THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 21, 1996 TAG: 9610210123
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKINGHAM, N.C. LENGTH: 113 lines
Ricky Rudd's pit crewmen were so disastrously rotten in the AC-Delco 400 on Sunday at North Carolina Motor Speedway, they won him the race.
It got so bad that crew chief Richard Broome finally told Rudd to just stay out of the pits.
It was a brilliant strategy.
Rudd remained on the track during the last round of stops, took over the lead and pulled away at the end to win by 3.397 seconds over Dale Jarrett.
``I have to give credit to the pit crew,'' Broome said. ``If they hadn't screwed up, I wouldn't have made the call to stay out. I guess even a blind hog can find an acorn sometimes.''
Said Rudd, ``I think it's got them fired up a little bit. They'll work seven days a week out there now, practicing pit stops.''
The late-season victory preserved one of the most impressive streaks in NASCAR racing. Rudd has now won at least one race a year for the past 14 seasons. He began winning in 1983 with two victories for car owner Richard Childress. He's changed teams five times but has kept winning all the while.
``There's just something awful rewarding about that,'' Rudd said.
Terry Labonte finished third and overtook Jeff Gordon for the lead in the Winston Cup championship chase. Gordon, in ``the toughest race I've ever run,'' finished a lap down in 12th and fell 32 points behind Labonte. Jarrett, who led the most laps, trails by 76.
But as the drama of the points race unfolded on a gorgeous October afternoon, the eventual winner was doing a slow burn in the driver's seat of his Tide Ford Thunderbird.
Rudd's crew did OK on the green-flag stops. But they botched the yellow-flag stops so badly that Rudd finally blew his top.
``Go out there in the infield and get me some people who can pit this car!'' Rudd hollered to Broome on the radio after a botched stop around lap 271.
So Broome benched the team's two tire changers and replaced them not with infield spectators but with Derrike Cope's tire changers. That led to perhaps the worst stop of the day.
By then, crew members were tearing their hair out.
An hour later, they were celebrating in Victory Lane.
``That pit stall was just possessed today,'' spotter Dale Cagle said. ``We couldn't do anything right.''
The team's first stop, on lap 78 under a green flag, was uneventful.
The problems started on the second stop, under caution on lap 101. Rudd was running second when he pitted. But as Danny Marshburn was changing the right rear tire, a lug nut became stuck in the socket of his air wrench. Rudd had fallen to 10th when he finally left the pits.
After another decent green-flag stop on lap 178, Rudd came back into the pits during a caution period on lap 218. This time, right front tire changer Dave Anthony had problems.
He failed to get one of the five lug nuts off, and when he went back to get it, there was another lug nut stuck in the socket. Anthony ended up with two lug nuts on the same post. It took more precious seconds to untangle that mess.
In the driver's seat, Rudd was not a happy camper. But he battled back to second on the track. And when another yellow flag flew on lap 269, he came back to the pits for more abuse.
This time, Anthony had more problems at the right front tire. Rudd was livid. When the crew finally finished, Rudd didn't pull out right away. He sat there for an extra second or so, glaring at the crew, before going back out onto the track - in 13th place.
``That's it!'' he shouted to Broome on the radio. ``We can't take no more chances. Pull them. Put somebody in. It ain't got nothin' to do with feelings. We got to get the job done.''
``I understand,'' Broome replied.
So Broome borrowed the tire changers for Cope, who had crashed out of the race.
But Rudd's final stop, during a yellow flag that started on lap 298, was another disaster.
As Anthony and Marshburn watched from atop a tool box, the Cope crewman changing the left front tire threw the tire into the jack, dropping the car to the ground. Then a NASCAR inspector noticed that the right rear tire changer had failed to get all the lug nuts on. The crewman had to go back and finish the job.
Rudd didn't say much this time. He was in ninth place when the race resumed.
The seventh and final caution flag flew for a wreck on lap 314. Now, Broome had a decision to make. But as he saw it, he had no option other than to leave Rudd out on the track.
``Ricky, you're going to stay on the racetrack,'' Broome told Rudd.
``Are you sure about what you're doing?'' Rudd asked.
``No, I'm not sure,'' Broome replied. ``But we're going to try it.''
``I didn't have no choice,'' Broome said after the race. ``The pit crew kept screwing up so bad, it kinda forced us to make that call.''
Rudd had enough fuel to go all the way. And he only had about 15 laps on the set of tires Cope's crewman had so laboriously installed. And because everyone else had pitted, he was now back in the lead.
When the race resumed, Rudd was able to stay ahead of Jarrett, who had dominated the race, because the longer the run, the better his car got.
``Our car liked to run on old tires, and it played into our hands today,'' Rudd said. ``If I had my choice, I would have rather been sitting on that restart with four new tires and decent track position, but we couldn't gamble on some kind of foul-up happening in the pits again.''
But when it's your lucky day, nothing can go wrong no matter how bad things go.
During postrace inspection, the team found a broken valve spring in the engine. Rudd never mentioned any engine problem. The team doesn't know when the valve spring broke. But when it broke, the piece that fell off became wedged in the spring and kept the tension in it, which apparently allowed the engine to keep running at full song all the way to Victory Lane. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
[Ricky Rudd]
Ricky Rudd has won at least one Winston Cup race a year since 1983.
Sunday's was a surprise.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
It was Ricky Rudd's lucky day Sunday at Rockingham, where avoiding
pit road led to his 17th career victory. by CNB