Melling Racing
Encyclopedia
Melling Racing was a NASCAR
team that ran from 1982 to 2002. The team won the 1988 championship with driver Bill Elliott
.
first became involved in NASCAR when his company Melling Tool sponsored Benny Parsons
in 1979. The team began in 1982 with driver Bill Elliott
by sponsoring Elliott's #9 Ford that season. The team ran 21 races that season and had nine top-tens and won the pole for the Champion Spark Plug 400.
In 1983
, Elliott won his first race at the season-ending race at Riverside International Raceway
and finished third in points. The following season, Coors became the team's new sponsor and Melling Racing responded with three wins with Elliott and another third-place points finish. 1985
marked a career-high eleven wins for Elliott and Melling, as well over $2 million in earnings, but a string of four finishes outside of the top-ten late in the season caused them to finish second in the series standings. The team slipped to sixth in points and had only two wins the following year, but started off 1987 with a win at the Daytona 500
, on top of five additional wins that season. Melling Racing won the championship in 1988 with Elliott after getting six wins and 22 top-ten finishes.
The team was unable to defend its championship in 1989 after Elliott was injured early in the season and Jody Ridley
served as a substitute driver, although Elliott was still able win three times. In 1990, Elliott had only one victory but still moved to fourth in points. After the sponsorship changed to Coors Light for the 1991 season, Elliott and Melling only won at Daytona and fell to eleventh in points, causing him and Coors to part ways with Melling at the end of the year.
Without sponsorship, Melling ran Phil Parsons
for the first two races in the 1992 season and had a top-ten finish at the Daytona 500. After that, the team ran a part-time schedule with Dorsey Schroeder
, Dave Madar III, and Bill Schmitt driving, before Chad Little
finished the season. The team continued running a very part-time schedule with Little and Greg Sacks
driving at the beginning of the season, along with P. J. Jones in the second half of the season. After Joe Ruttman
drove at Daytona, Rich Bickle
drove for ten races and had only one top-20 finish, causing him to be replaced by Parsons later on. The team finally got a new sponsor in Spam
when Lake Speed
signed with the team in 1995. He had two top-ten finishes and finished 23rd in points running a full-time schedule. After only one top-ten in 1996, Spam left the team.
Due to a lack of sponsorship, the team skipped races, and ran a total of 26 events with Speed driving 25 and Jeff Davis running at Sears Point
. Melling was able to return full-time in 1998 when Cartoon Network
became the team's new sponsor. While practicing at Sears Point, Speed was involved a wreck and had to be replaced by Butch Gilliland
that weekend while he recuperated. After returning for a final race at New Hampshire, Speed retired from driving and was replaced immediately by rookie Jerry Nadeau
, who had a best finish of 15th at Watkins Glen International
. Nadeau returned for the 1999 season, with Turner Broadcasting taking a larger role in its sponsorship duties, advertising TBS, Dinner and a Movie
, WCW
, and the Atlanta Braves
in addition to their Cartoon Network sponsorship. Midway through the season, Harry Melling died due to a heart attack, and his son Mark took over ownership of the team. At Watkins Glen that season, Nadeau gave Melling Racing its first top-five since 1991 with a fifth-place finish, but left after the following week to replace Ernie Irvan
at MB2 Motorsports
. For the rest of the season, Bickle, Steve Grissom
, and Stacy Compton
all shared the ride.
Compton was hired as the driver for 2000 with Kodiak/Tobacco
replacing Cartoon and Turner as the sponsor. In his rookie season, Compton was unable to finish higher than 16th, had to miss the goracing.com 500 due to injuries, and was replaced by Bobby Hillin, Jr.
for that race. In 2001, Melling yielded the #9 to Evernham Motorsports
, who was fielding entries for Bill Elliott. In exchange, Melling Racing switched to the #92 and ran Dodge Intrepid
s with support from Evernham. Compton qualified on the outside pole at the season-opening Daytona 500 and finished 10th in the race and later won the pole at both Talladega
races that year. After finishing 33rd at the end of the season, Compton and Cougar left Melling.
