Looking back: 'Mr. September'

By Ben White - NASCAR Illustrated

Friday, November 06, 2009

NASCAR legend Harry Gant celebrates in victory lane at Richmond International Raceway in 1991.

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Photo gallery: A September to remember for NASCAR legend Harry Gant

At the end of the 1990 Cup season, Harry Gant seemed to be on the wrong side of his 18-year career. The 11-time winner limped to a 17th-place finish in the point standings and it wasn’t clear just how much the 50-year-old driver had left.

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But he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot. In September of 1991, he shocked NASCAR by reeling off four straight wins at Darlington, Richmond, Dover and Martinsville.

Though Gant wasn’t the only driver to make four consecutive visits to victory lane, his hot streak earned him the nickname “Mr. September” and secured his place in NASCAR lore.

“It seems like everything just fell into place,” Gant says. “The car was really fast and handled so good. The pit crew did an excellent job getting out of the pits in those races. Everything just clicked. Sometimes it works out that way.”

Andy Petree, Gant’s crew chief at the time, credits one particular chassis built by legendary mechanic Edwin “Banjo” Matthews and a strong engine for their eye-popping run.

“It was just incredible,” Petree says. “We ran the same car and the same engine in all of those races. We were having to turn the car around every week and they were also taking the motor back to the shop to rebuild it. We only had one set of heads for that engine and I remember Leo [Jackson, team owner] saying, ‘Let’s just keep teeing this car up until it loses.’ ”

Before the first of the four wins, Petree sat down with his driver at Darlington and told Gant he wanted to win.

“We had already won at Talladega [that year] and I said, ‘We have only won one race per year and we’ve never won in the second half of a season. We need to buckle down and try to win some races.’ I had no idea he was going to take it that serious,” Petree says.

After dominating Darlington, Gant edged Davey Allison at the first Richmond night race before lapping the entire field at Dover. At Martinsville, Gant rallied from a crash to seal his fourth straight win. He nearly won a fifth race but his brakes failed with nine laps remaining and he finished second behind Dale Earnhardt at North Wilkesboro.

“Even now, I think about how that bleeder valve on the brake line kept us from winning five in a row,” Gant says. “That was probably the best the car had run in all of those races. In the other four that we won, I had to run the car hard.”

Gant won two more races in 1992 but after Petree left and Gant’s team switched from Oldsmobile to Chevrolet in 1993, he never won again.

“Andy went to work for Richard Childress the next year and that really put us back a good bit,” Gant, 69, says. “We would have been really, really good that next year if we had all been able to stay together. Plus, the Oldsmobile went out and we had to switch to a Chevrolet Lumina. Having to make that change took away a lot of the advantage we had with that car.”

This story originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of NASCAR Illustrated.