THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 12, 1996 TAG: 9608120120
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. LENGTH: 89 lines
The driver who ended up in Victory Lane at Watkins Glen International on Sunday considered his accomplishment a miracle.
But it was not a bruised and battered Dale Earnhardt. It was Geoff Bodine, who became a winner again in the Winston Cup series for the first time in almost two years.
Bodine gambled on a pit-stop strategy that worked perfectly, then squeezed past Ken Schrader with eight laps to go and won by 0.44 seconds over Terry Labonte as Schrader faded with engine problems.
Mark Martin was third, followed by Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte and Earnhardt, who led the most laps (54 of 90) and gamely drove the entire race with a broken clavicle and sternum.
Eighteen other cars finished on the lead lap.
``Ah, yes, miracles do happen,'' Bodine told his team on the radio during his victory lap. ``Yeah, this is the way it's supposed to be.''
Life for Bodine has not been the way it's supposed to be for almost two years, since his ex-wife, Kathy, left him. He lapped the field to win at North Wilkesboro that October, then the bottom fell out.
``If you've never been through what I've been through, you just can't imagine,'' he said. ``It was terrible - the worst time of my life. It was so bad, I thought about selling the team. I thought about quitting.
``But I had friends who stuck with me - (business manager) Bill Doucette and my crew chief, Paul Andrews. I don't really know why they stayed. I guess they just had confidence that someday my life would be back to normal and we could concentrate on racing.
``This victory means all that. It means we survived the worst time of my life. We survived with friends and with God's help, and you just can't get any better than that.
``I can't believe we pulled this off.''
Bodine said his heart really wasn't into racing until recently.
``About two months ago, it started to get better,'' he said. ``A month ago it was really good, and today was great. I was finally able to concentrate and do all the things I needed to do to race again.''
Bodine, who started 13th, was never higher than 10th until a yellow flag flew on lap 54 when Robert Pressley's car died and stopped on the track. While everyone else pitted, Bodine elected to stay out until it was time for his normal pit stop. And that put him in the lead.
``I guess everyone was saying, `What the heck is he doing,' '' Bodine said. ``But we learned from Indy that we spent too much time in the pits and got way behind.
``We said we weren't going to do that here. We said we were going to have just a two-pit-stop race and that's it. We said no matter what happened, we were only going to stop twice.. . . I think it was a pretty gutsy move. And it worked.''
It worked because a lap after Bodine came in for his normal pit stop on lap 62, the yellow flag flew again. That allowed Bodine to move back up near the head of the field when most of the cars pitted again for additional fuel.
At that point, Bodine was ninth, trailing a group of drivers who had chosen to stay out and see if Bodine's strategy would work for them.
``A key was that I got through those cars ahead of me really quick,'' Bodine said.
The race-winning pass started after the final turn on lap 82.
Schrader ``was slowing me down in the corners and I could see Terry catching us and I said to myself, `I gotta do something really quick,' '' Bodine said.
``I really ran him into turn 1 hard, hoping he'd slide up just a little bit to give me that land underneath. He got a little high getting off turn 1, and that's all I needed. He tried to get back over to the inside of the track and we touched a little bit, but we made it through there and I got by him.
``It took a little while for Terry to get by Kenny, and I got that cushion back.''
This was Bodine's 18th career victory and one of his most important.
``Today proves I'm surviving as a race-car driver,'' he said. ``It was just time to try to get on with my life. I'm not telling you the rest of my life is in order. The personal part of my life is still very hurt. But, thank God, the professional side is coming back together.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by AP
``Ah, yes, miracles do happen,'' Geoff Bodine said of his first win
in nearly two years.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Geoff Bodine, left, nudges past Ken Schrader to take the lead for
good with eight laps left in Sunday's Bud at the Glen. ``He got a
little high getting off turn 1, and that's all I needed,'' Bodine
said. The win was the 18th of his career.
Graphic
The Ricky Rudd Report
Bud at the Glen Results
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