Tim Richmond

Richmond grew up in Ashland, Ohio. His parents, Al and Evelyn (née Warner) Richmond, met in the course of their work. Al was a welder for pipe construction companies and Evelyn was a field office manager. Noticing that highway crews had to dig up the entire highway to lay pipe, Al designed a machine to bore underneath the highway. To market this invention, he founded Richmond Manufacturing, which eventually exported machines worldwide. Richmond grew up in a well-to-do family, and was sometimes therefore treated differently by his classmates, so his parents enrolled him in Miami Military Academy in Miami, Florida. During his years in Miami, Tim and his mother moved to Florida and his father stayed in Ohio. While home in Ohio over a summer break, he met local drag racer Raymond Beadle through lifelong friend Fred Miller. Miami Military Academy named him Athlete of the Year in 1970. Richmond's other interests included flying, and he earned his private pilot license at age 16. Following high school graduation, Richmond attended Ashland University for about one year before dropping out. ==Racing career==

Open wheel racing A friend of Richmond's father co-owned a sprint car and Richmond joined the team as a crew member for Dave Shoemaker. In 1976, 21-year-old Richmond took the car onto Lakeville Speedway at Lakeville, Ohio for some practice laps. "Somebody put a stopwatch on me," Richmond said. "I was running laps faster than Dave had been. It was the first time I had ever driven a race car." The car was unique in that it featured 3 wheels on the right side for added grip on oval tracks, but only 1 wheel on the center of the left side, along with a left-offset aluminum Chevrolet ZL-1 V8 engine. Richmond was able to lap the test track at over 200 MPH, but found doing so in a car with no left front wheel slightly unnerving. The car was tested, but outlawed before it could actually be raced. During practice for the 1980 Indianapolis 500, Richmond set the fastest unofficial practice speed of the month, besting even race favorite Johnny Rutherford in the vaunted Chaparral. His hopes for the pole were dashed with a crash in morning practice on the first day of qualifying. After repairs he qualified nineteenth for the race. That season, he competed in five events, with two DNFs (did not finish) and three twelfth place finishes. Overall, he finished the 1980 season 41st in points. He had his first career top-ten finish, taking tenth place at Bristol Motor Speedway, soon followed by a sixth at Talladega and a seventh-place finish at Texas World Speedway. For the following event, Richmond was hired to drive J.D. Stacy's No. 2 car. In his first race for the team, Richmond earned his first career top-five finish when he placed fifth at Darlington Raceway. Returning to Pocono, he finished second, before winning his first race on the road course at Riverside, California the following week. For the season, Richmond had twelve top-tens, two wins, and one pole to finish 26th in points. Esquire magazine named Richmond as one of "the best of the new generation" in 1984. Richmond finished the 1984 season 12th in points, with eleven finishes in the top ten and in six in the top-five. In the Busch Series, he qualified at the pole position in the two races he entered, and won the Charlotte race. The National Motorsports Press Association named him Co-Driver of the Year with Earnhardt after Richmond accumulated 13 top 5 finishes and 16 in the top 10. He had a career-best third place finish in points after winning seven events in 1986, in what was his last full NASCAR season. ==Illness and death==

Richmond fell ill the day after the 1986 NASCAR annual banquet during a promotional trip to New York City. He was not well enough to begin the 1987 NASCAR season despite lengthy hospitalization in Cleveland Media later reported that he had Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Although Richmond attempted a comeback in 1988, NASCAR suspended him for testing positive for banned substances. Richmond then withdrew to his family's condo in Florida, receiving few visitors except for immediate family and a few friends, including Dr. Jerry Punch and A.J. Foyt. There were by then rumors of HIV and AIDS, which he denied. ESPN sent a get-well-soon card to Richmond when it aired the July 1989 NASCAR race at Pocono. The television network showed highlights of Richmond's victory at the track from 1986. "Tim had Hollywood good looks and the charisma of Tom Cruise," said his friend Dr. Jerry Punch. "There he was in victory lane with the team all around him and beauty queens hanging all over him. It was important for the people at the hospital to see Tim the way he really was, when he was healthy and handsome and vital, not the way he was as they saw him every day in the hospital. There were tears everywhere." He was buried in Ashland, Ohio. Richmond's physician, Dr. David Dodson, said: "There's no way of knowing who that woman was. Tim was a celebrity with a lot of charisma, a handsome guy. He naturally attracted a lot of women." Punch later claimed that more than 90 drivers and personnel underwent HIV testing in the wake of Richmond's death. ==Legacy==

In 1990, a few months after Richmond's death, Washington television station WJLA-TV and reporter Roberta Baskin reported that Dr. Forest Tennant, who was then the National Football League's drug adviser, "falsified drug tests" that ultimately helped shorten Richmond's NASCAR career. Baskin reported that sealed court documents and interviews showed Tennant and NASCAR used "allegedly false drug-test results in 1988 to bar Richmond from racing". Baskin also stated that NASCAR had targeted Richmond, requesting that Tennant establish a substance-abuse policy with Richmond in mind. A series of drug tests and falsely reported positive results shortly before the 1988 Daytona 500 kept Richmond from driving in what was to have been his last big race...", the report said. The New York Times published the findings. While neither Tennant nor NASCAR supplied an official response at the time, NASCAR did confirm that they were seeking to replace Tennant. The Ashland County Sports Hall of Fame inducted Richmond in their second class in 1996. In 1998, NASCAR named Richmond one of its 50 greatest drivers of all time. The race at Mansfield was co-promoted by Mattioli's son Joseph Mattioli III. The documentary film Tim Richmond: To The Limit was produced as part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series with a premiere date of October 19, 2010. In 2018, Dalton Sargeant drove the No. 25 truck for GMS Racing in honor of Richmond. From 2019 to 2022, an ARCA Menards Series driver who shares the same name ran identical paint schemes with his cars to Richmond's No. 25 when he drove for Hendrick Motorsports. In June 2019, current Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman announced in the Darlington Throwback Race he would run a Tim Richmond throwback to the No. 25 Folgers car. ==Motorsports career results==

American open wheel CART Series (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) USAC Champ Car series Indianapolis 500 NASCAR (key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.) Winston Cup Series Daytona 500 Busch Series ==References==