Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 2, 1992 TAG: 9203020080
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: ROCKINGHAM, N.C. LENGTH: Long
After seeing his car demolished in the Daytona 500, Gibbs spent most of the afternoon at North Carolina Motor Speedway glumly watching his crew trying to solve an engine problem on driver Dale Jarrett's Chevrolet.
Jarrett dropped out of the Goodwrench 500 after 73 laps. He finished 37th in a 40-car field.
"Apparently something happened with the camshaft," Jarrett said. "That's just part of the game."
Said Gibbs: "This is about as tough as you can get, I think. It's certainly a downer. When you're tested, you find out what you're made of, and I think we're being tested now."
\ Davey Allison, who finished second in Sunday's race and holds a 56-point lead in the Winston Cup championship points race, said winner Bill Elliott had him covered.
"Second place isn't bad today," Allison said. "We hung in there, even though we weren't tough enough to do much with Bill."
Harry Gant, who finished third, had similar thoughts.
"It wasn't a bad run for us," Gant said. "We were the first General Motors car, and that says a lot for this team. We knew we couldn't catch them but just tried to salvage the best finish we could."
\ Elliott's victory gave Ford its sixth straight victory in the Winston Cup series.
The streak started with Geoff Bodine's victory last October in the Mello Yello 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Allison then won the AC Delco 500 here in October and won the November race in Phoenix. Mark Martin closed out the 1991 season with a victory for Ford at Atlanta, and Allison won the 1992 season opener at Daytona.
\ The dormant Team III Racing team, tangled in a bankruptcy case involving owner Sam McMahon III, is about to be sold and is expected to field a car at Bristol on April 5, team spokesman Barry Armistead said Sunday.
Team III is being run by the Finley Group, a crisis management company appointed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Charlotte.
Team III is basically intact, with 11 cars, 16 engines and 18 employees, including crew chief Barry Dodson and engine builder Lou LaRosa.
Armistead said the sale of the team is expected to be consummated Wednesday. He said he could not identify the new owner but said that the buyer has sponsorship. He said the new owner and sponsor will be revealed next Sunday at Richmond.
The sale of Team III, which is worth about $1 million, has been approved by the court, Armistead said. Proceeds from the sale will be used to help reduce the debts of the McMahon family.
\ Dale Earnhardt and Ricky Rudd, who finished one-two in last year's Winston Cup championship battle, have struggled in 1992.
Earnhardt had brake problems Sunday and finished 24th, 23 laps down.
Rudd's chances essentially ended when a shock absorber mount broke on his Chevrolet. Moments after that happened, he tangled with Chad Little coming out of turn 2.
That incident on lap 278 "put the icing on the cake," said Rudd, who continued driving his battered car and completed 437 laps, good for 28th place.
"We got up to about seventh early in the race and the Fords were nowhere to be seen," said Rudd. "But we can't holler that the Fords are the guys to beat until we get our act together a little better."
Said Earnhardt: `If we hadn't had that brake problem, we would have been in good shape. We just can't have any luck at all at The Rock. What kind of rock is this anyway? Granite or what? On the good side, we didn't tear up our race car."
\ Rick Mast was encouraged with his 12th-place finish.
"I'm as happy as I can be," said Mast, who completed 489 of the 492 laps. "The car was actually a 10th-place car, but we were off [on the handling] by just a little bit today. But things are really starting to work for this team. The big thing is we're headed in the right direction."
\ Mark Martin "had a respectable run going" in third place until something broke in the rear end of his Ford late in the race, dropping him to a sixth place finish.
Until that problem occurred, "we were in the hunt," Martin said. "We probably weren't going to outrun the first two cars, but we were trying to get to where we could make a run at them."
\ Geoff Bodine, who finished 14th, said he had handling problems until late in the race.
His most eventful moment was when he nearly slammed into the spinning Ford driven by his brother Brett during a minor melee in turn 2 on lap 129.
"Oh, man!" Bodine said. "He did a good job controlling his end of the deal, and I did what I could to keep from hitting him. I stopped and he slid out of the way. That would have been pretty bad to take out both Bodines in one accident."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB