THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 17, 1996 TAG: 9602170511
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: A Guide to Nascar '96
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Eighteen months after a blown tire sent Ernie Irvan to the edge of death's door, he's back where he said he'd be: out front.
Last Saturday, Irvan put his Ford Thunderbird on the front row for Sunday's Daytona 500. And on Thursday, he led all 50 laps to win his Twin 125 qualifying race - his first victory since May 1994.
Is his recovery complete? Ask him in August, he says. If he's challenging for the Winston Cup title, as he was when injury intervened, he'll be satisfied.
It was a long road back from the frightening crash in turn 2 at Michigan International Speedway. Hospitalization, surgery, physical therapy. An eye patch and prism glasses. Irvan wasn't expected to live, much less race again. But he was determined to hasten the day the doctors would clear him to return to Winston Cup.
That came last fall. Irvan competed in three of the last five races of the 1995 season. He drove with a patch over his still-injured left eye, and his performance was remarkable. He finished sixth at North Wilkesboro on Oct. 1, and led 30 laps. At Phoenix four weeks later, he led 110 straight laps before dropping out with a broken engine. And in the final race of the year, at Atlanta, he finished seventh.
The importance of those races, especially to Irvan himself, cannot be underestimated. He established that, even with one eye, he was competitive in the Winston Cup series.
Those races also solidified Irvan's goal for the 1996 season.
``What I want to accomplish is just getting back to where I was at before the accident,'' he said. ``We were in the hunt for the (1994) championship. My main goal is just to get back to where I was at. And I think the race team feels the same way.''
It would have been one thing if he had been hurt during an average campaign. But he was knocked out of the sport while at the very top of the heap. He was fighting for a championship. He had already won three races and had led so many laps in 1994, no one ever caught up to him.
Because he has tasted competition at that level, he won't say he's back until he gets there again.
Irvan's appearance and demeanor suggest he is nearly fully recovered.
His left eyelid still droops. He wears glasses. He retains a scar below his Adam's apple from the tracheostomy that saved his life.
But beyond that, there seems to be no trace of his wreck.
He no longer displays the slow gait and not-quite-all-there demeanor that he had when he made his first post-accident public appearances in the fall of 1994. He doesn't have the special prism glasses he wore last summer and fall.
Irvan is thinner, but that is because he has been working out, often with close friend Mark Martin, and he is in the best shape of his life.
He no longer plans to wear an eye patch while racing, but he admits that all is not perfect inside his left eye, which suffered some of the worst damage in the Michigan accident.
``I had some nerve surgery on the eye during the offseason,'' he said. ``Basically, what it has done is just enabled me to take the prism glasses off.''
He didn't like the prism glasses. They were hard to see out of.
``I still wear corrective glasses just to correct some of the vision,'' he said. ``But I still get some double vision if I look one way or the other too far. But in the race car, I don't seem to get any double vision.''
Irvan also had considered surgery to correct his droopy eyelid.
``We're hoping to to that April 2,'' Irvan said. ``Probably the only reason we'll have eyelid surgery is to get it open just a little bit more, where you don't have to look through the eyelash.''
Irvan begins this season with something he's never had before - a teammate.
Dale Jarrett, who replaced Irvan last year, will drive a second Yates Ford this year.
Whether Irvan and Jarrett will work well together as teammates is still unknown. There was tension between them last year. Irvan, to be sure, never seemed comfortable with Jarrett in the driver's seat of his No. 28 Texaco Havoline Ford.
``I don't really know if our driving styles are going to have to mesh together,'' he said. ``We have two different race teams, two different sponsors and two different crews. And I don't think that anybody's style meshes with my style and anybody's style meshes with Dale's style.
``But I think the biggest thing is we're going to be able to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond and be able to learn more things. Everybody new who has come to the race shop has been with other race teams, so now we get to have some of their knowledge.
``Right now I think that everything has worked out really good for both of us.''
But he also has a strong idea of the proper hierarchy in a two-car team.
``There's one reason to have a second team - to make the first team better,'' he said. ``That's the first thing we have to do.''
One of the biggest obstacles Irvan may face this year is the fact that the balance of power between Ford and Chevrolet has tilted toward Chevy. The new Chevy Monte Carlo was introduced last year. At the end of the season, Chevy had won 21 races and Ford only eight.
Thus far this year, a determined Irvan and his Thunderbird have more than held their own.
``I'm real fortunate that none of my skills left, all my memories of racing never left,'' he said. ``I don't know if that's because the doctor did such a good job, but that's what has enabled me to come back. Basically, all I had to do was be physically able to do it.'' by CNB