ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 28, 1996 TAG: 9610290019
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PHOENIX
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
BOBBY HAMILTON wins the Dura-Lube 500 for his first Winston Cup victory.
The long drought for Petty Enterprises is over.
Car owner Richard Petty, the winningest driver in NASCAR history, finally found his way back to victory lane in the NASCAR Winston Cup series with a semi-castoff named Bobby Hamilton behind the wheel.
It was Hamilton's first visit to victory lane in a Winston Cup race, and the first for Petty since July 1984, when he drove to his 200th and last victory, at Daytona.
``This is a big deal for me to win in Richard Petty's race car,'' Hamilton said after winning the Dura-Lube 500. ``I've won a lot of races, so that's not a big deal. But there's a lot of race fans out there who may be Dale Earnhardt fans or Jeff Gordon fans, but if they don't win, they're still Richard Petty fans. So I thought it would be cool to win the first race in his car.''
Hamilton passed Geoff Bodine in turns three and four on lap 283 and led the final 30 laps to win by 1.23 seconds over Mark Martin at Phoenix International Raceway.
Meanwhile, Terry Labonte, broken hand and all, had the best day among the Winston Cup championship rivals. He finished third and extended his lead by 15 points over Jeff Gordon, who finished fifth. Labonte now leads Gordon by 47 points and is 99 points up on Dale Jarrett, who finished eighth.
For Petty, who's always had marvelous timing in this sport, the victory came 10 days before the election that will determine whether he becomes North Carolina's secretary of state.
``Hopefully, this will give me some good publicity instead of some of the bad publicity I've been getting lately,'' Petty said. ``Bobby is not running for office, but I am. But yet, somewhere in the story, they'll bring [the election] up. So definitely, it has to help.''
Phoenix was an appropriate place for Hamilton to win his first Cup race because it was here in 1989 where he first made his mark. Hamilton came to help shoot a movie, and left as the hottest young prospect in the sport.
Fellow Tennessean Waltrip had recommended Hamilton as a driver for a camera car used in the race to film segments of ``Days of Thunder,'' a movie starring Tom Cruise. But Hamilton wanted to be more than a chauffeur in his first Winston Cup race. He qualified fifth and actually took the lead twice in the event before the engine blew.
That led to three races in 1990 for car owner George Bradshaw. Hamilton won rookie of the year in his first full season in 1991, with four top-10 finishes.
He remembered how tough it was that first year, fighting with everything he had to keep up with the other cars and watching with frustration as they pulled away, race after race. It was a hard dose of reality for a Nashville driver who already had dozens of short track victories under his belt.
However, his second year was not as good as his first. And the third year was worse than the second. Hamilton was fired by Bradshaw after eight races in 1993 and only competed in seven more than year.
He struggled again in 1994, driving for Felix Sabates. And when he was hired by Petty for the 1995 season, it was only because Petty had been unable to land John Andretti.
But things began to click right away. The Pettys liked Hamilton's down-home style. He posted 10 top-10 finishes in 1995 and finished second at Dover in September of that year. This year, before Sunday's victory, Hamilton had been knocking on the door. He had led 595 laps in nine different races coming to Phoenix.
Hamilton started 17th Sunday, but was running in the top 10 within 60 laps. He took the lead for the first time on lap 81. He led a total of 40 laps in a race that saw a number of different strong cars trade the top spot.
As the race wound down, Hamilton went through the jitters that every victory-starved driver experiences while waiting for the checkered flag to fall.
``I picked up a bad vibration about halfway through the race and I knew it was [in the] driveline because we've had that happen before,'' Hamilton said. With 10 laps to go, ``it felt like it was getting worse. Then my front end started pushing, and I said, `Oh my God, I've got a tire going down.' I thought I heard a miss in the motor. Your mind just runs wild, but the good Lord took care of us.''
Of course, that wasn't all.
``There was a couple of cars smoking on the race track running right in our groove,'' Hamilton said. ``I couldn't believe all the cars that were smoking. That was bugging me pretty bad. All that stuff was working on me the last 10 laps.''
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Bobby Hamilton's car (bottom) passes Mark Martin'sby CNBduring the Dura-Lube 500 in Phoenix on Sunday. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING