Ridley will always be grateful for the way the team owner and team treated him during their three years together.
“Junie was a neat guy,” Ridley said. “Whatever happened, happened. He never got upset about anything. If we wrecked, we wrecked but we didn’t do that all that much. If something happened, no one got upset. We just went on to the next deal. It wasn’t just Junie. The whole crew that worked for him was that way, too. The three years I drove for him was some of the best times of my life.”
Donlavey was known for his laid-back, easy-going gentlemanly mannerisms and for never getting rattled under any conditions.
Dick Brooks, driver of the No. 90 Fords from 1975 through ’78, was known for telling one story pertaining to Donlavey’s tight racing budget.
“We were at Talladega one year and we pitted for a set of tires under caution and went back out,” Brooks said. “I called back to Junie on the radio and said, ‘Junie, the tires I just got won’t grab anything at all and I’m all over the place out here. These tires are terrible.’ There was dead silence on the radio for a full minute and Junie came back on the radio and said, ‘I don’t see how they could be too bad; Cale (Yarborough) just ran a bunch of laps with them at 205 (mph) and they were fine for him.’”
Brooks also drove Donlavey Racing’s No. 90 Ford in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1976. It was one of two cars NASCAR sent to the endurance-racing classic. Except for personal purchases, NASCAR covered all expenses; packing and shipping of cars and equipment, roundtrip air and ground transportation to France, and lodging and meals.
“Those two cars were in a class of their own in the 24 Hours of Le Mans,” said Randy Hallman, a highly respected motorsports writer for the Richmond-Times Dispatch. “This was part of Bill France’s (founder of NASCAR) hopes of increasing the stock car racing’s world presence among other forms of motorsports. They were there for a week and a half.”
Donlavey was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2007 as well as the National Motorsports Press Ass’n Hall of Fame in 2009. He was also given many other honors, including the 1992 Smokey Yunick Award, which recognizes lifetime achievement in auto racing, and the STP Richard Petty Achievement Award in 1998.
“I never drove for Junie, but I did talk with him about that and he told me I was too good of a driver to ever get into his car,” said Donnie Allison, who won 10 Cup Series races. “I never heard him say a bad word about anyone and I never heard anyone say a bad word about him. I believe the Good Lord had a place for him in racing and that wasn’t in victory lane, even though he did go there once in a Cup race in 1981. But Junie was OK with that. His place in the sport was so much bigger because everyone loved Junie.
“He was truly a racer’s racer.”
Ironically, Donlavey was 90 years old when he died on June 9, 2014.