It was hard to get to and hell to drive on—but everyone will miss North Wilkesboro, which finally gave way to bigger and shinier tracks by Ed Hinton In the 93rd and final NASCAR race at North Wilkesboro, Wonder Boy held off the Intimidator for his 10th win of the season. (Margin of victory: 1.73 seconds) Jeff Gordon, Chevrolet, 400 laps at 96.837 mph Dale Earnhardt, Chevrolet, 400 laps Dale Jarrett, Ford, 400 laps Jeff Burton, Ford, 400 laps Terry Labonte, Chevrolet, 400 laps 2 hours, 34 minutes, 54 seconds; 4 flags, 29 laps run under caution Ted Musgrave 118.054 mph with point totals (and points earned this weekend) 1 Jeff Gordon 4,088 (185) 2 Terry Labonte 3,977 (155) 3 Dale Jarrett 3,906 (165) 4 Dale Earnhardt 3,737 (175) 5 Mark Martin 3,626 (143) After they played a raspy tape of Auld Lang Syne over the loudspeakers, and after the checkered flag had dropped on the last of 93 major NASCAR races in 48 seasons at rugged old North Wilkesboro Speedway, only one pair of hands clapped in the rapidly emptying grandstands. The same lone spectator let out a whistle. That was about it for send-offs (except for one other fellow whose bellowing was related more to beer than to nostalgia). There had been fears of an angry fan demonstration protesting NASCAR's abandonment of its Ebbets Field—Wilkesboro's two Winston Cup races were being moved to bigger, newer venues in Texas and New Hampshire starting with the 1997 season—but one never developed. In the end there was hardly a whimper as the sellout crowd of more than 40,000 spectators left the little five-eighths-of-a-mile oval in the Blue Ridge foothills. They all seemed to share the "mixed emotions" expressed by Jeff Gordon, winner of that last race, the Tyson Holly Farms 400. "You don't want to see a place like this go," he said, "but at the same time, it's exciting to see how much this sport is growing. Who knows what levels we'll reach?" It was Gordon's third victory in a row, his fourth in five races and his 10th of the season (but his only career win at Wilkesboro). It made the points race seem to be all but over, so commanding was his 111-point lead in pursuit of the Winston Cup, and it seemed to establish Gordon, at the tender age of 25, as the Man. But regardless of whether or not he leads the sport into the future, Gordon needed the Wilkesboro notch in his gun grips. To help rid himself of the Wonder Boy rap, he needed to win on the track that was, so notoriously, not for boys. The early races at Wilkesboro had been won by moonshine runners like Bob Flock and Junior Johnson. On this last day, Gordon outran the reigning tough guy, Dale Earnhardt, the same one who'd given the young star the Wonder Boy moniker. "I've won two races that I've really gotten excited about," said Gordon. "The inaugural Brickyard 400 [at Indianapolis] and the final race here. I know how tough this place is. It's so slick, so hard to win—and we were racing the best out there today." Gordon took North Wilkesboro's final checkered flag. photograph by George Tiedemann "We'd like to have won the last one at Wilkesboro," said Earnhardt, who had five career wins there in 18 years of trying. "But I just punished the heck out of my tires trying to run him down. And I got caught in some lapped traffic. But the name of the game is being there when you gotta be there. And we weren't there at the end." Not true. They were all there at the end.