THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9411180595
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GREENSBORO LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Most of the seat-hopping for the 1995 season in the Winston Cup series is finished, but down at Petty Enterprises in Level Cross, N.C., they're still looking for a driver.
And from the King himself on down, they're not in any big rush.
That's because Richard Petty and his team are still getting over the loss of John Andretti, the young Indy-car import with the famous racing name and the talent to back it up.
Andretti's impressive performance in the No. 43 Pontiac gave the Petty camp a boost they haven't felt in years, so his decision to join the new Kranefuss-Haas team for next year has been tough to take.
``When John came, he really pumped the team up and lifted the team up,'' crew chief Robbie Loomis said Thursday. ``The deal just flowed. It wasn't anything you can describe. It just worked.
``Losing him I relate to losing a family member. I keep thinking it ain't true and he's going to come back and say, `I'm your man.' But I'm starting to realize it more and more that he's gone.''
Andretti made a huge difference as soon as he took over the car, winning the outside pole at Michigan in his first race. He qualified fourth at Martinsville and then started third at Charlotte, where he legitimately led a Winston Cup race for the first time. He led again at Atlanta before fading to 13th.
``It was like we just kept stacking pennies,'' Loomis said. ``Now the pile is scattered again and we gotta start stacking.''
The four candidates under consideration are Randy LaJoie, Bobby Hamilton, Jeremy Mayfield and Lake Speed.
``Richard is trying to decide which one will flow best with the team,'' Loomis said. ``But he's not really in a hurry.''
TIRE TALK: For Goodyear Tire Co., the war with Hoosier this year required a tremendous amount of extra time, effort and money.
But when the tire giant was forced to scramble on the Phoenix race weekend and rush racing tires to the desert track by Federal Express, the chaos wasn't because of anything Hoosier had done.
Blame it all on the squirrel.
Early in the week before the Phoenix race, ``a squirrel got across a high power line in Akron that supplied the factory, and it shorted everything out,'' said Goodyear racing director Leo Mehl. ``It shut down the factory and wiped out a whole day's production. NASCAR thought we were kidding, but we sent them a picture of that squirrel. I think it took about 40,000 volts.''
But that was only one of about 20 times during the season that Goodyear had to ship tires by next day air to get them to the track, he said. ``When you start making 72,000 tires and changing a lot during development, we had that problem quite a bit. We worked many, many Saturdays and Sundays we normally don't work.
``I'm very happy it's over,'' Mehl said of the tire war.
As for Geoff Bodine and the other Hoosier users, ``They can expect to purchase tires and be treated with respect,'' Mehl said.
Will they be invited to help test for Goodyear?
``I think we can squeeze along without testing with them for a while,'' he said.
Mehl said Goodyear had to provide between 1,600 and 3,200 tires per race. It provided some 54,000 tires to the Winston Cup series during the season and about 18,000 to the Grand National series.
He also said that as best Goodyear and NASCAR can determine, the tire failure that caused Ernie Irvan's near-fatal crash at Michigan in August was a puncture that would have happened even without a tire war.
``Obviously, we studied that tire a lot,'' Mehl said. ``There wasn't enough left of that tire'' to determine exactly what happened. ``But it showed the marks of a puncture and blowout. It showed a typical puncture that would have happened with or without a tire war. That was not related to anything we had done to go fast or be competitive.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
After a successful year, John Andretti left to join the new
Kranefuss-Hass team.
by CNB