ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 20, 1996 TAG: 9602200074
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
The most telling words of Speedweeks, it turned out, came from Dale Earnhardt on Thursday after he won his Twin 125 qualifying race.
``Everyone is talking about teammates,'' he said. ``It's going to get real competitive this year, racing two cars per team and three cars per team vs. racing one-on-one.
``It's going to be a different trend at Daytona and Talladega. These speedway races are going to be teamwork races. Unfortunately, we've only got one team. We're going to have to go after them alone.''
At the end of NASCAR's big show Sunday, won by Dale Jarrett, Earnhardt was the loneliest driver on the track. He was riding in second place yet again with nowhere to go and no one willing to help him.
It was not that Earnhardt was double-teamed by teammates. Two rival drivers - a Ford driver and a Chevy driver - ganged up on Earnhardt to him to keep him from winning the one major NASCAR title that has eluded him.
Chevy driver Ken Schrader and Ford driver Mark Martin had no more sympathy for Earnhardt's agony in the Daytona 500 than an ornery bull has for a rodeo rider.
And so Jarrett motored to his second victory, nervously awaiting the challenge that never came.
This race alone should prompt Earnhardt's car owner, Richard Childress, to add a second team to his one-car stable. That may be the only way Earnhardt will ever get any direct help in the Daytona 500.
Martin could not have been more plain about that after emerging from his Ford with a fourth-place finish. Martin's own effort had been - unquestionably - the outstanding performance of the 500. Martin had been unusually slow throughout Speedweeks. But Sunday, with sheer determination, he had driven his turtle far beyond its capabilities and was in a position to have a say in the outcome.
``I was going to go with Kenny Schrader,'' Martin said. ``I wanted to see Kenny win. He was not going to go with Dale Earnhardt. He was not.''
In the final laps, the lineup at the head of the pack was Jarrett, Earnhardt, Schrader and Martin.
Earnhardt had asked for help from fellow Chevy driver Schrader, and was told by his spotter that Schrader would go with him when the time came.
But on the last lap, it was Schrader and Martin who raced as a team - a Ford and a Chevy openly working together against Earnhardt, wholly unwilling to try to help him draft past Jarrett.
As it turned out, they could do nothing as a team to get past Earnhardt.
But together, they made sure he got no help in challenging Jarrett. And alone, Earnhardt had nothing for Jarrett. In that act, here is the unspoken message Martin and Schrader were sending to the greatest stock car driver of his era:
We're tired of you winning. Your success - your four Winston Cup championships in the 1990s - has come at our expense. And if there is any justice in the world, you will never win the 500, because you've already had more than your fair share of glory.
Martin, year after year, is a consistent multiple-race winner. But he has become so jaded at Earnhardt's uncanny good luck in winning championships, he simply does not talk these days about winning championships.
And Schrader, poor Schrader, hasn't won a thing since 1991 and has to endure the humbling reality of being the rehabilitation project in the three-team Rick Hendrick stable. Other than those who have never won, there can be no hungrier driver in the garage than Schrader.
Of course, none of the veteran, top-line drivers in the garage was happy about the outcome of 1995. It didn't seem right that when the Winston Cup championship door finally opened for someone other than Earnhardt, it opened for a kid - Jeff Gordon - who was in only his third year on the circuit.
But if Earnhardt thinks he is just going to return to business as usual in 1996, he found out Sunday that Gordon may not be his biggest problem. He found out Sunday there were rivals in the garage who had so little use for his continuing success, they were willing to gang up on him to keep him mired in his career-long Daytona 500 drought.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Dale Jarrett (right) hugs one of his crew membersby CNBSunday after winning his second Daytona 500. color. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING