Rusty said to Clint "you've been out to I-70, have you heard of this guy Terry Bivins?" Jeff Hammond - "I worked with Terry as his Crew Chief"... Rusty " Terry drove into turn 1, went up the wall, over the race track, flew outside the track - they threw the red flag - everybody went out there, the ambulance, Terry was nowhere to be found... landed on his wheels, drove around the racetrack and was waiting at the pit gate, trying to get back in!" Jeff Hammond - "Correct me if I'm wrong, it was 'Terrible Terry', wasn't it?
Bivins compiled a legendary resume at Kansas City area tracks before making 28 starts in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series from 1975-77, posting one top-five and eight top-10 finishes.
Bivins posted a very respectable average finish of 16.86 over his Cup career, but an incident at the end of the 1976 season, when he was bypassed as the rookie of the year, was a huge factor in his decision to leave NASCAR.
"I won it,'' Bivins said. "They announced after the Ontario (Calif.) race that I won rookie of the year. But the guy that was sponsoring Skip Manning had trillions of dollars -- a big pocket book -- and he wanted Manning to get rookie because he had spent all this money on it.''
Manning made nine more starts in '76 than Bivins (27-18), but Bivins had the only top-five finish and had two more top-10 finishes (six to four).
Bivins had an average finish of 15.94 while Manning's average finish was 18.2. Manning earned $45,820 and Bivins $44.070.
"The guy that ran Skip Manning's outfit, I guess he went and told NASCAR, "If Skip can't win that rookie of the year I'm taking all my stuff and going to USAC next year. (NASCAR) was short of cars back then and they were needing every car and hated to lose a guy with that kind of backing, so they called me up in two weeks and said due to some technicality they had given it to Skip Manning and I finished second.''
http://www.3sistersracing.com/driver_terrybivins.htm
