. AJ picked up a hell of a fan here. There is just a lot of history in NASCAR. As far as the way the sport has grown it’s unreal. I was telling somebody this morning that if somebody would have told me back then that there would eventually be a speedway in Kansas I would have told them they needed a straightjacket.
“It was just not going to happen. It was not a national sport. I came from Kansas, they called me a Yankee. I had to laugh I had never been called a Yankee, but I was pretty far North. It has changed a lot. Some good maybe, maybe some they would probably like it better. We had a big grey area on the cars back then. You could get kind of ingenious. You might get caught, but you didn’t get fined. They just made you change it. One of the neatest things about the Darlington thing and I thought of this the other day. I had pretty much the same pit crew my whole rookie year even though they were all volunteer help. We stuck together. We were in battle together and I started calling them to see if they had seen this and what have you.
“Some had, some hadn’t and they were thrilled. I’m trying to get them all together at the Darlington race to get a group picture with AJ’s car. They are thrilled about this. I’ve got a buddy sitting out here that was involved, Mark he came down with me today. He was involved way back then. I’ve got another buddy down in Atlanta he was the old gas man and his nickname was ‘wild man’ and there was a reason for it. I called him the other day. He said ‘well you know I’ve got this congestive heart failure and this COPD going on, but count me in. I will be there dead or alive.’ That is kind of how they feel.
“What attracted me was what AJ was talking about earlier. I was a go-kart racer and raced all over the country and did well in it and wanted to somehow make racing a career. At the time, it was actually me and the guy sitting right there we got to looking around at the different types of racing. Going into like the IndyCar stuff was more of a fit from what I was driving than the big stock cars, but we actually kind of saw maybe where NASCAR might have a pretty good future.
“You could kind of see it even way back then. It was a matter of just trying to stick around until it finally happened. That is how we chose NASCAR. I went down south, rented a shop had a little bitty shop south of Atlanta. Ran a whole rookie season with one full-time employee, volunteer crew, had a lot of guys come by and help and stuck with us and one race car.
“The body man, he stayed busy. As far as the best race, which is kind of ironic, was my first Southern 500. I finished top five, which for that race it was… I was proud of that. Darlington was a driver’s track. You’ve got to get around Darlington. I ran well there because we were down on horsepower to the big teams at a lot of place, Darlington if you got your car working you could make that up. That is what that boiled down to.”
