ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 26, 1996 TAG: 9608270036
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: AUTO RACING
DATELINE: BRISTOL, TENN.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
Four weeks have passed since Dale Earnhardt's upper body was battered in a crash at Talladega Superspeedway, and the magic of his courageous perseverance has worn off.
It has been replaced by the numbing conclusion that the difference between a hurt Dale Earnhardt and a healthy Dale Earnhardt is almost assuredly the difference between championship number eight and another titleless year.
Earnhardt completed 476 of the 500 laps around Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night and finished 24th while Rusty Wallace drove to his fifth victory of the year.
Afterward, Earnhardt was sore and tired and mad. And Ray Evernham, Jeff Gordon's crew chief, was in Earnhardt's transporter and in his face, angry at the rough treatment Earnhardt gave Gordon each time the second-place finisher lapped him.
Gordon himself was furious, too, privately complaining about Earnhardt.
Gordon wouldn't stick his neck out though. For public consumption, he simply complained that some lapped cars wouldn't get out of the way. He did not mention Earnhardt by name.
Giving Gordon grief apparently was the only way Earnhardt could defend his stake in the Winston Cup championship Saturday night.
As we know, everything was proceeding according to plan for Earnhardt until lap 117 of the DieHard 500 at Talladega on July 28. He was a measly 12 points behind Terry Labonte for the points lead, and he was leading the race.
Suddenly, the bad luck he avoids better than anyone else got him. His crash left him with a broken shoulder and a broken sternum.
Earnhardt managed to tread water at Indy when relief driver Mike Skinner came home 15th. At Watkins Glen, Earnhardt put on one of the great performances of his career, winning the pole and running the entire race to finish sixth.
Perhaps that gave him the notion that he could, indeed, skate through his injury without losing his edge in the championship battle.
But late in the race at Michigan, he got into Ken Schrader and spun.
That cost him a top 10. He finished 17th. And then came the wall-banger at Bristol on lap 211, courtesy of a tap from Lake Speed.
Earnhardt started losing laps right after the collision, but the worst was yet to come.
``We were cooling the radiator because the fan had quit,'' crew chief David Smith said. ``Then the valve stuck open and it started spewing water. That was a big fiasco.
``Everything went downhill after we hit the wall,'' Smith said. ``Dale is sore, but he's mad about everything that happened, so I think he's OK.''
We'll never know whether Earnhardt would have had the problems he had at Bristol if he wasn't hurt. He wasn't running particularly well when he hit the wall. But we've now seen two races in a row where a hurt Earnhardt looks like just another middle-of-the-pack driver in the series.
If anything, that's a testimony to his greatness. The only way you can bring him down to the level of the rest of the field is to break a few of his bones.
Bristol was the beginning of the stretch run. There are nine races to go. Clearly, Earnhardt is just hanging on.
In fact, the entire second half of his season has been decidedly un-Earnhardt like, with only two top-10 finishes - his sixth at the Glen and a fourth at Daytona in July. He was leading the championship battle at Daytona.
Now he's fourth, 198 points back.
Two of the next three races are killers - the Southern 500 this weekend at Darlington Raceway and the MBNA 500 on Sept.15 at Dover Downs International Raceway. All of his competitors are healthy and hungry. He's still on the mend.
If Earnhardt can get through those two events and the other three races in September without losing further ground to Labonte, it will be a racing miracle.
But he's already demonstrated in the past month how adversity creates its own opportunities.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB