THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504300205
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TALLADEGA, ALA. LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
One day last January at Richmond International Raceway, with the temperature well below 20 degrees, Bobby Hamilton slipped behind the wheel of the distinctive No. 43 STP Pontiac Grand Prix and made a startling discovery.
Hamilton found that the struggling team he had just joined, which hadn't visited Victory Lane in more than a decade, had given him a race car that flew.
``I was totally impressed with that race car,'' Hamilton said Saturday between practice sessions for today's Winston Select 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. ``I was like, `Man, this thing drives good!' ''
It was the prelude to a remarkable turnaround for Hamilton and the Petty team, which sits in eighth place in the Winston Cup points race with four top-10 finishes in eight events.
How can this happen? Why do certain driver-team combinations, such as Hamilton and the Petty team, or Derrike Cope and the Bobby Allison team, defy the odds and achieve success? And why do combinations that should do well, such as Dale Jarrett and the Robert Yates team (zero laps led in 1995) struggle?
``Who knows?'' said Hamilton.
Hamilton's success is all the more remarkable when you hear him talk about his equipment.
``This 43 car has got some the oldest stuff on it,'' he said. ``This was stuff they were running in 1989 - stuff that hasn't been running for five or six years.
``This was a standard old chassis and standard old spindles - stuff that people had thrown on the shelf. I've seen teams run it through sales to get rid of it.
``And I like it.''
Hamilton's performance in 1995 is high on the list of unexpected story lines. Here's a driver who has never finished in the top five joining a team that had just lost hot prospect John Andretti and, boom, instant success.
Hamilton qualified second-fastest at Richmond and finished ninth. He finished ninth at Darlington, then had a career-best fourth-place finish at Bristol. He backed that up with an eighth-place finish last week at Martinsville.
``The only thing I can see for it is that everybody gets along so good,'' Hamilton said. ``The crew chief and the driver see 100 percent eye-to-eye on everything. We don't care what works as long as it works.
Said Loomis: ``It's something that's hard to measure, but I think the biggest thing is the personalties. It's like a husband and wife: You see the perfect couple, but when they get together, if their personalities don't let them communicate, they can't ever live together.''
Cope, who is 12th in points with three top-10 finishes, had almost the same explanation for his success.
``I honestly believe that it comes down to the attitude - how you're perceived by your people and how your attitude is towards them,'' he said. ``We get along. We go out together. We spend time together. We are intense in the same fashion. We eat, drink and sleep racing. I've never had that before with anybody.
``When I question myself, they say, `No, no, don't question yourself. Let's work on the race car and do it the way you want to do it. It's a deal where (crew chief) Jimmy (Fennig) and I are learning together. It's a very collective effort to try to get better every week.''
While Hamilton has found success using parts other teams have discarded, Cope has changed his driving style to fit the temperament of his car.
``The way Jimmy runs his race car, with the nose weight, doesn't allow me to overdrive in the corners,'' Cope said. ``His race cars don't like that. And that's made me a better race-car driver.
``I've always wanted to get in the corners really hard and try to make up ground getting in, but now I don't do that. I don't drive the car in the corner as hard as I used to, and I run around the bottom faster and get out of the corner quicker.''
Of course, things could change at any time. Nearly every driver and crew chief keep a wary eye out for the slump they fear may be just around the corner. But those are about as hard to predict as the success of Hamilton and Cope.
``You just honestly don't know why these things happen,'' said Rick Mast. ``The way I look at it is that sometimes the racing gods and stars all get aligned in certain positions. That's the best way to explain this, because you cannot make logical explanations for all this stuff.
``It's like making a car work. A lot of times what you do doesn't make any sense at all, but it works.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``The only thing I can see (is) everybody gets along so good,'' says
Bobby Hamilton.
by CNB