
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993                   TAG: 9308220152
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: D11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: M.J. DOUGHERTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

SMITH WINS DASH RACE AT NRVS

Johnny Smith just about had the race won before the green flag dropped Saturday night at New River Valley Speedway.

Smith, from Taylorsville, N.C., beat pole-sitter Will Hobgood to the finish line at the start of the race. Smith then held-off Hobgood for the entire 100 laps of the Goody's Dash race as part of the Pontiac Excitement 250.

"I've been racing with Will all year, and I know he doesn't have too good of a takeoff," Smith said. "I knew if I could get in front of him when we first started that he would have a hard time. I had watched him in practice and knew he was loose."

And that's exactly how things happened. Smith's Pontiac got off quicker than Hobgood's Chevrolet on the start and on each of the six restarts after caution periods.

"That's where he beat us," said Hobgood, from Columbia, S.C. "We've got to get that [the restarts] going."

Even with the quick starts, Smith had to do some fancy driving to keep Hobgood at bay. During the late-race green-flag periods, Hobgood would draw closer and closer. But he never could do more than pull along side of Smith on the final two laps.

"About halfway through the race, I started getting loose so I backed out of it a little bit," said Smith, whose victory was his third of the year and the second in which he has led every lap. "He kind of snuck up on me those last 15 laps. I was loose and I just had to hang on to it."

Hobgood, the Dash series' points leader, made a valiant effort in the closing laps. But with no green-flag stretch longer than 15 laps in the final 50, Hobgood just didn't have enough time to take the lead.

"The caution periods killed us," said Hobgood, who had won the two consecutive races before Saturday. "I don't know if we could have gotten him. But I would have made him work a lot harder. I tried everything."

Mickey York of Ashboro, N.C., the series' other three-time winner this season, finished third in a Pontiac. The performance ended a two-race run of bad luck for York, who won the Goody's Dash race at New River last year on his way to the points championship.

Keywords:
AUTO RACING

by CNB