Melling began the season at Daytona with Robert Pressley
driving, finishing 22nd in the Brand Source Dodge after a late race engine failure. The team did not run until the summer Michigan race with Compton finishing 30th. The team's final attempt came at Talladega with Pressley, but they did not qualify. In the team's final race, Stacy Compton led three laps.
During the 2003 season, the team closed for good and sold its shop to Arnold Motorsports
.
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing is a family-owned and -operated business venture that sanctions and governs multiple auto racing sports events. It was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1947–48. As of 2009, the CEO for the company is Brian France, grandson of the late Bill France Sr...
team that ran from 1982 to 2002. The team won the 1988 championship with driver Bill Elliott
Bill Elliott
William Clyde "Bill" Elliott , also known as Awesome Bill from Dawsonville or Million Dollar Bill, is a part-time driver and former champion of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Elliott was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America on August 15, 2007. He won the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup...
.
History
Owner Harry MellingHarry Melling (NASCAR)
Harry Melling was the team owner of Melling Racing, which won the 1988 NASCAR championship with Bill Elliott.- Background :...
first became involved in NASCAR when his company Melling Tool sponsored Benny Parsons
Benny Parsons
Benjamin Stewart Parsons was an American NASCAR driver, and later an announcer/analyst on TBS, ESPN, NBC and TNT...
in 1979. The team began in 1982 with driver Bill Elliott
Bill Elliott
William Clyde "Bill" Elliott , also known as Awesome Bill from Dawsonville or Million Dollar Bill, is a part-time driver and former champion of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Elliott was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America on August 15, 2007. He won the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup...
by sponsoring Elliott's #9 Ford that season. The team ran 21 races that season and had nine top-tens and won the pole for the Champion Spark Plug 400.
In 1983
1983 NASCAR Winston Cup Series
The 1983 NASCAR Winston Cup Season began on Sunday February 20 and ended on Sunday November 20. Bobby Allison was Winston Cup champion at the end of the season finishing 47 points ahead of Darrell Waltrip...
, Elliott won his first race at the season-ending race at Riverside International Raceway
Riverside International Raceway
Riverside International Raceway was a race track or road course in Riverside, California. The track was in operation from September 22, 1957, to July 2, 1989...
and finished third in points. The following season, Coors became the team's new sponsor and Melling Racing responded with three wins with Elliott and another third-place points finish. 1985
1985 NASCAR Winston Cup Series
The 1985 NASCAR Winston Cup Season began on Sunday February 10 and ended on Sunday November 17. Darrell Waltrip, driving for Junior Johnson, was crowned champion at the end of the season...
marked a career-high eleven wins for Elliott and Melling, as well over $2 million in earnings, but a string of four finishes outside of the top-ten late in the season caused them to finish second in the series standings. The team slipped to sixth in points and had only two wins the following year, but started off 1987 with a win at the Daytona 500
Daytona 500
The Daytona 500 is a -long NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race held annually at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is one of four restrictor plate races on the Cup schedule....
, on top of five additional wins that season. Melling Racing won the championship in 1988 with Elliott after getting six wins and 22 top-ten finishes.
Jody Ridley
Jody Ridley is a former NASCAR driver. He won the 1980 NASCAR Winston Cup Rookie of the Year award and one race at Dover International Speedway the next year, the only Cup victory for Donlavey Racing....
served as a substitute driver, although Elliott was still able win three times. In 1990, Elliott had only one victory but still moved to fourth in points. After the sponsorship changed to Coors Light for the 1991 season, Elliott and Melling only won at Daytona and fell to eleventh in points, causing him and Coors to part ways with Melling at the end of the year.
Without sponsorship, Melling ran Phil Parsons
Phil Parsons
Phil Parsons , is a former NASCAR driver and owner of MSRP Motorsports . He is also the younger brother of the late 1973 Winston Cup champion and former NBC/TNT commentator Benny Parsons. Years later, he returned to the Busch Series, where he enjoyed modest success...
for the first two races in the 1992 season and had a top-ten finish at the Daytona 500. After that, the team ran a part-time schedule with Dorsey Schroeder
Dorsey Schroeder
Dorsey Schroeder is a race car driver born February 5, 1953 in Kirkwood, Missouri. Dorsey currently lives in Florida with his wife Kim and daughter Carissa Schroeder from his second marriage...
