Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302150100
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Long
ANGRY PETTY SILENT
A horde of television reporters crowded around Kyle Petty's hauler after he crashed in the Daytona 500 on Sunday, but he wasn't talking. Not now. Not later. Not at all.He had done just about all the talking he was going to do in the grassy trioval of Daytona International Speedway, and the only one to hear it was fellow driver Bobby Hillin. It was not a pleasant scene.
Petty had just crashed into Hillin's crippled car. He accused Hillin of failing to apply his brakes. Hillin took offense. He chased after Petty and tried to explain.
"Shut up!" Petty could be seen saying to Hillin. "Shut up! Shut up!" They were in each other's faces and there was some shoving.
But Hillin wasn't the real culprit in the accident that ended Petty's chances to win his first 500.
It was a bitter finish to a race that held so much potential for the 32-year-old High Point, N.C., driver.
Petty started from the pole and led three different times for 19 laps. But things began to go bad around lap 100 when he made his second pit stop with the rest of the field.
Petty's gas man fell down and failed to unload the second can of gas. He was a substitute, brought on by crew chief Robin Pemberton after four team members were injured in a January traffic accident.
The gas man's miscue meant Petty had to make an extra stop only 25 laps later. That shuffled Petty back into the pack and set him up to be the victim of someone else's mistake.
It came on lap 157. Dale Earnhardt and Al Unser Jr. collided coming off the fourth turn. Unser lost control and slammed into Hillin, who had been having a great run.
Unser, making his debut in the 500, said Earnhardt "got into myright rear quarterpanel coming off of turn four and turned me sideways. There were too many people coming off four and they started banging into each other."
Hillin slid into the grass and back onto the track in front of Petty, who was desperately trying to stop his car. They collided.
"We had no place to go!" an agitated Hillin said just after the crash. "He told me, `Keep your foot on the brake.' I had my foot on the brake! There was nothing I could do! He's upset, just like I'm upset. He don't know any better, so we'll let it slide."
After his confrontation with Hillin, the only talking Petty was willing to do was to his team's publicist, Jane Gossage, and her husband, Eddie. And that was inside his hauler.
"I don't want to say anything," Petty told Jane Gossage. "I'll regret it tomorrow."
To Eddie Gossage, he said, "I asked Hillin why he didn't keep his foot on the brakes. I didn't understand what he said. I told him to shut up and he kept talking. All I said was shut up. That's all I've got to say."
\ ROUGH DAY ALL AROUND: This was not the best of races for some of NASCAR's top stars.
Bill Elliott was the third driver out of the race. His engine broke.
Defending champion Davey Allison was plagued by a mysterious chassis problem, had to make several unscheduled pit stops and finished 28th, three laps down.
Alan Kulwicki, last season's Winston Cup champion, was going like gangbusters until his Ford engine dropped a cylinder. "Man, this is a shame," Kulwicki told his crew. "This car was running. We could have beaten those guys today - I mean beat them!" Kulwicki finished 26th, three laps down.
1991 Daytona 500 winner Ernie Irvan had a good run going until he was pushed into the wall by Derrike Cope. He finished 37th.
Rusty Wallace was having a great race until he became the big loser in a collision between Cope and Michael Waltrip. He rolled twice, flipped end-over-end and then rolled four or five more times. His only injury was a cut on the chin.
"When we were running, I was saying, `Man, this is great. I'm finally going to get a good Daytona 500 in.' And then it happened. It was upsetting, but it's over and everything is cool," Wallace said.
\ RUDE TO RUDD: Ricky Rudd had a terrible Daytona 500 for the second year in a row.
Rudd broke a rear end gear in his Chevrolet Lumina while leaving pit road after his first pit stop around lap 50. His car came to a stop on pit road. His crew had to push him behind the wall to make repairs. He lost 22 laps.
"It's a shame," Rudd said. "This car drove extremely good today."
He finished 30th, 23 laps down.
\ HENSLEY CRASHES: The burst of smoke that preceded Jimmy Hensley's crash in turn 1 on lap 12 was not from a blown engine.
"The motor is fine," car owner Jimmy Means told Hensley when the Ridgeway, Va., driver returned to the garage after a routine visit to the infield care center.
"I think the left rear tire went," Hensley said. "I wasn't around nobody. It just turned sideways. It turned around before I ever got to the turn."
Hensley spun around once and backed into the outside wall.
At the time of the accident, "we hadn't moved up a lot," Hensley said. "We were trying to stay out of trouble. But we were staying in the draft and doing pretty good." Hensley was the second driver out of the race and finished 40th.
\ RICK MAST UPDATE: Rick Mast had a fine run going and inched his way into the top five with only 50 laps to go. But he eventually slipped back to a 12th-place finish.
"On our last pit stop, we changed four tires and the car started pushing," Mast said. "We should have changed none. I was just kind of holding on there at the end."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING