THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 9, 1995 TAG: 9509090418
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Dale Jarrett and Mark Martin battled furiously through the final laps of the Busch Grand National Autolite 250 on Friday night, passing and repassing each other in a duel that Jarrett finally won by two car lengths.
It was the second great finish in two nights at Richmond International Raceway, which will stage the sold-out Miller 400 Winston Cup race at 7:40 tonight.
Jarrett and Martin swapped the lead six times in the final 55 laps before Jarrett finally took the lead for good in the second turn with less than two circuits remaining.
``Mark is a lot of fun to race,'' Jarrett said. ``We just had some good racing. I hope everybody enjoyed it because we had a lot of fun.
``He's going to race you hard every single lap. We kinda used slow traffic on each other to swap the lead back and forth.''
Said Martin: ``We were just racing. There wasn't anything complicated about it. It was just all a matter of who got in front and who passed who.
``Dale Jarrett beat me.''
Jarrett was leading with four laps to go, but Martin, who led 147 of the 250 laps, used a slower car as a pick and muscled past going into turn one on lap 248. The next lap, however, Jarrett did the same thing and took the lead for good.
It wasn't quite as breathtaking as the side-by-side, final-lap duel between Terry Labonte and Geoff Bodine (won by Labonte) in Thursday night's SuperTruck race, but it was close.
Johnny Benson Jr. finished third, followed by Steve Grissom and Terry Labonte.
With his third-place finish, Benson further extended his lead in the Grand National points championship over Chad Little, who had another late-race crash - this one on the last lap with Jeff Green - and finished 16th. Benson is now 206 points ahead. by CNB