ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 25, 1996 TAG: 9603270101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DARLINGTON, S. C.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DALE JARRETT finishes 15th after a charge to the front leaves him running on empty at the TranSouth Financial 400.
After Dale Jarrett took the lead from a dominant Jeff Gordon with only 15 laps to go Sunday in the TranSouth Financial 400 at Darlington Raceway, he and his team faced a critical decision.
They were running out of fuel. Pit for gas, or go for it?
``The 24 [Gordon's car] says he can make it,'' crew chief Todd Parrott told Jarrett on the radio. ``We can gamble if we want to.''
Jarrett didn't hesitate: ``We came here to win, didn't we?'' he replied.
But Jarrett's boldness was forlorn. Five laps later, he tapped the fourth turn wall and Gordon took the lead.
And as Gordon romped to his second win of the 1996 season, Jarrett finally did run out of fuel and was eventually relegated to 15th place by NASCAR.
But the drama made for an interesting finish to a rather dull race that saw Gordon lead 189 of the 293 laps. He beat Bobby Labonte by 1.4 seconds, while second-year driver Ricky Craven posted his second consecutive third-place finish. Rusty Wallace was fourth, followed by Terry Labonte.
``You've got to be there at the end,'' Gordon said. ``You've got to have four corners on the car. You've got to stay out of the wall, and that's not easy to do. We had some patience today.''
Jarrett managed to hold onto his lead in the Winston Cup championship, which is now 47 points over Dale Earnhardt, who had an ill-handling car all afternoon and finished 14th.
But Jarrett could not have been happy with the turn of events in the NASCAR trailer after the race. Jarrett was docked a lap for getting assistance after the white flag fell, and a finish that could have been as high as eighth became 15th.
Here's what happened in the final 15 laps: Jarrett passed Gordon for the lead in the fourth turn on lap 279 when Gordon became jammed behind slower cars. But on lap 287, Dave Marcis drifted high in turn four as Jarrett passed him.
``Dave was down on the bottom, and I had plenty of room,'' Jarrett said. ``All of a sudden, he came up and I hit him and I hit the wall.''
Gordon retook the lead almost immediately, while Jarrett lost speed because of the damage from the collision with the wall.
Jarrett's team told him he might run out of gas with five laps or less to go. With two circuits remaining and Jarrett speeding down the frontstretch, he shouted in his radio: ``Running out of gas!''
Jarrett wasn't going to be able to coast all the way around the track, so he zipped into the backstretch pits and drove to teammate Ernie Irvan's pit, where Irvan's crew refueled him. Is that legal?
``That's not specifically addressed in the rule book,'' NASCAR spokesman Kevin Triplett said.
What is addressed in the rule book is this: ``No car may receive any assistance after the white flag has been displayed except cars on a regular pit stop.''
And NASCAR ruled that after the white flag flew, crew members of two other teams helped push Jarrett's car down the backstretch pit road after he was refueled.
``We did not score his last lap,'' Triplett said. ``He was being pushed after the white flag came out, and that is specifically addressed in the rule book. He is not being penalized for getting gas from another team.''
For Jarrett, it was a sour ending to a gutsy performance.
Jarrett was in eighth place after the 11th and final caution period. The race restarted on lap 224.
During the next 55 laps, he charged through the field. And that charge, along with the extra horsepower produced by his Robert Yates engine, meant he burned fuel at a faster rate.
``Obviously, my main objective was to get to the front,'' Jarrett said. ``When you do that, you are going to use more fuel. When you try to save fuel, you've got to do it from the very start of a run.''
Said Gordon, ``I was so focused on getting by those lapped cars and trying to be careful, I didn't know [Jarrett] was coming as fast as he was. They told me he was coming fast, but he had to stop [for gas]. I didn't fight him real hard for the (first) position.
``Had I known he was going to try to go all the way, I would probably have fought him a little harder.''
Jarrett was just one of a number of drivers who were short on fuel at the end of the race. Others who ran out of gas included Earnhardt, Ted Musgrave, Jeff Burton and Bill Elliott.
Sunday's win was Gordon's 11th career victory, and it vaulted him from 16th to ninth in Winston Cup points as the series heads to Bristol next weekend for the Food City 500.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Jeff Gordon celebrates his victory Sunday in theby CNBTranSouth Financial 400 at Darlington Raceway. color KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING