Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 15, 1993 TAG: 9311150112
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON, GA. LENGTH: Long
Long after the 1993 Winston Cup season has been recorded in the NASCAR record books, Rusty Wallace will remember that his 10 victories in 1993 - including the Hooters 500 - failed to do as much to win the Winston Cup championship as two vicious crashes did to lose it.
Wallace did everything he could Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway to keep Dale Earnhardt from winning his sixth title. Wallace led the most laps - 189 of 328 - and he won the race by 2.62 seconds over Ricky Rudd. Darrell Waltrip was third, followed by Bill Elliott and Dick Trickle.
But Wallace's victory wasn't enough. And before the race started, it was a foregone conclusion that it wouldn't be enough, because Earnhardt had too big a lead. On Sunday, Earnhardt did what he had done in all but two events: He completed the race.
Earnhardt finished 10th, one lap down, but won championship No. 6 - and a Winston bonus of $1.25 million - by 80 points over Wallace.
"I would have never thought I'd win 10 races and not win the championship, but it happens," Wallace said. "Sure, I'd like to win this thing, but you can't win it with five DNFs."
The races Wallace did not finish were the difference.
While Wallace failed to finish five races, chiefly because of his horrendous crashes at Daytona and Talladega, Earnhardt completed all but 169 of the 11,977 miles of NASCAR Winston Cup racing in 1993.
What makes this fact even more impressive is that Earnhardt had fewer unfinished miles in races entered than the late Alan Kulwicki, who only ran five of the season's 30 races before he was killed in an April 1 plane crash, and the late Davey Allison, who ran 16 races before he died after a July 12 helicopter crash.
Kulwicki, for the record, failed to finish 306 miles; Allison didn't finish 270 miles. And Wallace saw his title hopes slip away during the 744 race miles that his Pontiac Grand Prix was not on the track.
"To win six championships is really unbelievable to me," Earnhardt said. "I look back at what we've done and what we've accomplished. Yet today, it's unbelievable. It's really impressive what someone from Kannapolis [N.C.] or a small town can do and accomplish."
Earnhardt's title-winning moment came at 2:31 p.m. on lap 141. Give unheralded T.W. Taylor the assist.
Taylor slammed into the wall in turn one and became the eighth driver to drop out of the race. That mishap officially clinched the title for Earnhardt, who only needed to finish 34th in the 42-car field if Wallace won.
"I want to talk to Dale about that," Taylor said before sitting down to an earlier-than-expected lasagna dinner in the infield cafeteria. "I hope he owes me a few driving tips. That's the thing I need the most."
Wallace knew Taylor's crash ended the championship contest. "I pretty well kept a count in my head: `Well, there goes two, and there goes two more and there goes two more,' " he said. "And when I saw another one [Taylor] stick it up in the corner, I said, `Well, there it goes.' "
A few laps after Taylor's crash, when Earnhardt's crew told him the title was his, "I got a little emotional there for a lap, and then I said, `Heck, I've got to win this race.' Then I went out there and messed up."
He messed up on lap 225 a couple of seconds after blowing past Wallace to take the lead going into the third turn. The only trouble was that Earnhardt was going far too fast to make the turn. He ran into Greg Sacks' car and sent it into the wall.
"I got a little too aggressive, a little too crazy," Earnhardt said. "I got into trouble, and then I had to ride. No matter whether you've won six championships or not, that don't make you King Kong going into the corners."
Although Wallace dominated the race, Darrell Waltrip made it an exciting finish when he tried to outlast the field on gas mileage. While everyone else pitted for a splash of fuel with a handful of laps remaining, Waltrip stayed on the track.
"I thought I was leading the race and I looked at the scoreboard and said, `Where the heck did he come from?' " Wallace said.
Wallace hunted down Waltrip and passed him with four laps to go. On the last lap, Waltrip ran out of gas, but he coasted across the finish line in third.
"There was nothing to do but go for it," Waltrip said. "We knew we couldn't make it any other way."
Wallace's 10 victories were the most in a season since Elliott won 11 in 1985.
But the killer blows for Wallace's title hopes came in the season-opening Daytona 500, when he tumbled down the backstretch while running among the leaders and finished 32nd, and at Talladega in May, when he flipped viciously at the checkered flag.
"Well I look back at that, and the Daytona thing, I lost a lot of points there," Wallace said. "At Talladega, I didn't lose a lot there. But I got my wrist broke."
The broken wrist affected his driving ability just enough to help knock him out of the May races at Sears Point and at Charlotte, where he crashed and "couldn't gather it back up because of that stupid brace I had on my hand."
While Wallace was winning the race and Earnhardt the title, Rudd was completing his season in ironic fashion by winning the manufacturer's championship for Chevrolet, the auto maker he is leaving to run Fords in 1994.
In the Chevy-Ford battle, whichever make finished ahead of the other Sunday won the manufacturer's title. And when Rudd's Chevy passed Elliott's Ford on lap 273, Chevy was on its way to its 10th title in 11 seasons. But Rudd had mixed feelings.
"Well it's a strange deal," Rudd said. "Chevrolet basically doesn't know I exist. They [General Motors] stepped up and gave Bill Davis $400,000 [to switch from Ford to Pontiac], but they wouldn't give me a thing. We were the No. 1 Chevrolet last year and clinched the title this year, but they still don't know we exist. All in all, I'm happy to go."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB