THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 4, 1995 TAG: 9505040533
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
It turns out Ken Schrader wasn't the only Winston Cup driver who found himself battling a strange, terrifying illness over the winter.
Bobby Labonte revealed to Stock Car Racing magazine that he had chemotherapy for a debilitating thyroid condition.
The illness was the reason David Green accompanied Labonte to the January tests at Daytona and shouldered some of the driving chores.
``I felt it in December and by the time I went to the doctor, my hands were trembling,'' Labonte says in the June edition of the magazine. ``I was lucky to have Joe Gibbs as my car owner. He got me to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., where I had a doctor who drives a Legends car and understands racing.
``I told him I had to be ready to race by Feb. 7. Other doctors would have said no way. The remedy was chemotherapy in the form of pills. The dosage was just below that requiring isolation.
``As it was, I had to limit my contact with people. It was most difficult when it included my son and wife. It was scary.''
The revelation of this off-season illness makes it all the more remarkable that Labonte is currently 11th in points. His health this season has been abysmal. After quelling the thyroid problem, Labonte had double pneumonia in late March and broke his shoulder at Darlington on March 26.
Schrader had a bout with Guillain-Barre syndrome, which attacks the central nervous system. Just before Christmas, he was so weak he couldn't climb a flight of stairs. But he recovered after a hospital stay.
COMPLETE SET: Any Grand National driver who wants to get a taste of the full range of Winston Cup racing couldn't ask for a better three-race stretch than the one Elton Sawyer has tackled with the No. 27 Hooters Ford Thunderbird.
Sawyer will be in the car for the third week in a row at the Save Mart 300 this weekend at Sears Point International Raceway, adding a road race to a Winston Cup resume that includes Sunday's superspeedway race at Talladega, where he qualified 31st and finished 27th, and the April 23 short-track race at Martinsville, where he qualified ninth and finished 20th.
Sawyer is enjoying a rare opportunity afforded by a gap of almost a full month in the schedule for his regular series, the Busch Grand National division.
The last Busch race was on April 15 at Hickory; the next is May 13 in New Hampshire.
Sawyer has road-racing experience in Grand National cars, including the race at Watkins Glen last year. But he's never raced at Sears Point.
``I've been looking at a lot of maps,'' he said Wednesday. ``It's going to be exciting. But it's going to be pretty tough. I kinda know we'll be fighting an uphill battle.''
``Patty (wife Patty Moise) will be with me, and she has actually run at Sears Point,'' Sawyer said. She competed there in the Kelly American Challenge series in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Kenny Bernstein's team said Hut Stricklin will drive the No. 26 Ford Thunderbird for the rest of the season.
RICHMOND RACE SOLD OUT: Richmond International Raceway sold all 83,000 tickets for its Sept. 9 Miller Genuine Draft 400 within three days after they went on sale.
Tickets are still available for the Fas Mart Supertruck Shootout on Sept. 7 and the Autolite Platinum 250 on Sept. 8. MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this report.
by CNB