The stock car crowd didn't make it on to the new Phoenix racing surface until January 1968 when Don White captured a 250-mile event on the road course. It took 20 years for NASCAR's Cup division to return the desert oval raceway with the running of the Checker 500 in 1988. Long a hot bed of racing, NASCAR's top division had competed at the old Arizona State Fairgrounds track in the 1950s with top stars Buck Baker, Marshall Teague and Tim Flock all winning on the one-mile oval there. Click here for NASCAR tickets. The 1988 PIR event proved to be historic not only for the return of NASCAR to the Southwest, but also marked the first career NASCAR Cup victory for Alan Kulwicki.

Kulwicki, a mechanical engineer, apprenticed for his Cup career on the Wisconsin short tracks and the American Speed Association before running his first Cup event at Richmond, Virginia, in the fall of 1985.

Kulwicki competed in 5 of 28 Cup events in 1985 and collected $10,290 for his efforts. His season-best finish--13th--came at Charlotte (now Lowe's) Motor Speedway in the Miller High Life 500.

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In 1986, Kulwicki gained notoriety for racing hard with significantly less funding than most of his competitors. Acting as both team owner and driver, Kulwicki made it through the season with using basically one car--the No. 35 Quincy's Steakhouse Ford Thunderbird dubbed "Old Sirloin"--and a couple of engines. For his efforts, Kulwicki was named Rookie of the Year in the Cup division.

With more funding in 1987, Kulwicki began to make waves on the Cup tour by winning three poles, including the top spot for both Richmond races. He finished a respectable 15th in the season championship chase and earned $369,889 in prize money.

The 1988 season proved to be Kulwicki's breakthrough year. Driving his own No. 7 Zerex-sponsored Ford Thunderbird, dubbed the "Underbird," Kulwicki scored six Top-5 finishes heading into the inaugural Phoenix Cup event. It seemed like just a matter of time before the driven Greenfield, Wisconsin, native would break into the win column.

In qualifying for the 1988 Checker 500, Geoff Bodine proved to be the class of the field by winning the pole position in his No. 5 Levi Garrett-sponsored Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet with a lap 123.203 miles per hour.

On race day, a crowd estimated at 60,000 looked on as Bodine, Kulwicki and 41 other drivers began competing for the first-ever Cup checkered flag at Phoenix. Kulwicki, who started 21st, was a distant second to race leader Ricky Rudd late in the event. Rudd, who dominated the race by leading a whopping 183 laps, saw the win slip away when the engine expired in his Kenny Bernstein-owned Buick. That gave Kulwicki, who led a total of 41 laps in the race, the top spot with just 12 laps remaining.

At the finish, it was Kulwicki by a wide margin--18.5 seconds over Terry Labonte, Davey Allison, Bill Elliott and Rusty Wallace. The event was slowed six times for cautions, totaling 52 of the 312 laps. Kulwicki's margin of victory is still the largest in the history of the Cup division at Phoenix. Ironically, his winning average speed of 90.457 miles per hour is still the slowest in the history of the division at the track.

Slow or fast, Kulwicki didn't care. After years of trying, the independent driver had won his first Cup race. He celebrated by initiating the "Polish Victory Lap" in which he circled the track in the opposite direction, window net down, while saluting the fans in the ceremonial ritual he would become famous for.

Eventually, Kulwicki won five Cup races in his short career. His life ended tragically, though, when his private plane crashed en route to the spring race at Bristol, Tennessee, on April 1, 1993.

In all, Kulwicki competed in 207 Cup events and finished in the Top-5 38 times and the Top-10 on 75 occasions. Always a good qualifier, Kulwicki scored 24 poles in his career, six of them in his 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup championship-winning season.

Since Kulwicki's win in the inaugural Cup race at Phoenix in 1988, 13 other drivers have visited Victory Lane at Phoenix. Included in that group are Davey Allison, Terry Labonte, Rusty Wallace, Ricky Rudd, Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett, Jeff Burton, Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, Bobby Hamilton, Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Earnhardt, Jr. etched his name into the record books last fall when he won the Checker Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway for the second-straight season. The two victories put Earnhardt, Jr. in the same company as Allison (1991-1992) and Burton (2000-2001) as the only drivers to win back-to-back Cup races at Phoenix.

Earnhardt Jr. started last year's Phoenix Cup clash from the 14th position and led 118 of the 312 circuits. He secured the victory when he roared by Jeff Gordon and into the lead for good with 11 laps remaining.

Earnhardt collected $274,503 for his winning effort, more than two-thirds the $368,630 total purse that was up for grabs in the first Cup race at Phoenix in 1988. A race-record 11 cautions slowed the 2004 event for 63 of the 315 laps with Earnhardt's average winning speed a leisurely 94.848 miles per hour.

Can Earnhardt, Jr. become the first driver to win three Cup races in a row at Phoenix? If not, who will become the first driver to win a NASCAR Nextel Cup night race at the Phoenix oval?

Whatever the outcome and despite the glitter and spectacle of the first-ever night race in the desert, the 2005 Subway Fresh 500 will be hard-pressed to match the excitement of the 1988 Phoenix Cup event when a hard-working, underdog racer from Wisconsin scored his first NASCAR Cup victory and burned the event into our racing consciousness forever with his "Polish Victory Lap."