Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9411020022
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITE|
DATELINE: PHOENIX LENGTH: Medium
``Wave at the crowd, Terry,'' a crewman told him moments after he took the checkered flag in the Slick 50 500 at Phoenix International Raceway.
Labonte was thinking of other things.
``How about bringing me some water,'' he said tersely. ``I'm thirsty. And a wet rag. And sunglasses.''
He paused for a moment.
``And where's victory lane at? I don't even know.''
His crew quickly gave him directions, and in a few moments Labonte was celebrating, with more certainty than ever, the revival of a once-stalled career.
Until this year, Labonte hadn't won since 1990. And before that, he was the kind of driver who never won more than one or two races each year, even in his 1984 Winston Cup championship season, when he won twice.
But this season Labonte has three wins for the first time since he started driving fulltime in the Winston Cup series in 1979. He upped his career total to 13.
``The biggest difference this season is with this team,'' he said. ``We've got good engines and good cars. We've got a great car owner [Rick Hendrick]. He gives us everything we need to work with. For me, it was really a dream come true to drive for Rick. I knew he had a great team with some really good people, and I knew how hard they work.''
Labonte led 112 of the 312 laps and beat Mark Martin by 3.09 seconds. Pole winner Sterling Marlin was third, the only other driver on the lead lap. Jeff Gordon was fourth, followed by Ted Musgrave, who had his career-best finish, Kyle Petty and Ricky Rudd, all a lap down.
Geoff Bodine quietly worked his way through the field to finish eighth. Dale Jarrett was ninth and Darrell Waltrip 10th.
``I tell you what, my hat's off to Terry Labonte,'' Martin said. ``I guess I didn't give him enough credit for a few years. We were awesome today in the pits, had a great engine, handled good and we were checked out on the next car. But he just whipped us today.''
Labonte, who started 19th, didn't ruffle anyone's feathers for the first half of the race.
``I was really a little concerned starting as far back as I did,'' he said. ``I just knew that I had to be careful and not get into trouble. So I was really probably a little cautious and I actually lost a couple of positions on the start just trying to let everything get sorted out.''
But by lap 40 he had cracked the top 10 and by lap 70 he was dicing with Martin and Gordon as they tried to get past Rudd, who led all but six of the first 100 laps.
During the second 100 laps, Labonte was content to ride behind Martin, who led 84 of them. Labonte didn't take the lead until he got past Martin on lap 192. After that, it was all over. He was in front for 104 of the last 105 laps around the one-mile track.
``Early in the race, we really weren't as good as Mark was and some of the others,'' Labonte said. ``I think about halfway through the race the track came to us a little bit.''
Labonte's pit stops also were close to flawless Sunday, unlike during his victory at Richmond last month, when his crew kept losing his lead for him with slow stops.
``They've been working on that very hard,'' Labonte said. ``And we had some really fast stops. I think all the stops they had today were really good. Any time you can hold your own with these guys, it's really good. We never lost a spot all day in the pits, and we probably gained a couple.''
There were four crashes Sunday and all of them were over with by lap 123.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB