By MIKE COX
It’s 1993 all over again.
That’s the first thing I thought as the vague news came in on Thursday of a plane crash in North Carolina. It happened, then reports started to trickle in that it was Greg Biffle’s plane. Speaking with co-workers, I said that maybe he’d let someone borrow it. My thought, silly as it is because I knew people still perished, was that the former NASCAR driver did not. I hoped.
As the news came in to the contrary, starting with random accounts on social media and then credible sources, it all took me back to the awful year for NASCAR that was 1993.
The previous season ended with what many say was the greatest race in Cup Series history, the 1992 Hooters 500 at Atlanta. Davey Allison was the points leader, with Alan Kulwicki and Bill Elliott close behind. Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt were close enough to where a crash could launch them to the top spot. It was also the last race in Richard Petty’s legendary career, and the first for Jeff Gordon. Elliott won the race, with Kulwicki second, after Allison crashed. Kulwicki ended up the champion, and Davey—my favorite—so frustratingly close to the title in a year where the Robert Yates team was either winning or crashing… and on one famous occasion, both.
This was a time when manufacturers’ rivalries were huge. Most fans were either for Ford or Chevy. My homeroom class one year included a bunch of Ford guys, which I was, and the teacher was all Earnhardt. Some weeks following a big win, it was, “How ’bout them FORDS?” Others, it was taking the lumps as a Chevy, the hated Earnhardt, or perhaps a crazy Pontiac or other random car won. It was fun.
Until April 1, 1993. I was 14 years old, working through an endless “clean your room” project that’s typical for a young teenager while listening to local radio. Then came breaking news… this is literally new. The Tri-Cities, in my mind, didn’t have much breaking news. Emanating from my radio was an ominous message, something like: “A Hooters plane has crashed in Blountville near Tri-Cities Airport. We will have more information as it is available.”
Now, I was already a teenager who knew a thing or two about air disasters. I watched the Challenger explode on national television, with a teacher aboard. I still remember watching the intricate detail NBC News experts used in describing the Pan Am Flight 103 plane that crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, an incident that frankly scared the fool out of me.
But those were far away. This was close.
I told my radio, “Guys, this is a VERY BAD April Fool’s joke.” And with that, I kept dropping stuff into a trash bag. If only. I was 14, you know.
Amazingly, I don’t remember that much detail on the day of Davey Allison’s plane crash, even though he was my favorite driver. I do know what my siblings have told me, that I was inconsolable for a long time that summer. In the 32 years and six months since July 12, 1993, my assignments at school, papers, notebooks, walls, and eventually cars, computers and office spaces, all have 28 somewhere… the number of that Texaco/Havoline car he drove.
I’ve been known to stop by Texaco gas stations to fuel up on trips through the South, since there are none in Northeast Tennessee anymore. My cars all had Havoline in them until I started owning Toyotas. In 2015, I visited the Talladega/Texaco Walk of Fame and Davey Allison Memorial, which is a wonderful place. I highly recommend it if you’re going to a race there. They’ve been adding new drivers to the Walk of Fame, which is fantastic.
I read Peter Golenbock’s book, Miracle: Bobby Allison and the Saga of the Alabama Gang, which contained way more detail on Davey’s helicopter crash than I could’ve accepted as a teenager, and it was pretty disturbing as an adult, quite frankly. The book mentions—by name—the man who trained Davey in how to fly a helicopter, and to some degree about that man’s demise in almost the same type of Hughes helicopter, trying to land the same way.
That eventually led to more research. As I pursued my degree in meteorology, the weather conditions surrounding the Kulwicki plane crash interested me. I learned from NTSB information on both crashes that they were both due to pilot error. Kulwicki was a passenger when his plane crashed, with ice being a factor. Davey tried to land downwind in a confined space and was less than 2 feet from safety.
Through my teenage years and well into my 30s, I remembered Davey Allison’s crashes the last couple years. Dover, Bristol, The Winston… Pocono. I was mad at Darrell Waltrip for two decades over that one. I wondered if Kyle Petty ever thought about the crash at the end of The Winston in 1992 led to what happened in the helicopter crash the next summer… and maybe that was why I’d never heard him talk about it. But if that book is to be believed, it didn’t matter one iota.
As we fast forward the tape back to December 18, 2025, the loss of Greg Biffle, his family, and everyone else on that plane in North Carolina is without a doubt a terrible tragedy. It’s especially horrific to happen one week before Christmas. I keep all fans, friends and relatives in my prayers.
The trickle of news coming in after such an event has been similar to 1993, but accelerated. When Kulwicki’s crash happened, initial reports came in that it was a Hooters plane. Eventually we learned who was on it, then we learned who wasn’t on it, and the grieving began. ESPN hosted a half-hour tribute show about Davey Allison in July of that year with the great Bob Jenkins quoting Bible verses and Benny Parsons, Jerry Punch and others offering words about him or offering wisdom of various sorts. Benny was the master of ceremonies for the Walk of Fame in Talladega for years until he passed away. That’s a fact I learned there in 2015 and forever endears “BP” into my sports fandom forever as one of my favorites.
December 18 was a terrible day for NASCAR fans. I’ve lived through many. As far as off-track tragedies in motor racing go, it felt like 1993 all over again. As the sport itself goes through major changes after the recent lawsuit, now it has to navigate tragedy as well. NASCAR will endure, and everyone will move through this. But expect 16s (and Greg’s other car/truck numbers) to be all around this coming season. The sport will do that right.
Mike Cox is Staff Meteorologist and Director of Radio Operations for Appalachian Radio Group in Bluff City. Follow WXMC on X and Instagram.