ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 21, 1996 TAG: 9610220031
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ROCKINGHAM, N.C.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
Ricky Rudd's pit crewmen were so disastrously rotten in the AC-Delco 400 on Sunday at North Carolina Motor Speedway, they won him the race.
It got so bad, crew chief Richard Broome finally told Rudd to just stay out of the pits. It was a brilliant strategy.
Rudd remained on the track during the last round of stops, took over the lead and actually pulled away at the end to win by 3.397 seconds over Dale Jarrett.
``I have to give credit to the pit crew,'' Broome said. ``If they hadn't screwed up, I wouldn't have made the call to stay out. I guess even a blind hog can find an acorn sometimes.''
Said Rudd, ``I think it's got them fired up a little bit. They'll work seven days a week out there now, practicing pit stops.''
The late-season victory preserved one of the most impressive win streaks in NASCAR. Rudd now has won at least one race a year for the last 14 seasons. He began in 1983 with two victories for car owner Richard Childress. He's changed teams five times, but the wins keep coming.
Terry Labonte finished third and overtook Jeff Gordon for the lead in the Winston Cup championship. Gordon, in ``the toughest race I've ever run,'' finished a lap down in 12th position and fell 32 points behind Labonte. Jarrett, who led the most laps, trails by 76 points.
But as the drama of the points race unfolded on a gorgeous October afternoon, the eventual winner was doing a slow burn in the driver's seat of his Ford Thunderbird.
Rudd's crew did okay on green-flag stops. But they botched the yellow-flag stops so badly, Rudd finally blew his top.
``Go out there in the infield and get me some people who can pit this car!'' Rudd hollered to Broome on the radio after a bungled stop.
So Broome benched the team's two tire changers and replaced them with Derrike Cope's. That led to perhaps the worst stop of the day.
By then, the team was tearing its hair out.
An hour later, they were celebrating in Victory Lane.
The problems started on the second stop during a yellow flag on lap 101. Rudd had started second and was running second when he pitted. But as tire changer Danny Marshburn was changing the right rear tire, a lug nut became stuck in the socket of his air wrench. Rudd had fallen to 10th when he finally left the pits.
After another decent green-flag stop on lap 178, Rudd came back in to the pits during a caution on lap 218. This time, right front tire changer Dave Anthony had problems.
He failed to get one of the five lug nuts off, and when he went back to get it, there was another lug nut stuck in the socket. Anthony ended up with two lug nuts on the same post. It took more precious seconds to untangle that mess.
Rudd was not a happy camper, but he battled back to second place. And when another yellow flag flew on lap 269, he came back to the pits for more abuse.
This time, Anthony had more problems at the right front tire. Rudd was livid. When the crew finally finished, Rudd didn't pull out right away. He sat there for an extra second or so, glaring at the crew, before going back out on the track - in 13th place.
But Rudd's final stop, during a yellow flag that started on lap 298, was another disaster. As Anthony and Marshburn watched from atop a tool box, the Cope crewman changing the left front tire threw the tire into the jack, dropping the car to the ground. Then a NASCAR inspector noticed that the right rear tire changer had failed to get all the lug nuts on. The crewman had to go back and finish the job.
Rudd didn't say much this time. He was in ninth place when the race resumed.
The seventh and final caution flag flew for a wreck on lap 314. Now Broome had a decision to make. But as he saw it, he had no option other than to leave Rudd on the track.
Rudd had enough fuel to go all the way. And he only had about 15 laps on the set of tires that Cope's crewman had so laboriously installed on his car. And since everyone else pitted, he was now back in the lead.
When the race resumed, Rudd was able to stay ahead of Jarrett because Rudd's car ran best on old tires. The longer the run, the better the car got.
``Our car liked to run on old tires, and it played into our hands today,'' Rudd said. ``If I had my choice, I would have rather been sitting on that restart with four new tires and decent track position, but we couldn't gamble on some kind of foul-up happening again.''
But it was Rudd's lucky day.
During post-race inspection, the team found a broken valve spring in the engine. Rudd never mentioned any engine problem. The team doesn't know when the valve spring broke. But when it broke, the piece that fell off became wedged in the spring and kept the tension in it, which apparently allowed the engine to keep running at full strength all the way to Victory Lane.
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Ricky Rudd's AC-Delco 400 win in Rockingham, N.C.,by CNBgives the Chesapeake driver at least one Winston Cup victory in 14
consecutive seasons. color. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING