Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 14, 1994 TAG: 9406160050
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Zeller
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This is what unions such as the United Auto Workers were organized to prevent.
And yet this is what happened in the aftermath of the chaotic finish Sunday night at Pocono International Raceway, where Rusty Wallace won his fourth Winston Cup race of the year.
The poor, disadvantaged pair of Ernie Irvan and Brett Bodine each lost four Winston Cup points - four precious jewels in their quest for racing glory - solely because they were handicapped.
They each lost cold, hard cash, all but stolen right from their pockets, because NASCAR wanted to be ``fair'' to its rising, young golden boy, Jeff Gordon.
What did Irvan and Bodine do to deserve such a fate?
They were lame. Their cars were crippled. To use more politically correct language, their cars were mechanically challenged.
The eight-cylinder Ford engines in the Thunderbirds driven by Irvan and Bodine were running on seven cylinders. For that and that alone, NASCAR came and took money and points they had rightfully and courageously earned while disabled. I thought there were laws against this.
And what of dashing, young Gordon? With five laps to go, he made an embarrassing mistake while running third. He spun into a mud puddle while warming his tires during a yellow flag. Five cars passed him, including those driven by Irvan and Bodine.
But Gordon's crew chief, Ray Evernham, in some weird interpretation of manifest destiny, had the nerve to order him back to his original position in third.
When NASCAR told the team Gordon couldn't have third, he took it anyway. When NASCAR repeatedly ordered the team to move him back to eighth, they ignored him.
The result was Gordon and his team thoroughly fouled up the final restart and sent the race into chaos.
Was he penalized? Surely this calls for some form of punishment. The same organization that kicked the legendary Junior Johnson out of the sport for four races a couple of years ago for an inadvertent engine mistake surely wouldn't tolerate this insolence.
Guess what?
Gordon was rewarded for his trouble. He was elevated from eighth to sixth place in the final standings, which gave him eight additional Winston Cup points. And if that wasn't enough, NASCAR paid him an extra $2,100 for his bad behavior.
Of course, the money came right out of the pockets of Brett Bodine and Ernie Irvan and their team owners, Kenny Bernstein and Robert Yates, respectively. It cost Irvan $1,400; Bodine $700. Call it a cripple tax.
``I won't say we understand all the time the rules and decisions NASCAR lays down, but we have to accept them,'' Irvan's crew chief, Larry McReynolds, said Monday. ``But we're not going to get caught up in this deal.''
NASCAR's benevolent rationale was this: Had Gordon started eighth as he was supposed to after his spin in the mud, he probably would have passed Bodine and Irvan because their cars were ``handicapped,'' as NASCAR spokesman Kevin Triplett put it.
But this sets two bad precedents.
First, the ruling was made on the purely speculative assumption that Gordon would have successfully raced from eighth to sixth.
``How can they say where he would have run?'' McReynolds said. ``Who knows? He might have ended up [crashed] like the [No.] 43 car'' driven by Wally Dallenbach.
Second, it tells competitors if they aggressively dispute NASCAR race rulings, even to the point of disobeying them, they can prevail.
The correct solution was simple, particularly in light of the refusal of Gordon's team to obey NASCAR's orders. Leave him eighth. That's fair to everyone. It wouldn't take anything from Gordon he hadn't lost himself.
Oh, well. It's NASCAR racing. It's not astrophysics. And to be perfectly honest, it was more entertaining than another Rusty Wallace runaway.
by CNB