Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303210129
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON, GA. LENGTH: Long
SHEPHERD SURPRISED WINNER
If you were surprised that Morgan Shepherd won the Motorcraft 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, don't give it a second thought. He was more surprised that anyone.As the checkered flag flew and the Wood Brothers crew began dancing and hugging and slapping hands on pit road, Shepherd came on the radio and asked, "Who won? Who won?"
"You did!" crew chief Eddie Wood shouted. "You did!"
"Huh?"
Shepherd is brighter than this conversation might indicate.
It's just that his radio was not working well. And his alternator was broken. And when he was leading the race on lap 259, a cut tire knocked him way back. And after that, there was no way he should have been able to finish without running out of gas.
What was working, Morgan?
"The driver."
The driver was working. The engine was working. The gas mileage on his Ford Thunderbird was terrific. And the car was handling fine.
That is why Shepherd, despite all his problems, beat second-place Ernie Irvan by 17.38 seconds.
Rusty Wallace was third. And he thought he was the winner.
On top of that, rookie Jeff Gordon seemed to have the race in hand with 25 laps to go. He finished fourth, a lap down.
This was, to be sure, a weird race. It was one of those races in which the best cars weren't as good as they seemed and some of the others were better than they looked.
That helps explain why Shepherd, who was a lot better than he looked Saturday, did not acknowledge his victory until it was about 25 seconds old.
"I didn't know I was leading the race when it all came down to it," Shepherd said. "The crew was getting so excited, but I couldn't understand them. To tell you the truth, the radio wasn't working real good.
"I seen them throw me the checkered flag, but I still wouldn't accept it. I didn't accept it until I was running down the backstretch."
Meanwhile, Wallace was shocked to learn he lost.
"Gordon is leading and he gets sideways and hits the wall and I pass him and I think I'm winning the race," Wallace said. "I thought I had won the race. But at the checkered flag, I looked down and the No. 21 [Wood Brothers] crew is jumping up and down.
"I said, `What's going on here?' So I looked at the scoreboard. And I said, `Damn.' I had no idea the No. 21 car [of Shepherd] and the No. 4 car [of Irvan] were there [ahead of him].
"It's just the craziest thing in the world."
Although no one seemed to notice, Shepherd did claim to have the fastest car Saturday. The key to his victory, though, was squeezing 69 laps out of his last tank of gas. Wood estimated that the 22-gallon tank had perhaps two-tenths of a gallon left.
"To start with, we weren't supposed to make it," Wood said. "By our calculations, we were supposed to come up a half-gallon short.
"But we kept talking about it and talking about it, trying to make it better. And we told Morgan, `Slow down, slow down, slow down.' "
Shepherd said: "They started coaching me with about 30 laps to go. They started talking about going all the way and not stopping. They asked me to back off and try to save gas.
"So I started easing out of it before I got to the corners. And instead of jumping into the gas off the corners, I eased into the accelerator.
"[The fuel pressure] never did fluctuate. We were always in good shape."
The gas crisis was Shepherd's second-worst problem. The worst was cutting his right front tire coming off turn 4 on lap 259 while leading.
"He ran over something," Wood said. "I don't know what it was, but it was something big."
The gash in the tire was eight or nine inches long. Shepherd almost hit the wall. He had to slow immediately and do another full lap before coming to the pits. That cost him about three quarters of a lap.
"I learned a long time ago to not ever say never, to not ever give up," said Shepherd. "But I thought our hopes of winning the race were gone. At [that] time, we were just going to settle for whatever we could get."
After Shepherd's setback, Gordon muscled past Wallace and took the lead.
Working a high groove next to the outside wall, Gordon moved out to a 20-car length lead over Wallace by lap 300.
"Does the car feel good, buddy?" crew chief Ray Evernham asked on the radio.
"No!" Gordon replied. "It's tight. It's real tight right in the middle of the corners."
But Gordon knew he was stuck with his ill-handling car. And unlike Shepherd, he needed a final stop for gas to complete the race.
That happened on lap 315 of the 328-lap race. When Gordon overshot his pit and had to be pushed back into the stall, a planned two-second gas-and-go stop became a nine-second nightmare. Shepherd and Irvan went sailing by.
Gordon's car still was tight and with six laps to go, he took the high groove too high and collided with the outside wall between turns 3 and 4.
"I could turn the steering wheel as far left as I possibly could and the car still would go straight," Gordon said. "I messed up, but I can't complain at all about today. We salvaged a top-five finish, and we can't be too unhappy with that."
For Shepherd, it was his fourth career victory. Three of them have been at Atlanta.
"I think they should run more races at Atlanta," he said. "I don't think two races a year is enough."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING