Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9505020055
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
DATELINE: TALLADEGA, ALA. LENGTH: Medium
With frigid air beating around his helmet, Hamilton found that the struggling team he had just joined, which hadn't visited victory lane in more than a decade, had given him a race car that flew.
``I was totally impressed with that race car,'' Hamilton said Saturday between practice sessions for today's Winston Select 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. ``I was like, `Man, this thing drives good!' And that was with the new stuff.''
When crew chief Robbie Loomis experimented with older parts, the car went even faster.
It was the prelude to a remarkable turnaround for Hamilton and the Richard Petty team, which is in eighth place in the Winston Cup points race with four top-10 finishes in eight events.
Hamilton's success is all the more remarkable when you hear him talk about his equipment.
``This 43 car has got some the oldest stuff on it,'' he said. ``This was stuff they were running in 1989, stuff that hasn't been running for five or six years. This was a standard old chassis and standard old spindles - stuff that people had thrown on the shelf. I've seen teams run it through sales to get rid of it.
``And I like it.''
Hamilton's performance is high on the list of surprises in 1995. He had never finished in the top five, then joined a team that had lost hot prospect John Andretti. But success came quickly. Hamilton qualified second at Richmond and finished ninth. He finished ninth at Darlington, then had a career-best fourth-place finish at Bristol. He followed that with an eighth-place finish, on the lead lap, at Martinsville.
``The only thing I can see [to explain the success] is that everybody gets along so good,'' Hamilton said. ``The crew chief and the driver see 100 percent eye to eye on everything. We don't care what works as long as it works.
``It's something that's hard to measure, but I think the biggest thing is the personalties,'' Loomis said.
Cope, who is 12th in the points race with three top-10 finishes, had a similar explanation for his team's success.
``I honestly believe that it comes down to the attitude - how you're perceived by your people and how your attitude is towards them,'' he said.
``We get along. We go out together. We spend time together. We are intense in the same fashion. We eat, drink and sleep racing. I've never had that before with anybody.''
Cope has changed his driving style to fit his car's temperament.
``The way [crew chief] Jimmy [Fennig] runs his race car, with the nose weight, doesn't allow me to overdrive in the corners,'' Cope said. ``His race cars don't like that. And that's made me a better race car driver. I've always wanted to get in the corners really hard and try to make up ground getting in, but now I don't do that. I don't drive the car in the corner as hard as I used to and I run around the bottom faster and get out of the corner quicker.''
Of course, things could change. Nearly every driver and crew chief keeps a wary eye out for the slump they fear may be just around the corner.
But those are about as hard to predict as the recent successes of Hamilton and Cope.
``You just honestly don't know why these things happen,'' Rick Mast said. ``The way I look at it is that sometimes the racing gods and stars all get aligned in certain positions. That's the best way to explain this because you cannot make logical explanations for all this stuff.
``It's like making a car work. A lot of times what you do doesn't make any sense at all, but it works.''
by CNB