DATE: Tuesday, October 28, 1997             TAG: 9710280420

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C10  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BOB ZELLER

LENGTH: 81 lines

NASCAR REPORT

Finishing 4th helps

Gordon pad his lead

in championship race

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. - Jeff Gordon held his pursuers at bay for yet another race Monday, clearing a wider path to the Winston Cup championship.

He came into the AC Delco 400 at North Carolina Motor Speedway needing three sixth-place finishes in the final three races to clinch his second championship. After finishing fourth Monday and putting his closest pursuer, Mark Martin, 15 points further behind, Gordon now need only post a pair of 13th-place finishes to win the title.

``To get a fourth place here today is a great day for us,'' Gordon said afterward. ``We raced the guys we needed to race and did exactly what we needed to do in the championship race. We need to do that two more times.''

With just Phoenix and Atlanta left, Gordon leads Martin by 125 points. Dale Jarrett, who finished second Monday, trails Gordon by 145 points.

If you put the championship battle in baseball terms, Rockingham was the eighth inning, and it was scoreless. Nobody made any big moves. Nobody lost any critical ground. And that, of course, favors Gordon.

But one disaster could still kill his edge. At Phoenix, as with every other Winston Cup race, the difference between first place and 42nd place is 143 points.

Although Gordon had to battle back from a axle-cap problem that forced him to make an extra pit stop and lose track position, he led 23 laps and had a fairly strong car all day. Jarrett led 73 laps and was a contender for the win.

``We've got a chance, but it's getting slimmer every time (Gordon) finishes in the top five,'' Jarrett said.

Martin never led a lap but managed to stick around in the top 10 most of the day. He took fifth place from Dick Trickle with two laps to go, then lost the position on the last lap.

``Got by Trickle on the next-to-the-last lap and he ran into the back of me and got back by me,'' Martin said. ``Passed him clean and he got into me. At least I didn't wreck. But I lost some points, and we'll go to Phoenix and get 'em back.''

It was Trickle's second top-five finish in the last nine races.

``It was kinda fun racing Mark,'' said Trickle, who has raced Martin since the 1970s. ``Mark shook his fist a little bit and shook his finger at me. That's fun. He doesn't realize I'm hungrier than he is. I didn't hit him hard, just enough to make him move up in the second groove.''

Martin's biggest problem was that he and his crew never managed to get his car dialed in.

``It was just a little off,'' he said. ``It was kinda one of those days when you are off just a touch and it seems to come and go real bad. We didn't run bad. We just didn't run good.''

Said Gordon, ``We've got a little breathing room. Not much. At Phoenix, we need to do exactly what we did here.''

A clean race

There seems to be a connection between rain-delayed races and clean races. Perhaps the delay induces drivers to be more careful so they can finish earlier and go home quicker.

In Monday's race, which was postponed from Sunday because of rain, there were only three wrecks and five caution periods.

On lap 113, Jimmy Spencer lost control coming off turn 2 and crashed, taking Ricky Rudd with him. Spencer apparently blew a tire.

``We had a good race car again, but we ain't had no damn luck,'' Spencer said.

Said Rudd, ``It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.''

Jeff Burton and Gary Bradberry were involved in single-car crashes.

Burton's came after he was penalized for speeding on pit road, which sent him deep into the field. As he tried to come back through the field, he tangled with his brother, Ward.

``I just drove in there (in turns 1 and 2) too hard for somebody to be on the outside,'' said Jeff Burton, who led 21 laps.

Odds and ends

Ricky Craven, who finished third, led the most laps. He was in front for 139 of the 393 circuits around this 1.017-mile speedway. . . . Bobby Hamilton's victory was the second of his career. His first came exactly a year earlier, at Phoenix.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu