THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602290472
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: NASCAR NOTES
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Loy Allen Jr. is still one banged-up race-car driver after taking several really hard wallops in his crash at Rockingham on Sunday.
He was still at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte on Tuesday and was expected to remain there several more days, slowly and painfully recovering from a broken right shoulder blade and a concussion.
``The thing they're most concerned about right now is that he has had a lot of swelling around his neck,'' team member Jeff Baker said. ``They've got a cervical collar on him and they're going to do an MRI. And they're curious to find out how much pain he will have holding his head up after they take the collar off.
``The first time he hit (the outside wall), he was knocked unconscious,'' Baker said. ``And then the second hit (to the inside wall), with his body being limp, he took quite a blow to his neck. It took a bad stretch.''
Baker said, however, that there was no spinal injury.
``They're going to keep him there for the next two or three days,'' Baker said. ``We've named Dick Trickle to drive the car (the No. 19 Tri-Star Motorsports Ford) until Loy is able to get back at it.''
TIME TO REFOCUS: Dale Earnhardt says that if Bobby Hamilton is thinking about retaliating this Sunday at Richmond for getting spun out at Rockingham, he's thinking about the wrong thing.
``First of all, I hate it happened,'' he said. ``But it wasn't the only incident on Sunday. Dale Jarrett got into me twice and I got away from him twice. I was lucky I didn't hit the wall.
``Several cars got wrecked several times. But we was racing and definitely didn't do nothing intentional.
``I don't know what to say about it. If they want to worry about what happened down there going into Richmond, it's going to take their focus off doing good at Richmond.
``If they want to try to just ride around and knock the 3 car out, that's their prerogative. But it will take their focus away from winning. It happened. It wasn't intentional. Sorry about it. Let's get on and go on to the next race.''
THE OTHER SIDE: The Hamilton camp isn't quite that willing to forget.
For one thing, several crew members worked all night Sunday after the race, preparing the car for repairs. By 7:30 a.m., it was at Mike Laughlin's shop near Greenville, S.C., for a new snout.
``And some of the boys worked all night last night in the body shop to get the car ready as a backup for Richmond,'' team manager Dale Inman said Tuesday.
``There's no question (Dale Earnhardt) is one of the greatest drivers,'' he said. ``I used to watch Grand National races just to see Earnhardt run. He is just absolutely great.
``And the thing that's so disturbing to us is, he's better than what he did there. There's not an inch on a racetrack where he doesn't know where he's at. I'm not saying he hit us on purpose, but he certainly could have missed us.'' by CNB