Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103170076
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Zeller
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Long
Earnhardt's one-lap qualifying speed of 175.351 mph Saturday was nearly a full mile per hour faster than Alan Kulwicki's pole-winning lap Friday.
Kulwicki won the pole for today's race, which starts at 1 p.m., with a lap speed of 174.413 mph.
Earnhardt's qualifying speed was particularly impressive because he ran using a race engine and race setup on his Chevy Lumina instead of a qualifying engine and setup, which are designed to be faster.
"We didn't even tape up the car all the way today," car owner Richard Childress said. "It's our race engine and we didn't want to hurt it."
To make their cars faster for qualification runs, Winston Cup teams routinely tape over the openings in the radiator grille to improve aerodynamics and heat the engine faster.
"We could have run that fast [Friday] if the engine hadn't messed up," Earnhardt said. "We're ready to race."
Earnhardt was unable to qualify Friday after his crew found a small hole in the cylinder head of his engine and a hasty, temporary repair job failed to hold up when he took the car on the track.
Despite having the top speed in qualifying, Earnhardt must start the race in 21st position. The first 20 spots were locked up during Friday's session.
\ Derrike Cope's 1991 Chevy Blazer, which was stolen from the parking lot of his hotel Thursday night or Friday morning, was recovered by police after a short chase Friday evening in College Park, a suburb of Atlanta.
The chase started at about 5:50 p.m. Friday when a police officer identified the General Motors-owned vehicle as stolen and tried to stop it, College Park police officer Eddie Atkins said. The chase ended about six blocks after it started when the vehicle stopped and backed up into a police car.
A 16-year-old fled from the Blazer into a nearby housing project but was quickly arrested, Atkins said.
The Blazer received rear-end damage, but Cope was more concerned about the golf clubs in the back, which were missing when police recovered the vehicle.
"I hate it that the whole thing happened," Cope said, "but I'm really upset that my golf clubs were stolen. The driver I got in the Busch Clash drawing at Daytona was in my golf bag, and I'd really been hitting the ball good with it. I've been driving close to 300 yards with it."
Cope had used the clubs to help his four-man team win the pre-race charity golf tournament Thursday with an 11-under-par 61.
\ Greg Trammell of Dawsonville, Ga., a protege of Bill Elliott, won the ARCA 500K race Saturday despite overshooting his pits once and getting a stop-and-go penalty for jumping a green flag.
"I just can't believe it," he said. "We had so much trouble. It just seems like a miracle that I'm here right now.
Trammell, 24, who won on the pole in his Melling Bill Elliott Ford, passed Ken Ragan on the 178th lap of the 204-lap race and was ahead by 22 seconds at the checkered flag. He won $15,825 for his first victory in the ARCA series. Ragan finished second.
Veteran Charlie Glotzbach dominated most of the race, leading for 140 laps, but retired with ignition failure after 167 laps.
There was one minor accident, and no one was injured.
\ NASCAR has announced that it will put new restrictions on the engine restrictor plates for the May 5 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.
To keep lap speeds under 200 mph, NASCAR officials have decided to reduce the size of the carburetor restrictor plate from 29/32 of an inch to seven-eighths of an inch, a reduction of 1/32 of an inch.
\ Two-time Trans Am champion Wally Dallenbach Jr. makes his Winston Cup stock car racing debut today, starting 33rd in Junie Donlavey's Ford Thunderbird.
"I hope if I can get to the 250-mile mark on Sunday, I might have some of this figured out by then," Dallenbach said after qualifying Friday.
Dallenbach made test runs in a Jack Roush Thunderbird at Atlanta in 1988 and Sears Point in 1989, but this is his first NASCAR race.
Dallenbach, the son of retired Indy car star Wally Dallenbach, had never experienced one-at-a-time qualifying until Friday.
"Boy, I'm glad that's over with," he said. "That's the first time I ever qualified like that. I'm used to having a half hour or so and going out with a bunch of other cars and just doing it."
\ Fred Lorenzen, stock car's golden boy in the 1960s, will be honored by Atlanta Motor Speedway and Ford Motor Company before today's race.
Lorenzen, who won 26 NASCAR Grand National (now Winston Cup) races in a career that stretched from 1960 through 1972, is scheduled to take a lap around the track in an exact replica of his 410-horsepower Holman-Moody 1963 Ford.
Stock car racing today is "`about the same, it's just very refined now," Lorenzen said. "It's come a long way since I got out of it, though."
Lorenzen is 55, two years older than Richard Petty, and is a real estate broker in Elmhurst, Ill.
Lorenzen said Earnhardt is the best driver he's ever seen. "He's going to be hard to beat for a long time," Lorenzen said. "He's good because of everyone around him. Richard Childress is to him like Ralph Moody was to me. It takes a mechanical brain to run the driver. It's perfectionism."
Lorenzen won the Atlanta race three years in a row (1962-64).
by CNB