DATE: Monday, October 6, 1997               TAG: 9710060167

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CONCORD, N.C.                     LENGTH:   85 lines

BAD BREAK A BLESSING AS JARRETT FINDS STRIDE HIS FORD SPRINGS INTO THE LEAD AFTER A PART WORKS ITSELF LOOSE AT CHARLOTTE.

Fate gave Dale Jarrett a major chassis adjustment his team did not anticipate Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and it opened the door for a commanding 4.142-second victory in the UAW-GM 500.

Bobby Labonte, who dominated most of the event, finished second, followed by Dale Earnhardt, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton, the only other drivers on the lead lap.

Labonte led 141 laps; Jarrett was in front for only 85, including the final 58 circuits around this 1.5-mile speedway.

During the cool-down lap at the end of Sunday's race, Jarrett and crew chief Todd Parrott were congratulating each other when crewman Brad Parrott, Todd's brother, came on the radio.

``Todd, I got the winner in my left hand,'' he said. ``The spring rubber fell out of the left front (spring) with two pit stops to go.''

Todd Parrott did not need his brother to tell him about it. He was already well aware of the bad break that magically turned into good luck during a pit stop on lap 224.

``They dropped the jack and the car left pit road and I looked down on pit road and I saw 10 or 12 lug nuts and a spring rubber and I said, `Oh, my gosh,' '' Todd Parrott said.

His heart sank.

``I just knew from then on, that was the end of it,'' he said.

But it wasn't; it was just the beginning. As Parrott watched the car and studied the stopwatch, he could see that Jarrett was actually better than he had been before.

``The car was the best it had been all day,'' Parrott said. ``After that happened, we were as good as the 18 (Bobby Labonte). We made one more minor adjustment on that last pit stop and were about two-tenths (of a second per lap) better than anybody.''

Said Jarrett: ``I just assumed that the adjustments we made were doing that. What it did was it made the car turn into the center of the corner real good. It gave me a good feeling I could get in there. And the car really went through the corner a lot better than it did all day.

``We had talked about taking (the spring rubber) out. We forgot to do it. God did it for us.''

The victory was Jarrett's sixth in his finest season in the NASCAR Winston Cup series. And it fell into much the same pattern as his last victory at Richmond last month.

He did not lead the most laps, but he was strong when it counted - at the end.

And that's the strategy of this powerhouse Ford team owned by Robert Yates: Make the car work best on the long runs.

``We look more towards making the car go during a long period of time,'' Jarrett said. ``We work a whole lot with shocks. That's a big part of racing today - making these radial tires stay on the car for a long period of time.''

During the first 100 laps, Labonte all but disappeared from view. He shot into the lead past pole-sitter Geoff Bodine on the fifth lap and led the next 62 circuits.

After the first round of pit stops, he took command again.

By lap 100, he had transformed more than three-fourths of the field into lapped traffic. Only nine cars remained on the lead lap.

Suddenly, the only significant crash of the day occurred in turn 2. Someone dumped oil and grease on the track, and cars began spinning in front of Labonte as he flew into the turn.

``I knew there was somebody in the wall, but I didn't know there was oil over there,'' Labonte said. ``When I got there, I was pretty much OK, but a couple of cars locked in front of me and I had to lock it up and I got in the oil a little bit and spun around.''

But other than take Labonte out of the lead and shuffle him to the back of the line of cars on the lead lap, ``it really didn't hurt us at all.''

Labonte was back in the lead by lap 232 and stayed in front for another 45 laps until Jarrett took the lead for good on lap 277.

What killed Labonte was Jarrett's bad/good luck on pit road, and a mismatched set of tires.

``The only time we were loose all day was that last set of tires,'' Labonte said. ``We had a good car, we just came up a little short there at the end.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dale Jarrett's victory Sunday in the UAW-GM 500 at Charlotte was his

sixth of the season.

RUDD REPORT

RESULTS

GRAPHIC

[For a copy of the graphics, see microfilm for this date.]

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