THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, June 22, 1995                TAG: 9506220641
SECTION: SPORTS                   PAGE: C7   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   61 lines

JARRETT SAYS HE ISN'T DEALING IN WHAT-IFS

Dale Jarrett won the first contest of the 1995 Winston Cup season - pole position for the Daytona 500.

Since then, however, he's been looking at the back bumpers of his competitors.

Although he has piloted the powerhouse No. 28 Ford Thunderbird, Jarrett has led only 43 laps. His best finish has been fifth. He is 14th in Winston Cup points.

The Chevy camp he left now reigns supreme, and his replacement in Joe Gibbs' Monte Carlo, Bobby Labonte, already has won twice.

Jarrett is not happy. But he says he has no regrets, gamely maintaining a confident demeanor in the face of doubters, critics and second-guessers now that his bold move to fill in for the injured Ernie Irvan has turned into a struggle.

``Knowing everything I know, I would have been hard-pressed not to make the same decision,'' Jarrett said this week in a teleconference. ``Whatever happens this year, I've already learned a tremendous amount. The whole idea behind this was to start my own team whenever Ernie came back. And I'm getting invaluable information.

``I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who think Dale Jarrett can't drive. They're entitled to their opinion. Certainly, fans along with the race team and myself have expected us to do more. It's a difficult situation to deal with at times.

``I made a decision and it doesn't do any good to look back and say, `What if?' ''

It has been said that part of the problem for Jarrett is one of adjusting, that he likes a different setup on his race car than Irvan, who is comfortable driving a ``loose'' car.

``You have to have a race car you can drive hard and be aggressive with, and you can't do that with a loose race car,'' Jarrett said. ``They had been so successful with it, I thought maybe that's what I needed to try.''

``It's hard to say that their styles are different,'' said crew chief Larry McReynolds. ``Dale is a really good race-car driver. He drives a car hard. But Ernie would really be one of those who would say, `I think we're close enough,' - a we'll-be-just-fine type of a driver, and Dale is looking to fine-tune more.''

Jarrett was seventh in the points standings after Sears Point. But he lost an engine at Charlotte, was involved in the multicar wreck at Dover and crashed again at Pocono after being punted by Sterling Marlin. Goodbye top 10. He was 17th after Pocono but pulled himself up to 14th with a sixth-place finish at Michigan.

``Certainly we expected to visit Victory Lane before now, but it hasn't happened,'' Jarrett said.

``We've had times when we felt like we had awfully good race cars. But we certainly haven't had very much good racing luck.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Dale Jarrett's season has gone downhill since he won the pole at

Daytona in the No. 28 Thunderbird.

by CNB