THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412270172
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
Who is the cleanest, safest veteran driver in the Winston Cup series? And which one crashes the most, year-in and year-out?
The statistics don't lie.
No one is better at keeping out of trouble than Terry Labonte. And no one is worse than Derrike Cope.
That's the verdict of the four-year review of the wallbangers stats compiled and published annually by The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.
These are statistics NASCAR would never consider keeping. Nonetheless, they have proved accurate and revealing.
Labonte was involved in only 15 spins or crashes during the past four years. He's been among the leaders in the noncrash category in three of the past four years. He was the outright leader in 1992, when he didn't have a single crash or spin that brought out the yellow flag.
The other drivers with the fewest crashes or spins during the past four years are, as you might expect, the top drivers in the sport: Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace.
At the other end of the spectrum, Cope is the runaway leader, with 45 crashes or spins from 1991 through 1994. Cope has proved that he can win, but he's had a reputation of being crash-prone, and the VPLS crash-and-spin stats bear that out.
Cope has been at or near the top of the list three of the past four years. And he was the leader in 1994, with 16 crashes or spins while driving for three different owners.
Next on the cumulative list? Who else but ``Mr. Excitement,'' Jimmy Spencer. The temptation is to put an asterisk next to Spencer's total of 38 because in 1992 he ran only 12 of the 29 races - and still had five wrecks. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Terry Labonte, left, chats with Kyle Petty. Labonte, a three-time
winner in 1994, has been involved in only 15 crashes or yellow-flag
spins over the past four Winston Cup seasons.
Graphic
CRUISERS & BRUISERS
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB