Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 4, 1993 TAG: 9310040057
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. LENGTH: Long
Rusty Wallace came out on top, winning his eighth race of 1993, but points leader Dale Earnhardt was second, only 1.54 seconds behind. Pole-winner Ernie Irvan was third, followed by Kyle Petty. They were the only drivers on the lead lap. Ricky Rudd was fifth, a lap down.
Wallace led the most laps - 182 - in his Pontiac Grand Prix and shaved another 10 points off Earnhardt's steadily shrinking lead, which is now down to 72 with four races left in the season.
One bad race for Earnhardt could put Wallace in the lead. But one slip by Wallace could restore the points cushion Earnhardt enjoyed only a few weeks ago.
So far, Wallace has shown no signs of weakening.
He has won three of the last four races and finished no worse than third in the last six Winston Cup events. More importantly, Wallace has beaten Earnhardt in each of the last seven races.
"With a 304-point lead [in mid-August], they just kind of pulled the throttle back in and put it on cruise control," Wallace said of Earnhardt's team. "I'm sure they never thought in a million years they would lose that many points."
But as Wallace readily admitted, Earnhardt was not on cruise control Sunday.
"He just stormed from 10th right to the front," Wallace said. "Absolutely, without a doubt, he's back to his old style. I looked in the mirror today and saw him. I said, `Son of a gun. I'm not believing this.' And the neat thing about this championship is nobody can be conservative. We both have to run our butts off.
"I thought he drove a super race all day long. They're wide-open right now. I expect it to be a shootout right to the very end."
Said Earnhardt: "He just beat us. We'll give him these points because he beat us. But it was a good race for us all day.
"I couldn't run up high," Earnhardt said. "But the car worked pretty good. Hopefully, we stabilized the points deal today and now we can go to Charlotte [on Sunday] and try to beat Rusty."
Earnhardt's diciest moment came right at the start, when Rudd slammed on the brakes to avoid jumping the start and a chain reaction began behind him. Many cars were involved and six were badly damaged.
"The 25 car [of Ken Schrader] hit us on that deal and we missed a gear and the engine turned over 9,000 rpms," said Richard Childress, Earnhardt's car owner. "I was a little concerned about that, but we came out of it OK. To lose 200 points in [the previous] two weeks is a pretty hard lick, but we did what we had to do today."
Wallace led the last 102 laps and was seriously challenged only by Earnhardt with about 20 laps to go. While both fought through lapped traffic, Earnhardt managed to get under Wallace in the third turn.
But a moment later, Wallace jumped ahead again by six or seven car lengths and eventually stretched his advantage to 1 1/2 seconds.
"You had to make your passes [of lapped traffic] on the outside, and when I was doing that, Dale drove underneath me," Wallace said. "But then I got out ahead when he had to go outside of some of them."
Although Wallace's left-front brake emitted puffs of smoke from time to time, he said he never had any problems with it. "When they told me about that, I just started taking it easy with them and it went away, I guess," he said.
The race was very competitive before Wallace began dominating.
Rudd led the first 23 laps on the .625-mile oval, then Petty took over for 54 circuits. Petty gave way to Terry Labonte, who led a total of 53 laps before his engine started missing, much to his disgust. Virginian Rick Mast then took over and led a total of 21 laps.
But the only leaders during the second half of the race were Wallace and Earnhardt, except for one lap led by Petty while they were pitting under the green flag. Earnhardt led a total of 59 laps.
There were four yellow flags, all in the first half of the race.
Wallace said he is prepared for the final stretch run through Charlotte, Rockingham, Phoenix and Atlanta, and his record is strong at all four tracks.
He does have some uncertainty, however, and it focuses on NASCAR's rule changes for Charlotte and Atlanta, which have mandated smaller spoilers, among other things. The changes, he says, hurt Wallace and the other Pontiac drivers the most.
Wallace said he has an appointment at a wind tunnel at 8 a.m. today to try find solutions for the aerodynamic problems created by the changes. "I just hope the spoiler changes don't crucify us too bad," he said.
"But if I lose, I can honestly sit back and say I've had a wonderful year."
If Wallace can catch Earnhardt and win his second championship, he can attribute most of it to his short-track performances. He won five of the eight short-track races and finished second in the other three.
Earnhardt won none of the short-track races. And no one has ever won the Winston Cup championship without winning at least one short-track event.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB