Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 26, 1994 TAG: 9411020020
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Rusty Wallace led 369 laps of the Goody's 500 Sunday at Martinsville Speedway and basically ran away with the show in his Ford Thunderbird. But he gave the fans 15 laps of fender-banging action with Dale Earnhardt at the end, and that was all it took to create one of the year's best events.
Earnhardt's Chevrolet was about four car lengths behind Wallace's Ford at the checkered flag (.66 seconds), but from lap 476 to lap 490, they were all but glued together.
Earnhardt would bump Wallace in turns 1 and 2, then try to claw by on the outside in 3 and 4. Then he would try it the other way. Lap after lap, Earnhardt dogged the leader, finally falling back only when his tires and brakes went away.
The battle was all the more impressive because the soon-to-be 1994 Winston Cup champion had to come back from two early spins to challenge Wallace.
``He [Earnhardt] could have went out the pit gate and I know he'd be back,'' Wallace said.
``Once we got through spinning around there, we came up and raced them,'' Earnhardt said.
Said Wallace: ``He pulled up alongside me after the race and gave the thumbs up. He loved it. I did, too, because I won.''
Bill Elliott finished third, followed by Kenny Wallace, Dale Jarrett and Ken Schrader, the only other drivers on the lead lap.
Pole-winner Ted Musgrave finished ninth, a lap down.
Wallace, who also dominated and won the Hanes 500 here in April, chalked up his eighth victory of the year. And he clinched Ford's manufacturer's title, but still gained only 10 points on Earnhardt's comfortable lead in the battle for the Winston Cup championship.
Earnhardt now has a 217-point lead with five races to go, and Wallace readily acknowledges that Earnhardt would now have to have a series of problems to relinquish his stranglehold on a record-tying seventh title.
``Something's got to happen, or he's got to go a couple of laps down two or three times, or start having tire failures,''
Wallace said. ``All I can do is just win 'em and lead 'em. I'm doing everything I can do. We've been laying numbers on the board, but that Daytona and Talladega got me so many points back early in the year, I can't make 'em up.''
He wrecked at both tracks early in the year, finishing 41st in the Daytona 500 and 33rd in the Winston 500.
Wallace was never ahead by more than a quarter of a lap in Sunday's race, but no one else could catch him.
``I had a good handling car and we didn't change any set-up at all,'' he said. ``My car was super consistent today.''
The race featured the usual short-track skirmishes (the caution flag flew 11 times for 75 laps), and Wallace took the blame for one of them - crashing Lake Speed out of the race on lap 88.
But the two spins by Earnhardt, neither of which prompted a caution period, were the ones that brought the fans to their feet. He spun in front of a pack of cars coming out of turn 4 on lap 35 when Kenny Wallace nailed him. And he looped it in turn 2 on lap 77 when Rick Mast lost a tire and took him out.
But Wallace knew better than to assume he would gain any advantage from those spins.
``I looked in my mirror and saw [Earnhardt] spin [on lap 35] and I thought, `They're all going to wreck in a big pile and he's going to come out of it,' '' Wallace said.
In the final stages, a flat tire prevented the race from being a Wallace runaway.
Wallace was cruising about 4 seconds ahead of Earnhardt on lap 447 when he suddenly slowed going through turns 1 and 2.
``Right front! Right front! Right front!'' he shouted into his radio going down the backstretch as his crew scrambled to prepare for an unscheduled stop. Wallace's right-front tire was punctured.
``And then I went down into turn 3 and I thought I was never going to get that thing turned and it went straight up the race track,'' Wallace recalled after the race. ``And I'm trying to get that thing down.
``When I made a left, I've got to tell you, that's not the smartest turn I've ever done. I just hoped that nobody was there. I made a left and mashed the throttle and there wasn't anybody there. If I hadn't done that, I would've lost the race.''
Luckily for Wallace, he and everyone else were scheduled to make their final pit stops around that time. And when Morgan Shepherd spun in turn 4 on lap 459, Wallace regained the lead by staying out on the track.
That set up the final showdown.
It started on lap 476, when Earnhardt closed in on Wallace's back bumper. The next three laps, Earnhardt tried to pass Wallace on the outside in the corners. On lap 480, he tapped Wallace between turns 1 and 2. He tried an outside pass on lap 482 and then bumped Wallace again on lap 484.
Wallace wouldn't budge. He kept his car stuck to the inside groove in the turns.
``I didn't feel him touch me,'' he would say after the race, conceding later, ``well, maybe a little bit. I must have a really cushioney bumper because everybody was telling me how much I got beat up. But I didn't have any scratches on the car and I didn't feel much.''
On lap 489, Earnhardt gave Wallace his biggest bump yet in 1 and 2, and tried the outside pass in 3 and 4.
And then it was over. By the end of lap 490, Wallace had pulled away by 11/2 car lengths.
``I did that restart on 17-lap tires and he did the restart on stickers [new tires],'' Wallace said. ``That's why I couldn't get away from him. The trend was that his car would run fast for about 20 laps and then give up. And that's what it did.''
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB