DATE: Sunday, April 27, 1997                TAG: 9704270197

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   65 lines

POLE SITTERS DO HAVE INSIDE TRACK, A STUDY OF THE NUMBERS SHOWS

When first-day qualifying for today's Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway concluded Friday, car owner Bill Davis was satisfied.

While his driver, Ward Burton, had not exactly blistered the 2.66-mile track, he had won the 25th starting position - the final qualifying spot in the first round of time trials.

As Davis said Saturday, ``The top 25 is what counts.''

But little did Davis know that the 25th starting spot, statistically speaking, is the kiss of death. In every NASCAR Winston Cup race run at every existing track as well as North Wilkesboro Speedway - a total of 924 events - no one has ever won from 25th on the starting grid.

That's just one of the interesting facts revealed in a study of the starting positions of Winston Cup winners.

It stands to reason that the fastest car will win more often than any other. And the second-fastest will win second-most-often, and so on.

Of the 924 races studied, the pole winner won 173. The outside pole winner won 138. The third-place starter won 119, the fourth-place starter 88 and the fifth-place starter 66.

This means, however, that the pole winner is batting, in baseball terms, a paltry .187. But it's still far better than anyone else.

It's almost mandatory to start in the top 10 if a driver wants to win. In more than four of five races - 82.35 percent - the winner came from the top 10 on the starting grid.

As you go down the lineup, the victories fall off quickly. Only nine winners in 924 races started from the 16th position. Only three winners started 23rd. And no one has ever won from 25th, or 34th, or 35th.

There are anomalies in the stats. Forty-eight winners have started seventh, but only 46 have started sixth. Six winners have come from the 24th starting spot, but only three from 23rd and none from 25th.

At three tracks, Dover, Martinsville and Pocono, no one has ever won from the ninth starting spot.

A driver who can guide his stock car into Victory Lane after starting 30th or worse has accomplished one of the rarest feats in NASCAR racing. It has happened only eight times in the 924 races, and only twice in the 1990s. The odds against it are more than 115-1.

The record for winning from the farthest back is held by Johnny Mantz, who won the first Southern 500 in 1950 from 43rd. He averaged 2 mph quicker in the race than he did in qualifying.

The last time a winner came from 30th or worse was at Dover in the 1995 Miller 500. Kyle Petty started 37th, missed the big wreck at the start of the race and came on to win, seemingly out of nowhere.

``That's the race where Goodyear had to bring in new tires on Sunday morning,'' Petty said. ``Goodyear came in and told us Saturday that the tires were coming apart and they were going to bring in all-new tires on Sunday morning. For some reason that morning, when we put those tires on, we were like Jack the Bear.

``Something like that lets you know there's a God up there who says, `OK, it's your day.' Because we could do no wrong. We had the car fall off the jack on a pit stop. But everybody else had bad stops, too, so we didn't lose any positions. When it's your day, it's your day.''

And that's kind of the way car owner Davis looks at it.

``It doesn't mean squat to us,'' he said. ``We'll be in the top five if we run all day and avoid the wrecks.''

Crew chief Chris Hussey even sees the 25th starting position as a good omen.

``It's due, that's what I say,'' Hussey said. ``Since it's never happened, someone is due to win from 25th.''

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