THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 28, 1996 TAG: 9610280151
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PHOENIX LENGTH: 91 lines
The long drought for Petty Enterprises is over.
Car owner Richard Petty, the winningest driver in NASCAR history, finally found his way back to victory lane in the NASCAR Winston Cup series with a semi-castoff named Bobby Hamilton behind the wheel.
It was Hamilton's first visit to victory lane in a Winston Cup race, and the first for Petty since July, 1984, when he won his 200th and last victory at Daytona.
Hamilton passed Geoff Bodine in turns three and four on lap 283 and led the final 30 laps to win by 1.23 seconds over Mark Martin.
Terry Labonte, broken hand and all, had the best day among the Winston Cup championship rivals. He finished third and extended his lead by 15 points over fifth-place finisher Jeff Gordon. Labonte leads Gordon by 47 points and is 99 points up on Dale Jarrett, who finished eighth. Labonte can clinch the title with at least an eight-place finish Nov. 10 in Atlanta.
But, as Darrell Waltrip put it after the race, ``The sun is shining very brightly in the desert today.'' It was shining for NASCAR racing's most popular personality and it was shining for a driver who fought his way out of stock car racing's doldrums and found that elusive passage to victory lane.
``This is a big deal for me to win in Richard Petty's race car,'' Hamilton said. ``I've won a lot of races, so that's not a big deal. But there's a lot of race fans out there who may be Dale Earnhardt fans or Jeff Gordon fans, but if they don't win, they're still Richard Petty fans. So I thought it would be cool to win the first race in his car.''
For Petty, who's always had marvelous timing in this sport, the victory came only 10 days before the election that will determine whether he becomes North Carolina's secretary of state.
``Hopefully this will give me some good publicity instead of some of the bad publicity I've been getting lately,'' Petty said. ``Bobby is not running for office, but I am. But yet, somewhere in the story, they'll bring (the election) up. So definitely, it has to help.''
Phoenix was an appropriate place for Hamilton's first Cup victory because it was here in 1989 where he first made his mark. Hamilton came to help shoot a movie, and left as the hottest young prospect in the sport.
Fellow Tennessean Waltrip had recommended Hamilton as a driver for a camera car used in the race where segments of the Tom Cruise movie ``Days of Thunder'' were filmed. But Hamilton wanted to be more than a chauffeur in his first Winston Cup race. He qualified fifth and actually took the lead twice in the event before the engine blew.
That led to three races in 1990 for car owner George Bradshaw. Hamilton wasrookie of the year in his first full season, 1991, with four top-10 finishes.
He remembered how tough it was that first year, fighting with everything he had to keep up with the other cars and watching with frustration as they pulled away, race after race. It was a hard dose of reality for a Nashville driver who already had dozens of short track victories under his belt.
His second year, however, was not as good as his first and the third was worse than the second. Hamilton was fired by Bradshaw after eight races in 1993 and only competed in seven more that year.
He struggled again in 1994, driving for Felix Sabates. And when he was hired by Petty for the 1995 season, it was only because Petty had been unable to land John Andretti.
But the Pettys liked Hamilton's down-home style. He posted 10 top-10 finishes in 1995 and finished second at Dover in September of that year. Entering Sunday's race, Hamilton had led 595 laps in nine different races this year.
Hamilton started 17th Sunday, but was running in the top 10 within 60 laps. He took the lead for the first time on lap 81 and led a total of 40 laps in a race that saw a number of strong cars trade the top spot.
As the race wound down, Hamilton went through the jitters that every win-starved driver experiences while waiting for the checkered flag to fall.
``I picked up a bad vibration about halfway through the race and I knew it was (in the) driveline because we've had that happen before,'' Hamilton said. ``When (starter) Doyle (Ford) signaled 10 laps to go, it felt like it was getting worse.
``There was a couple of cars smoking on the race track running right in our groove,'' Hamilton said. ``I couldn't believe all the cars that were smoking. That was bugging me pretty bad. All that stuff was working on me the last 10 laps.''
Said Petty, ``I think I was thinking like Bobby was those last few laps with all those cars smoking. I wasn't worried about Bobby or the car. I was worried about somebody else doing something that would mess up our situation.''
``It feels great,'' Petty said. ``I had confidence in Bobby, and it was just a matter of time. I've said before when the circumstances were right, we'd win races. We have a good-enough team, driver, crew. It was just a matter of time.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bobby Hamilton pulls ahead of Mark Martin en route to his first
Winston Cup victory Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway. by CNB