Bristol, Tenn. ? Rusty Wallace and Alan Kulwicki forever will be linked to Bristol Motor Speedway.

Wallace has nine victories there, including one 70 hours after Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash en route to the track.

“Bristol was special to Alan Kulwicki and Alan was special to Bristol,” Wallace said. “He was always a big factor in every race he ran there. Appropriately, they’ve even named one of their grandstands after him.”

Kulwicki, the reigning Winston Cup champion, and three others died when their small plane crashed near Tri-City Airport in April 1993.

Racing went on that weekend and Wallace dominated the event, leading 376 of 500 laps. He celebrated the win with a “Polish Victory Lap” as a tribute to Kulwicki, driving around the track in reverse direction as was Kulwicki’s trademark.

Wallace will make another backward lap Saturday night, kicking off NASCAR’s Victory Lap tribute to longtime series sponsor R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in the parade laps before the Sharpie 500.

The tribute pairs a still-active past Winston Cup champion with an inactive or late champion, so Wallace will run his parade laps with a replica of Kulwicki’s old car.

“Everybody knows that Bristol is my favorite track and I think it was Alan’s, too,” Wallace said. “I think when we take the show car and my car out there and do the Polish victory lap, I think it’ll really bring the house down.”

Wallace is Bristol’s all-time winningest driver. In 39 races on the .533-mile bullring, Wallace has nine wins, 20 top-fives, 27 top-10s, seven poles and $1,800,197 in career winnings.

He won his first Winston Cup race there in 1986, but is in the longest drought of his career, now at 84 races without a win.

“Bristol’s always been like a home track to me,” Wallace said. “We’ve always had so much success there, we have such a big following of race fans in the area and having the auto dealerships just down the road from the place, it all adds up to making it like a homecoming every time we go to Bristol.”