, Dave Madar III, and Bill Schmitt driving, before Chad Little
Chad Little
Chad Little is a former NASCAR driver. He holds a degree in marketing from Washington State University, and a law degree from Gonzaga University...
finished the season. The team continued running a very part-time schedule with Little and Greg Sacks
Greg Sacks
Greg Sacks is a NASCAR driver. He is married to his wife Vicky and lives in Ormond Beach, Florida. Together they had three children: Paul, Brian, and Rachel. He and his sons are partners in Grand Touring Vodka.Sacks has spent most of his career as a Research & Development driver for many NASCAR...
driving at the beginning of the season, along with P. J. Jones in the second half of the season. After Joe Ruttman
Joe Ruttman
Joe Ruttman , is an American former racecar driver. He currently lives in Franklin, Tenn. He actively competed in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series, Nationwide Series, and Camping World Truck Series and is a 13 time winner in the Truck Series, the seventh most wins by any driver in the Truck...
drove at Daytona, Rich Bickle
Rich Bickle
Richard "Rich" Bickle, Jr. is a journeyman NASCAR driver. Bickle, who has never completed a full season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, has a long history in short track racing.-Early career:...
drove for ten races and had only one top-20 finish, causing him to be replaced by Parsons later on. The team finally got a new sponsor in Spam
Spam (food)
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, first introduced in 1937. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative...
when Lake Speed
Lake Speed
-Background:Lake was named after the best friend of his father, Bob Lake. Lake's father Leland L. Speed took office as the Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi in 1948, the same year that he was born. He started his racing career at the age of thirteen racing karts, much to the displeasure of his family...
signed with the team in 1995. He had two top-ten finishes and finished 23rd in points running a full-time schedule. After only one top-ten in 1996, Spam left the team.
Due to a lack of sponsorship, the team skipped races, and ran a total of 26 events with Speed driving 25 and Jeff Davis running at Sears Point
Infineon Raceway
Infineon Raceway, formerly Sears Point Raceway, is a road course and drag strip located on the landform known as Sears Point in the southern Sonoma Mountains near Sonoma, California, USA. The course is a complex series of twists and turns that go up and down the hills...
. Melling was able to return full-time in 1998 when Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
became the team's new sponsor. While practicing at Sears Point, Speed was involved a wreck and had to be replaced by Butch Gilliland
Butch Gilliland
Butch Gilliland is a former NASCAR Winston Cup and Craftsman Truck Series driver from California. He was the 1997 Winston West Series champion and based on the west coast. All of his 10 Cup starts came at either Infineon Raceway or Phoenix International Raceway and all 12 of his Truck Series...
that weekend while he recuperated. After returning for a final race at New Hampshire, Speed retired from driving and was replaced immediately by rookie Jerry Nadeau
Jerry Nadeau
Jerry Nadeau is a retired race car driver from Danbury, Connecticut. Nadeau competed in the 1994 Barber Dodge Pro Series and the 1996 Formula Opel Euroseries.-NASCAR career:Nadeau's NASCAR career began in 1995 in the Busch Series...
, who had a best finish of 15th at Watkins Glen International
Watkins Glen International
Watkins Glen International is an auto race track located near Watkins Glen, New York, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. The facility is owned by International Speedway Corporation...
. Nadeau returned for the 1999 season, with Turner Broadcasting taking a larger role in its sponsorship duties, advertising TBS, Dinner and a Movie
Dinner and a Movie
Dinner and a Movie is a cooking and entertainment television program produced in the U.S. by TBS from 1995 to 2011.Each episode included a movie and the preparation of a creative dinner to go with the theme of the movie, generally via a pun...
, WCW
World Championship Wrestling
World Championship Wrestling, Inc. was an American professional wrestling promotion which existed from 1988 to 2001. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it began as a regional promotion affiliated with the National Wrestling Alliance , named Jim Crockett Promotions until November 1988, when Ted Turner and...
