Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 6, 1993 TAG: 9306060161
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DOVER, DEL. LENGTH: Medium
"I've got a record that I plan to keep on going, and that is I've been able to win a race every year since '83," Rudd said, making a statement that only Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott also can make. "Points - that's not a motivator anymore because we're so far back."
He qualified 15th for Sunday's Budweiser 500 at Dover Downs International Speedway, but he will wind up starting ahead of pole-winner Ernie Irvan after Irvan crashed Saturday in the final practice session for the race.
Irvan will have to go to a backup car and and drop to the rear of the 38-car field for the start of today's race. His Chevrolet, which won the pole with a track-record speed of 151.541 mph, spun and hit the wall in turns 3 and 4 of the high-banked, 1-mile oval. He said the car slipped on oil.
"I sure wish they would have thrown the caution for oil on the track, but I guess no one saw it until it was too late," Irvan said.
He said the backup car is a new car.
"That's the second time I've wrecked a car up here in practice," Irvan said. "It's a challenge when you have to go to a backup car and start at the rear of the field. I like challenges, but I don't know about that much of a challenge."
Irvan won a race last year after being sent to the rear of the field for jumping the start. He has never won at Dover.
Rudd, winless through the first 11 races of 1993 and 20th in the season standings, has three career victories at Dover, third among active drivers.
Rudd's last victory was here in September, a .47-second win over Elliott. The victory was his third in three seasons with team owner Rick Hendrick.
He will have Hendrick's Chevrolet on the inside of row 8 today for the $820,000 event.
During two days of qualifying, Rudd was among 28 drivers who broke Mark Martin's September 1988 record of 148.075 mph.
Rudd has two top-five finishes this season, his best a third in the road race at Sonoma, Calif., three weeks ago. He is 568 points behind Earnhardt, the leader, in the Winston Cup standings with almost two-thirds of the season left, but like anyone planning to change teams he already must look ahead.
"I'm working real hard to put my own team together next year," said Rudd, 36. "I started this sport with my own team. We did it . . . with really no financial help, no sponsorship. It was very hard going that route."
But he has a limited, if prominent, role as part of somebody else's team.
"I guess I'd like to have a little more say in the managing side of it," Rudd said.
Driver-owners had become a rarity among NASCAR's top teams until recent years, when Darrell Waltrip and Rusty Wallace went the ownership route and the late Alan Kulwicki won a championship with his own team last year. Geoff Bodine next year will take over the team Kulwicki molded before his death April 1 in a plane crash.
Rudd said he could announce a new team as early as this week.
"As far as making decisions that could affect you next year," he said, "you don't even think about that on the race track."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB