Harry Gant’s NASCAR career was like a bottle of fine wine with Sonoma: it got better with age.
Gant, a native of Taylorsville, N.C., didn’t make his first NASCAR Cup Series start until 1973 at age 33. He didn’t contest his first full-time Cup season until 1979.
But at age 86, Gant is set to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday thanks to a legendary career from a late bloomer.
How Harry Gant became a NASCAR superstar
In 1981, Gant moved to the No. 33 Skoal Bandit team, owned by Hal Needham and actor Burt Reynolds of “Smokey and the Bandit” fame. Thus, the infamous “Skoal Bandit” No. 33 car was born, and Gant was the face of it.
In 1982, at age 42, Gant earned his first Cup Series win at Martinsville. The rest, as they say, is history.
From 1982 to 1990, Gant won 11 Cup Series races and finished top-10 in the championship five times, including a runner-up finish to Terry Labonte in 1984.
But it was 1991 — Gant’s age 51 season — that propelled him to superstardom.
Gant was consistent as usual through the first 20 events of 1991. He sat 10th in the points standings and had snagged a win at Talladega earlier in the year.
But that fall, Gant put together a dominant four-race stretch that saw him win four races in a row and earn the nickname “Mr. September.”
Gant and the No. 33 team dusted the Winston Cup field at Darlington, Richmond, Dover and Martinsville, with Gant leading 41.4 percent of the laps in those races. He then led 350 of 400 at North Wilkesboro, but finished runner-up to come up just shy of five consecutive wins.
Gant’s late-season surge vaulted him to fourth in the final standings in 1991. He won two more races in 1992 and finished fourth in the standings again — the final time he would finish top-10 in the championship. His final career win at Michigan in August 1992 came when Gant was 52 years old, and he remains the oldest winner of a Cup Series race to this day.
Gant retired after the 1994 season with 474 Cup Series starts, 18 wins and 208 top-10 finishes to his name.
Gant was no spring chicken on the racetrack, but his wisdom often carried him to the front of the pack and eventually led him to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.