THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503270126
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DARLINGTON, S.C. LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
You never would have thought that making Darlington Raceway easier to drive would be a formula for mayhem.
But NASCAR's oldest big track proved again Sunday, in a new and unexpected way, that it really is too tough to tame.
Sterling Marlin survived the worst wreckfest in Darlington's 45-year history in Sunday's TranSouth 400 to win his second race of 1995, while two-thirds of the field was involved in one or more of the 15 crashes in the race.
Things really got nasty toward the end when Bobby Labonte suffered a cracked shoulder blade in the fourth four-car crash of the day on lap 217 of the 293-lap event. He was taken to McLeod Regional Medical Center in Florence, where he was treated and released with his arm in a sling.
The previous record for cautions in a Darlington race was 14, in the 1982 and 1985 Southern 500s. And Sunday's race was only 400 miles.
``It was really a wider track before they repaved it,'' Marlin said. ``Going into turn one, it's a lot narrower than it used to be. It's a lot tighter and two seconds faster, and that kinda makes for an exciting place to be.''
Marlin won by 1.05 seconds over Dale Earnhardt, who made the most of a subpar performance and managed to avoid being one of the casualties. Ted Musgrave was third in his best career finish, followed by Todd Bodine and Derrike Cope.
Steve Grissom, Michael Waltrip, Morgan Shepherd and Bobby Hamilton also finished on the lead lap.
Waltrip's fate was indicative of what could happen on a wacky Sunday in South Carolina when 67 percent of the cars crashed.
On lap 27, Waltrip was slammed from behind by Mark Martin on a restart. The frontstretch crash also took out Rusty Wallace. And there already had been three yellow flags.
``I get clobbered and now I'm running dead last with a car tore all to hell,'' Waltrip moaned on his radio shortly after the crash. But he became one of the race's most successful survivors. And by the end of the afternoon, with his seventh-place finish salted away, Waltrip was calling it a good day.
``If anybody ever thought that by changing the surface they would change the track, they're wrong,'' Greg Sacks told Pontiac's Brian Hoagland. ``This is still Darlington.''
Sacks crashed twice and still finished 22nd, one spot ahead of Wallace, who spent about 57 laps in the garage fixing his wrecked car and still finished ahead of 19 other drivers.
The first half of the race was a Jeff Gordon runaway. He led 155 of the first 189 laps. But the crash virus infected Gordon, too. By that time, Marlin had passed him and was leading.
``Jeff Gordon, he was gone early on new tires,'' Marlin said. ``But we could run around the same speed as him on old tires. He could outrun us for 30 laps, but after 30 laps we could reel him back in.''
On a restart on lap 200, Bobby Labonte tagged the lapped car of Randy LaJoie in turn one. LaJoie collected Gordon, and Morgan Shepherd plowed into the back of Dick Trickle.
``I don't know what happened out there,'' Gordon said. ``We got caught up in it and there was nowhere to go.''
The crash broke Gordon's oil cooler and his engine was without oil pressure long enough for his crewmen to suspect it had been damaged. Rather than risk blowing it, they retired the car.
``I don't want to ruin that motor,'' crew chief Ray Evernham said.
Labonte, meanwhile, had survived that incident, and one before it. But he was doomed.
He had lost a lap, but later regained it, after getting involved in the first four-car crash of the race on lap 75. He had clawed all the way back to second when he tagged LaJoie. That sent him back to 14th. And he was on his way back through the field again when Rick Mast tangled with Billy Standridge while they battled through turn two.
Mast's spinning car collected Labonte, who was clobbered by Trickle. Both Mast and Labonte then slammed hard into the inside wall on the backstretch.
Seconds later, a crewman radioed Labonte: ``You all right, Bobby?''
``Nooooooo!'' Labonte wailed in anguish.
He crawled out of his car, staggered to the pit wall and finally crawled over it and sat against the cold concrete as rescue workers sought to help him.
And so it went, as 28 of the 42 cars were involved in one wreck or another before it was over.
The repaving of Darlington, it seems, has made the groove smaller in the turns even while making the track faster, and drivers were just too brave for their own good.
``Before, 10 laps into a race, you were letting off the gas way early and you'd slip and slide through the turns,'' Marlin said. ``Now you can drive way down into the corners and drag the brake a little and get back into it almost wide open.''
Perhaps Earnhardt knew this. Perhaps that's why the only crashing he did at Darlington was in the IROC race on Saturday. Perhaps that is the reason Marlin did not have much trouble making the race-winning pass around Earnhardt with 12 laps to go.
``I guess he was looking at the big picture,'' Marlin said. ``I thought it would be a little tougher to get by him, but I guess finishing second is better than finishing 20th.'' by CNB