Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 27, 1995 TAG: 9509270027
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Whatever else is remembered about an exceedingly wet race weekend at Martinsville Speedway, Ernie Irvan did make it to Victory Lane.
It didn't happen until Monday afternoon. And he went there not as a driver but as the owner of the truck driven by winner Joe Ruttman, who cruised past the spinning trucks of Mike Skinner and Geoff Bodine as the trio was about to take the white flag.
``I wish we'd had enough to outrun them and beat them anyway, but we'll take it any way we can get it,'' said Irvan, still sounding like the driver he was until an eye injury suffered in a crash interrupted his career.
While Irvan did not race at Martinsville, he knows that time is getting closer and closer.
Irvan remembered that Friday, ``I walked up to talk to Mark Martin, and when I was talking to him, it hit me: `Shoot, this is the first time I've talked to Mark with my uniform on.'
``And he said something about it, too. He said, `Man, it's great to see you like this.'
``And I said, `Well, the real thing is going to come next week when I've got my real [Winston Cup] uniform on and ... talk about when I rubbed the paint off your fenders.
``He said, `Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.'
``And that is exciting. It would be different if it was a month or a month-and-a-half before the next race, but [North] Wilkesboro is only four days away and we'll be there doing it again.''
It would be safe to say Irvan hasn't won a lot of friends, especially among the print media, in the past few months. And one of the first things he did at the news conference announcing his return was apologize.
``Sometimes, I'm like the person you like to walk up and talk to, and other times I have not been real friendly,'' he said last week. ``I probably owe an apology to a lot of people. It's been real hard to do everything I've done. I kind of like stepped on a few people.
``About the time we got to Indy [for the Brickyard 400], I got real moody about the whole thing,'' Irvan said Monday. ``It's been really hard to stomach. Hopefully, all that's behind us now. I feel a lot better. And I'm going to feel more like a new man when I know that I can do that job like I did before.
``That's another thing. We really don't know that for sure until I go out and do it.''
Irvan agreed his relationship with his replacement driver, Dale Jarrett, had been strained for much of the year. But he said it's much better now.
``Dale and I have really started communicating a lot better,'' Irvan said. ``He was in a really touchy situation when he came to this race team.
``It was similar to the situation that I was in when I came to this team and took the job that Davey [Allison] had before. The difference was, Davey was in our memory and I was looking over his shoulder. It was a hard deal for Dale. But we're learning how to talk to each other more and more.''
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB