THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606020199
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DOVER, DEL. LENGTH: 81 lines
Huge C-5A military transport planes lumber through the sky here, appearing to move so slowly that they seem to crawl compared to the NASCAR stock cars on the track at Dover Downs International Speedway.
The big planes are a routine sight when the Winston Cup series visits Dover. They fly out of Dover Air Force Base, the East Coast headquarters for the C-5A fleet.
The Dover area is also the home of Sambo's Tavern; a congregation of Amish who still travel in horses and buggies, and a 500-mile Winston Cup race that nearly every driver wants to see shortened.
Dover is a rather strange place to have a major sporting event. About the only time Dover is in the news is when some tragedy takes the lives of U.S. servicemen overseas and their bodies are brought back to the military morgue on the base.
Al Robinson, the track's public-relations director, well remembers his first impression of Dover when he moved here more than a decade ago and first saw the vast spread of wetlands along the Delaware Bay.
``I was taken out to Port Mahon (just east of the city), and it was an incredibly peaceful and unspoiled landscape. It's an amazing sight - until you look on the horizon and see the Salem nuke plant on the Jersey side,'' Robinson said.
Dover is the capital of Delaware, but one gets the impression that the real wheeling and dealing happens in Wilmington, where the most of the money and power is located.
So NASCAR's presence in this overgrown small town is a big deal.
``People kind of take it for granted in North Carolina, but when you have an autograph session up here, there's 1,000 people in line,'' driver Kenny Wallace said Saturday while relaxing in the garage.
And they have no trouble packing them in here at the track. More than 100,000 fans will bask under sunny skies here today, ready and eager to see a four-hour marathon.
If it was up to the drivers, it would be the Miller 400. Or the Miller 350.
``Five hundred miles here is cruel and unusual punishment,'' said Darrell Waltrip, a two-time winner at Dover. ``It's just sticking it in your face. If they would just listen to what people are telling them and shorten this race up to 350 miles, Dover would be a lot better.''
As he talks, Waltrip is digging into a pile of steamed shrimp from Sambo's Tavern, one of the area's unique pleasures.
Sambo's is one of the few businesses in the sleepy village of Leipsic, just a few miles northeast of the track. They use newspapers for tablecloths, and the cuisine is steamed crabs and steamed shrimp. And if you want to see drivers up close, just hang out at Sambo's on a Friday or Saturday night of race weekend - if you can get in.
Kyle Petty won this race last year, and he would probably take more pleasure in his victory if he could remember it better.
``I was a little out of it last year,'' Petty said. ``We had an exhaust leak and I was just trying to survive. I won the race, but I don't remember a lot about the last 100 laps.
``Dover is a great place for a 400-mile race. A 600-mile race at Charlotte compares to a 400-mile race at Dover. That extra 100 miles at Dover makes it like an 800-mile race at Charlotte.''
The long race is compounded by the difficulty of driving the track.
``Dover is one of those places that has a tendency to reach out and bite you,'' said Derrike Cope, who won this race in 1990. ``You carry so much speed in the turns here, you're almost in the throttle before the car gets its direction set in the turns.''
That puts the driver in the awkward position of hammering the gas before he knows how his car will respond.
``It's just ridiculously long,'' Waltrip added. ``Just look at how much time it takes. Forget the number of miles. It ought to be 3 1/2 hours long, however many miles that would be.''
But there's no indication Dover has any intention of shortening its races.
``We conduct a very sophisticated form of audience research twice a year,'' Robinson said. ``It's called selling tickets. And our customers have voted overwhelmingly for 500 miles. We intend to maintain 500 miles as the race distance as long as it is agreeable with NASCAR.''
But as Brett Bodine argued, ``Quantity doesn't always ensure quality. This is a classic example of that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Darrell Waltrip calls the 500-miler at Dover Downs ``cruel and
unusual punishment.'' by CNB