Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 26, 1993 TAG: 9307260117
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TALLADEGA, ALA. LENGTH: Long
It was hard to tell which sapped the energy more - the race or the 100-degree Alabama sun.
There was an incredible series of crashes - with Jimmy Horton tumbling clear out of the park and Neil Bonnett flipping into the front stretch fence to end his comeback after a three-year absence.
Smith, 43, of Chelsea, Ala., was in the same six-car crash as Horton. But while Horton walked away from a demolished race car with only scrapes and bruises, Smith suffered a terrible head injury.
He was reported in very critical condition at Carraway Methodist Medical Center in Birmingham on Sunday evening with a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and partial paralysis of his right side.
Bonnett's terrifying crash, reminiscent of Bobby Allison's wreck here in 1987, punched a hole in the catch fence and stopped the race with 54 laps to go. It took 70 minutes to repair the fence.
But after that, the race continued with no more wrecks and evolved into one of the finest battles ever on this longest and fastest of NASCAR tracks.
On the last lap, after a wild scramble for position, Earnhardt and Irvan were side-by-side at the front through turn 4.
Irvan had the edge going into the tri-oval, but Earnhardt's front bumper edged ahead as they came out of it. He was 6 inches ahead as they shot under the checkered flag.
"I beat him! I beat him!" Earnhardt screamed in his radio. "I was holdin' that sucker wide open the whole time!"
Behind them, Mark Martin charged from the back of the lead pack to steal third as Kyle Petty and Dale Jarrett battled for position. Petty finished fourth and Jarrett was fifth.
If anybody but Earnhardt had won, you would have said it was pure luck. He said so himself after the race.
"It was one of them see-saw deals and I was on the last saw," he said. "I don't think there was a plan or anything. I was just playing the game until the game ended. It was lucky, really lucky.
"You didn't know who was going to push who or who was going to help who or who was going to hurt who. But it was just and all-day game and we made the last move and it worked."
Considering this was his sixth win this year, his second in a row and his fifth in the past eight races, there's a lot more than luck at work here. He always seems have that last move, except in the Daytona 500.
This was probably the closest finish ever with carburetor restrictor plates. In 1993, for some reason, the drivers have been able to do a lot more passing with the plates. They showed it at Daytona in February, with Jarrett's dramatic victory, and they demonstrated it here.
But it was a costly road getting to the finish, and the plates caused that, too.
Emotions were at a peak even before the green flag fell, as the late Davey Allison's widow, Liz, read a poem "that brought some peace to me" and thanked the fans for their love and support in the wake of Allison's death.
Less than two hours later, another driver was fighting for his life in the same hospital where Allison died July 13 after a helicopter crash at this track.
Smith's injury seemed to make no sense at all.
Although he apparently triggered the crash going into turn 1 on lap 70, Smith's car was the least damaged when it was over. But debris apparently flew into his car and hit his head, or his head hit something inside the car, because he had a bad, bloody head injury when rescuers got to him.
Smith apparently tapped Kenny Wallace in the rear, sending both cars into the outside wall. Suddenly, Smith's car veered to the inside and clipped Horton's right rear.
Horton flipped up and over the banking and out of the track altogether.
For the first time since this track opened in 1969, a stock car actually sailed over the concrete wall at the top of the tall Talladega high-banked curves and tumbled down the steep embankment on the outside of the track.
But the car landed right-side up, facing backwards, and in a few moments Horton was out of his car, covered from head to foot in the red clay soil of Alabama.
"There was dirt flying all around, and the next thing I knew, I was dirt racing again," Horton said. "Once I saw the dirt, I knew I was in trouble. I knew I was going somewhere, but I didn't know where I was going.
"When I started going down the bank, I was just worried about it catching on fire. Anytime you're upside down, whether it's a dirt car or anything, it's scary. But at this speed, it's real scary. But we walked away from it. I guess [the car] goes into a museum."
Bonnett's wreck was almost as scary, but he managed to stay inside the track. And he walked away from his first start since 1990 - and first crash since 1990 - with only a bruise on his right arm.
He was tapped from behind in the tri-oval at the end of lap 133. And when his car spun sideways, it flipped on its roof, careened into the outside fence and then spun to a stop on the track.
"I just felt a little tap and I felt the car go up," said Bonnett just before he headed to the CBS television booth to provide color commentary for the rest of the race. "I knew it was upside down and I felt a real hard lick."
When his car came to a stop, he managed to gasp, "I'm OK" into his radio, adding, "It's just my arm hurts real bad."
Until then, and even afterward, Bonnett was like a kid in a candy store.
He was a chatterbox on the radio early in the race and it was clear he was doing his best to take it easy. But early on, he radioed: "Man, this is some kind of fun!"
After wrecking one of Earnhardt's cars, however, Bonnett wasn't sure if car owner Richard Childress would be too eager to do this again.
"I doubt very seriously if Childress will let me borrow another car right now," he said.
As usual, however, Earnhardt had the last word.
"Hell, the dadgum thing run second at Daytona anyway," he said. "It wasn't worth a dang."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB