"It was the coolest thing we've ever done together." That's how Bobby Labonte summed up the season-ending NAPA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, in which he took the checkered flag for his only win of the season, and his older brother, Terry, finished fifth to secure the 1996 Winston Cup championship.
Cool? The Labonte brothers were dry ice after the race. Following a side-by-side victory lap around the Atlanta oval, the two rolled into Victory Lane, gave each other the thumbs-up, and engaged in the following rousing exchange.
Bobby: "You spending the night in Atlanta?"
Terry: "Don't know."
Bobby: "O.K. See you later."
Moments before, though, there had been at least one brief surge of emotion. Terry, long known as the Iceman around NASCAR garages, had finally melted as he prepared to climb out of his Chevrolet after the victory lap. He sat for a moment, overcome by the drama of winning his first Winston Cup championship since 1984-the longest any driver has gone between Winston Cup Series titles.
"That's the first time I've ever gotten emotional," said Terry, who picked up the second title a week shy of his 40th birthday. "I couldn't believe it. I was surprised at myself."
The Labontes may guard their emotions, but when they do express themselves, they're straight shooters. Asked for his recollection of the second-coolest thing the brothers had done together, Terry hesitated. His car owner, Rick Hendrick, cut in: "Probably the time you two shot up your dad's truck."
"I hated that truck," Terry said of the troublesome '83 Chevy pickup. "It had broken down on me. Bobby had borrowed it one time and it had broken down on him, and he hated it too. Finally my dad called and said take it to the junkyard.
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Terry Labonte's safe fifth-place finish in the number 5 Chevy sealed his second series title-12 years after the first.
photograph by
George Tiedemann
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"Before we did, I told Bobby, 'We ought to do something to that truck. Let's shoot it.' So we turned it sideways in the driveway, and I got a .44 Magnum. We shot the truck—six shots. We got it.
"My dad went by the junkyard the next day and saw all the bullet holes in it. So later he told Bobby, 'Go get my truck back. I've found a buyer for it.' Bobby called me in a panic. He said, 'We're in trouble. Dad's trying to sell that truck.' I said, 'What truck?' Bobby said, 'The one you shot.' I said, 'You mean the one you shot.' Bobby said, 'It was your gun.'"
"Terry figured it out the next day," said their father, Bob Labonte. "But I had Bobby goin' for several days."
Both brothers had it going in Atlanta. Bobby took the pole, and Terry qualified third—a position that boded well, as he needed to finish eighth or better to clinch the series title. Terry's series lead entering the season finale was a less-than-comfortable 47 points over defending champion Jeff Gordon, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate; Dale Jarrett was still in the running too, 99 points behind the leader. But Labonte controlled his own destiny.
The number 5 Monte Carlo had been running well all week; the greatest point of concern was the driver. Labonte would have to race with a broken left hand, suffered in a crash during practice at Phoenix 16 days earlier. At Atlanta he wore a splint, which hampered his grip on the wheel. To ease the pain, he took prerace injections of a local anesthetic. "It wore off with about 100 laps to go," Terry said.
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Gordon pitted early, then climbed back, but he never could shake Bobby Labonte.
photograph by
Robert Rogers
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There were other reasons for nervousness. Fuel economy was also an issue, but a caution with 54 laps to go allowed Labonte to slip into the pits for a reassuring splash of gas. After the restart, he found himself in 12th place, with Gordon running fourth, but Labonte quickly climbed back into the top five. From Lap 300 on, he mainly tried to avoid problems, steering clear of lapped traffic. "I just found a spot and rode it out," he said. "I didn't want to take any chances I didn't need to take."
Before the race, Gordon had said he had only one hope of overtaking his teammate for the championship: "Lead the most laps [to collect the five-point bonus] and win the race." Bobby Labonte did his brother a favor, capturing both those honors. He led 147 of the 328 laps-including the last.
"I can't say enough about seeing him happy," Bobby, 32, said regarding his brother's championship.
Gordon was slowed early in the race. Within the first few laps, his Chevy developed a bad vibration in one of the rear wheels. Repairs cost Gordon two laps in the pits, but he quickly grabbed them back-one on Lap 18 on the restart after the race's first caution, and the other on Lap 49 as the second caution ended. Gordon led at times and even threatened Bobby Labonte for the win in the late going before fading to third, behind Jarrett, at the finish.
The 1995 champion was chipper as he climbed from his car. "We knew if Terry didn't have a problem, we didn't have a chance," said Gordon. "We certainly wanted to make him work for it. We did, and we're proud of that."
Gordon wound up 37 points short of the title, and Jarrett 89 points back. The Labonte-Gordon series finish marked the second straight Winston Cup championship for Hendrick and the first time a car owner has placed drivers one-two in the final standings.
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Atlanta earned thumbs-up from Bobby (left) and Terry.
photograph by
George Tiedemann
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"We might be one-two-three next year," said Gordon. That's because the highly regarded Ricky Craven joins Labonte and Gordon on the Hendrick team for '97.
Gordon won 10 races to his teammate's two in 1996 but
didn't garner enough points over the season to earn the title. Nevertheless, he had no complaints about the scoring system, which emphasizes consistently high finishes rather than victories.
"We know how a championship is won—we proved that last year," said Gordon. "We're happy we won 10 races. But I'd trade places with Terry in a second."
The feeling was most decidedly not mutual. Said Terry, thinking back to '84, "The last time I won the championship,
I thought, 'That's pretty neat. I'll probably do it again next year.' Then for 12 years, I didn't think next year was ever going to
get here."
