THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 5, 1995 TAG: 9506050119
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DOVER, DEL. LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
In times of crisis, unlikely heroes often step to the fore. Kyle Petty did that Sunday at Dover Downs International Speedway for an unexpected and much-needed victory in the Miller 500.
Petty, who was nobody's pick coming into this event and had little to show for his season, did the best job of adapting to Goodyear's tire crisis and won the Miller 500 by 0.22 seconds, or three car lengths, over Bobby Labonte.
Labonte nipped Ted Musgrave by a couple of feet at the finish line, while Hut Stricklin was fourth and Dale Earnhardt fifth, the only other drivers on the lead lap.
``If I had to point to one thing, we caught up with them on tires today,'' Petty said after his eighth career victory and his first in almost two years.
``It looked like it was going to be a typical day for me,'' Petty said. ``I qualified 37th. But I will say that this morning in practice, when we put on the Goodyear tires, we didn't lose as much time (on the track) as some of the other teams. We didn't change anything on the car.''
Sunday morning, one of the most unusual in NASCAR history, featured a special 30-minute practice session so the teams could adapt to the new Goodyear tires shipped overnight to replace the tires prepared for this race.
The original tires had too much tread and became too hot on the new concrete surface at this 1-mile track. They blistered and chunked during practice Friday and during the Busch Grand National race Saturday. So Goodyear scrapped them and brought in a conglomeration of leftovers from past races - tires with less tread. Petty's team adapted to the change better than any other.
On Sunday, the crisis boiled down to a shortage of right-side tires, which are constructed a bit differently than left-side tires. Goodyear had 400 of the replacement right-side tires - all it had available - shipped in during the night. And the teams scrounged up another 100 at their shops and had them brought to Dover.
Each team started the race with six sets of the tires. Later in the race, the top 25 or so teams received one more set from NASCAR from an inventory created from the tires of teams that had dropped out of the event.
The tires did not become a major issue during the race itself because they turned out to be a good match for the track. In later runs, some teams were getting 90 laps out of a set.
``All's well that ends well,'' Goodyear racing director Leo Mehl said.
Petty's chances were also greatly enhanced by a spectacular 18-car crash on the second lap. The crash left John Andretti with a cut on his left ankle and Dale Jarrett with a cut on his nose, which was possibly broken as well.
The crash also left Petty with a much-improved position before he ever did anything on his own.
``We went from 37th to 20th in the first (actuallym, the second) lap,'' he said. ``That helped a ton. All of a sudden they dropped the green and flag and I hadn't passed a car and I was 20th.
``It wasn't that we were that fast. We ran the same speed all day.'' Some cars were quicker at the beginning of long runs, but ``we came back on `em,'' Petty said.
In the final laps, Labonte and Musgrave pressed Petty, but with only one groove through the corners, they had no way to get by so long as Petty didn't make a mistake.
``They were really better than I was at the end,'' Petty said. ``I was just leading.''
Said Labonte: ``It was hard to pass, but we had to make it exciting.''
Petty, who led 271 of the 500 laps, needed oxygen in Victory Lane after the four-hour, 10-minute marathon.
``I was just glad it was over,'' he said. ``It was a long day. My hands were beginning to go numb and my feet were beginning to go numb. I didn't have a lot left.
``It's been a long time where we've run where we've been competitive and I felt like we could win a race. I think it's been so long that we've run competitively that I was just tired. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
An exhausted Kyle Petty received oxygen in Victory Lane. It was the
first victory for a Pontiac since Rusty Wallace in November 1993.
RESULTS
[For a copy of the results, see microfilm for this date.]
by CNB