, and the Atlanta Braves
Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves are a professional baseball club based in Atlanta, Georgia. The Braves are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League. The Braves have played in Turner Field since 1997....
in addition to their Cartoon Network sponsorship. Midway through the season, Harry Melling died due to a heart attack, and his son Mark took over ownership of the team. At Watkins Glen that season, Nadeau gave Melling Racing its first top-five since 1991 with a fifth-place finish, but left after the following week to replace Ernie Irvan
Ernie Irvan
Virgil Earnest Irvan, more commonly known as Ernie Irvan is a former race driver in NASCAR. He is best remembered for his comeback after a serious head injury at Michigan International Speedway which earned him numerous awards and respect from his fellow drivers...
at MB2 Motorsports
MB2 Motorsports
Ginn Racing was a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series team based in Mooresville, North Carolina, which is near Charlotte. Its principal owners in its final season, 2007, were 80% Bobby Ginn and 20% Jay Frye. The Valvoline corporation co-owned the #10 car with the principal owners from 2001 to 2005...
. For the rest of the season, Bickle, Steve Grissom
Steve Grissom
Steve Grissom is a NASCAR driver. Grissom was the 1993 Busch Series champion and has eleven Busch wins in 185 starts. He turned down a scholarship to play quarterback at the University of Alabama to focus a career on racing....
, and Stacy Compton
Stacy Compton
Stacy Compton is a NASCAR team owner and former driver. He currently owns Turn One Racing. He is a former co-owner of Bobby Hamilton Racing-Virginia in the Craftsman Truck Series, and is a former racing analyst for ESPN full-time...
all shared the ride.
Compton was hired as the driver for 2000 with Kodiak/Tobacco
Kodiak tobacco
Kodiak is a brand of dipping tobacco manufactured by American Snuff Company, a U.S. smokeless tobacco manufacturer that also produces the Grizzly tobacco and Levi Garrett brands...
replacing Cartoon and Turner as the sponsor. In his rookie season, Compton was unable to finish higher than 16th, had to miss the goracing.com 500 due to injuries, and was replaced by Bobby Hillin, Jr.
Bobby Hillin, Jr.
Bobby Hillin, Jr. , is an American stock car racecar driver. Hillin's love for racing began when he was a young boy watching his father's USAC Sprint and Indy cars race across the Midwest. At the age of 13, after a short period of racing go-karts and motocross, Hillin drove his first race car in...
for that race. In 2001, Melling yielded the #9 to Evernham Motorsports
Evernham Motorsports
Richard Petty Motorsports is a two-car NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race team owned by seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty, Douglas G. Bergeron and financial company Medallion Financial. The team was founded as Evernham Motorsports in 2000, was renamed Gillett Evernham Motorsports in 2007 after...
, who was fielding entries for Bill Elliott. In exchange, Melling Racing switched to the #92 and ran Dodge Intrepid
Dodge Intrepid
The Dodge Intrepid is a large four-door, full-size, front-wheel drive sedan car model that was produced for model years 1993 to 2004. It was mechanically related to the Chrysler Concorde, Chrysler LHS, Chrysler New Yorker, Eagle Vision, and also the 300M sedans...
s with support from Evernham. Compton qualified on the outside pole at the season-opening Daytona 500 and finished 10th in the race and later won the pole at both Talladega
Talladega Superspeedway
Talladega Superspeedway is a motorsports complex located north of Talladega, Alabama, United States. It is located on the former Anniston Air Force Base just outside the small city of Lincoln. It was constructed by International Speedway Corporation, a business controlled by the France Family, in...
races that year. After finishing 33rd at the end of the season, Compton and Cougar left Melling.
Melling began the season at Daytona with Robert Pressley
Robert Pressley
Robert Pressley is a former NASCAR driver who is now the promoter at Kingsport Speedway.-Beginnings:...
driving, finishing 22nd in the Brand Source Dodge after a late race engine failure. The team did not run until the summer Michigan race with Compton finishing 30th. The team's final attempt came at Talladega with Pressley, but they did not qualify. In the team's final race, Stacy Compton led three laps.
During the 2003 season, the team closed for good and sold its shop to Arnold Motorsports
Arnold Motorsports
Arnold Motorsports was a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series team owned by Don Arnold. 1983 Winston Cup champion Bobby Allison was the Vice President of operations and also served a consultant. The team debuted in 2003 as the #79 car , with All-Pro driver Billy Bigley Jr. driving, the team originally planned...
.