ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602050053
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
It has been 18 months since a blown tire sent Ernie Irvan to the edge of death's door after his car slammed against the second-turn wall at Michigan International Speedway, a track with a nasty habit of injuring drivers in seemingly benign crashes.
Eighteen months is not a long time. Richard Petty has been retired now for more than twice that span.
But for Irvan, it has felt like a long time. And the NASCAR off-season, short though it is, simply extended Irvan's wait to come back to NASCAR racing in a full, no-holds-barred fashion.
``The off-season has been long, but then again, it's happened quickly,'' a relaxed Irvan said at Daytona International Speedway during the final Ford Winston Cup test in late January.
``But the off-season was a lot more painful for me. Everybody else has kind of wanted an off-season. Me, I'm kind of like, `OK, I just started my season the last part of the year.'''
Irvan raced in three of the last five races of the 1995 season. He drove with a patch over his still-injured left eye, and his performance was remarkable.
He finished sixth at North Wilkesboro on Oct.1 after leading 30 laps. At Phoenix four weeks later, he led 110 consecutive laps before dropping out with a broken engine. And in the final race of the year, at Atlanta, he finished seventh.
The importance of those races, especially to Irvan, cannot be underestimated. He established that even with one eye, he was competitive in the Winston Cup series and that he would not be just hanging on to a hopelessly stunted career.
Those races also solidified Irvan's goal for the 1996 season.
``What I want to accomplish is just getting back to where I was at before the accident,'' he said. ``We were in the hunt for the championship. My main goal is just to get back to where I was at. And I think the race team feels the same way.''
It would have been one thing if he had been hurt during an average campaign. But he was knocked out of the sport while doing battle at the very top of the heap. He was battling for a championship. He had won three races and had led so many laps in 1994, no one ever caught up to him.
Because he has tasted competition at that level, he won't say his comeback is complete until he gets there again.
The most striking thing about Irvan now is that his appearance and demeanor suggest he is nearly fully recovered, that he has made significant progress even since the end of last season.
His left eyelid still droops. He wears glasses. He retains a scar below his Adam's apple from the tracheotomy that saved his life.
Beyond that, there seems to be no trace of his wreck. He no longer displays the slow gait and not-quite-all-there demeanor he had when he made his first post-crash appearances in the fall of 1994. He doesn't have the special prism glasses he wore during the summer and fall.
Irvan is thinner, but that is because he has been working out, often with close friend Mark Martin, and is in the best shape of his life.
He no longer plans to wear an eye patch while racing, but Irvan acknowledges all is not perfect inside his left eye, which sustained some of the worst damagein the Michigan wreck.
``I had some nerve surgery on the eye during the off-season,'' he said. ``Basically, what it has done is just enabled me to take the prism glasses off.''
He didn't like the prism glasses.
``I still wear corrective glasses just to correct some of the vision,'' he said. ``But I still get some double vision if I look one way or the other too far. But in the race car, I don't seem to get any double vision.''
Irvan hasn't raced at Daytona since July 1994, when he finished second in the Pepsi 400. So there was more than one raised eyebrow when it became apparent he did not intend to practice at Daytona in January, despite six days reserved for Ford testing.
When he showed up at the track Jan.24, the final day of Ford testing, he was in street clothes and his car was about 500 miles away in Charlotte, N.C.
As far as he is concerned, he settled the issue of whether he needs special practice on the high-banked track with the results of his three races in the fall. And it's not that he didn't practice. He and team owner Robert Yates did most of their off-season testing at Talladega..
``When we went to Talladega [in early January], that was the first time I'd been there since right before I got hurt, because we raced there before that,'' he said. ``It didn't seem like I'd forgotten anything, so I think we'll be all right.''
Irvan is concerned about not practicing at Daytona, but not because he thinks he needs practice. The issue is practice for the car.
``Well, there's a lot of concern about it,'' he said. ``When we went to Talladega, we had some problems down there with some stuff and we just needed to come back [to the shop] and regroup.''
There's no certainty, of course, that whatever problems they encounter, or advancements they make, will translate from Talladega to Daytona.
``But it gets real crowded at Daytona and we think we can do a lot more running at Talladega,'' he said. ``We've got two really good race cars, but it's just a matter of getting all the pieces in one basket.''
Irvan begins this season with something he's never had before - a teammate. Dale Jarrett, who replaced Irvan last year, will drive a second Yates Ford this year.
Whether Irvan and Jarrett will work well together is not known. There was tension between them last year.
Irvan, to be sure, never seemed comfortable with Jarrett in the driver's seat of his Texaco Havoline Ford.
``I don't really know if our driving styles are going to have to mesh together,'' he said. ``We have two different race teams, two different sponsors and two different crews. And I don't think that anybody's style meshes with my style and anybody's style meshes with Dale's style.
``But I think the biggest thing is we're going to be able to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond and be able to learn more things,'' he said. ``Everybody new who has come to the race shop has been with other race teams, so now we get to have some of their knowledge.
``Right now, I think that everything has worked out really good for both of us.''
But he also has a strong idea of the proper hierarchy in a two-car team.
``There's one reason to have a second team - to make the first team better,'' he said. ``That's the first thing we have to do.''
But one of the biggest obstacles Irvan may face this year is the fact that the balance of power between Ford and Chevrolet has tilted toward Chevy since Irvan was sidelined.
The new Chevy Monte Carlo was introduced last year. At the end of the season, Chevy had won 21 races and Ford had eight victories.
``I haven't got to race at Daytona for a year-and-a-half,'' he said. ``If you look at the last time I ran here, we had an awfully good car and almost won the race.
``Now, it's different. But all we're going to do is do the best we can. And if that's how it plays out, we're not going to be very happy.''
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. Ernie Irvan, shown here with hisby CNBSuperTruck at Martinsville Speedway, says his comeback will not be
complete until he is competing for a Winston Cup points title again.
He'll make that attempt with Dale Jarrett as a teammate. 2. (no
caption) 3. Ernie Irvan hasn't raced at Daytona since the Pepsi 400
in July 1994, but he'll be at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18. color. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING