THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 24, 1995 TAG: 9507240135
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TALLADEGA, ALA. LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
It came down to the final lap of the DieHard 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, and suddenly nobody was racing anymore.
So Sterling Marlin waltzed to his third victory of the year with little heat from Dale Jarrett, Dale Earnhardt and the string of cars behind them. Morgan Shepherd finished fourth and Bill Elliott fifth.
``Nobody pressuring you from behind! No one from behind!'' Marlin's spotter shouted as Marlin reached the finish line about two car lengths ahead of Jarrett, who had squeezed past Earnhardt five laps earlier.
Earnhardt summed it up best: ``I was going to try to help Dale (Jarrett) do something, but there wasn't nobody doin' nothin.' We tried. Did all we could.''
Marlin, who led 57 laps, took the lead for the final time on lap 149 and led the final 40 circuits around this 2.66-mile oval.
``Once we got the lead, I knew it would be hard to pass,'' he said. ``I did a lot of mirror-driving at the end.''
It was a tame conclusion to a wild weekend in which too much close racing led to a string of terrifying crashes and flips, including a 12-car accident that erupted on lap 139 Sunday as Ken Schrader flipped five times in the backstretch grass.
Schrader spun after a tap from teammate Jeff Gordon, who led the most laps - 97 - but was ineffective after the incident. Gordon was not caught up in the crash, but he didn't lead a lap from then on. He finished eighth and has a 78-point lead over Marlin in the Winston Cup championship chase as the series heads to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Brickyard 400 on Aug. 5.
Schrader, who has gone end-over-end many times in a sprint car, emerged from the wreck of his Chevrolet Monte Carlo unhurt, except for a huge knot on his right eye caused when his head slammed into the steering wheel.
``Got turned around and we just caught a little too much air over there,'' Schrader said. ``It just took off. Then I played sprint-car driver - head down, arms up and hold on to the steering wheel.''
For Schrader it was yet another in a long string of bad-luck races. And for NASCAR, the honeymoon with roof flaps is over.
Unquestionably, the flaps have prevented cars from flipping time and again since they were introduced at Daytona 18 months ago. But three flips in two days, including two in which the flaps could not prevent a car from getting upside down, proved they are not foolproof.
``I don't think we can attribute it to anything other than coincidence,'' Winston Cup director Gary Nelson said after the race. ``You know, two wrecks in one weekend after a year and a half with none . . . I don't see what you could ever do (to make them foolproof) with those speeds and with that body weight. The potential is always there.''
Actually, the 12-car crash was the only incident of Sunday's race, which ran green for 111 laps until the caution flag flew for debris on the track. But it only takes one spectacular wreck to put its mark on a race - and the Sunday evening highlights as well.
In the driver's meeting two hours before the race, the drivers received stern lectures from Nelson, vice president of competition Mike Helton and veteran Darrell Waltrip, who was a television commentator for Saturday's Grand National race, in which 25 cars wrecked.
``That was the ugliest race I've ever seen,'' Waltrip said of Saturday's race. ``People were bumping into people and swerving in front of them. It's ridiculous. This could be a neat racetrack. It's just not necessary.''
The drivers seemed to take the lectures to heart.
``Everybody has been real courteous to each other so far,'' Ricky Rudd said after dropping out of the race on lap 68 with a broken engine.
But then Gordon got into Schrader. That's all it took for things to get ugly. Schrader spun around, and his dual roof flaps popped open as they're supposed to. And the flaps were keeping Schrader's car on the ground until it was struck by Ricky Craven's car.
``My assumption is that another car (Craven's) sort of shoveled Schrader up,'' Nelson said. ``You go a whole year without an accident like that, and now two in one weekend. Same roof flaps we had last year. But we'll continue to work on it and see what we can do to make it better.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ken Schrader's Chevy sheds sheet metal as it tumbles across the
infield; behind it, smoke rises from a chain-reaction crash.
Schrader sustained only a bruised forehead.
by CNB