Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 3, 1993 TAG: 9305030144
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TALLADEGA, ALA. LENGTH: Medium
Wallace had led 38 laps of the 188-lap race, more than anyone but Dale Earnhardt, and he had stayed in the thick of the battle throughout the afternoon.
But this race lasted three hours, 13 minutes and four seconds. And for Wallace, everything came apart in those final four seconds.
At the finish of one of the wildest final laps ever at Talladega, Earnhardt banged into the back of the Winston Cup points leader and sent his car flipping and tumbling nine times down the frontstretch.
Earnhardt came back to the crash site, stopped his car and went to check on Wallace.
"We were going down in the tri-oval," Earnhardt said. "When I came down to go under him, he had blocked us. He blocked Mark [Martin] and about put Mark into the wall. I was going for the hole and he cut back down.
"I hit him right in the back left rear bumper and turned him upside down. I wouldn't have done that to anybody on purpose, especially him. Rusty and I are too good of friends for that.
"It's a shame as many laps as we led [102] and as good a day as we had that it had to come down to something like this."
This was Wallace's second horrible crash of the year. He flipped eight times down the backstretch at Daytona in February while running among the leaders late in the Daytona 500.
Wallace walked way from the Daytona crash, but this one sent him to Carraway Medical Center in Birmingham with a fractured left wrist, a concussion and bruises.
Wallace's season, which has yielded four victories, seems to be turning into the type of year Davey Allison had in 1992: crash, win, win, crash.
"We're going to overcome this and our team is strong enough to do it," crew chief Buddy Parrott said. "If he can bite the steering wheel with his teeth, I know he'll drive it" May 16 at Sears Point, Calif.
After the crash, Parrott rushed to the wrecked car. It had landed right side up. A battered Wallace was still tightly strapped in, his face splotched with dirt.
"They were just getting him out of the car and the doctor asked him what day it was and he said, `Sunday,' " Parrott said. "They asked him another question and he answered that and he looked at me and I said, `Who am I?' "
"And he said, `Buddy, I know you're here.' He had his eyes open and everything. The doctors asked him to take deep breaths to check his insides. I saw him take deep breaths and all of that and I was sure relieved."
\ INJURY REPORT: Terry Labonte suffered sore ribs when his Chevrolet Lumina slammed into the outside wall head-on during an 11-car crash that started in the fourth turn on lap 129. Labonte was taken to a hospital in nearby Anniston, but X-rays showed no cracked ribs and he was released Sunday evening.
Rick Mast, who was involved in the crash but went on to finish 13th, said it started when Allison "shredded a tire and he pulled down to get in the pits." The pack behind Allison began to slow.
"Everything backed up," Dick Trickle said. "It was a chain reaction. I was doing real good slowing down, then I got tagged in the rear [by Bobby Labonte] and turned around."
Twenty eight laps later, Brett Bodine slammed into the backstretch wall and then spun around and around down the track. He was trying to avoid Hut Stricklin, who had hit the wall ahead of him.
"I tried to miss him, but I lost it," Bodine told his crew. "It was a hell of a ride."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB