Terry Labonte set the record for consecutive starts, but short-track ace Rusty Wallace took Martinsville—again by Bruce Newman Amid the usual NASCAR techno-squabbling, Martinsville master Rusty Wallace got his first win of the '96 season and Ernie Irvan his best finish since his '94 accident. (Margin of victory: 2.526 seconds) Rusty Wallace, Ford, 500 laps at 81.410 mph* Ernie Irvan, Ford, 500 laps Jeff Gordon, Chevrolet, 500 laps Jeremy Mayfield, Ford, 500 laps Dale Earnhardt, Chevrolet, 500 laps 3 hours, 13 minutes, 52 seconds; 6 flags, 36 laps run under caution Ricky Craven 93.079 mph with point totals (and points earned this weekend) 1 Dale Earnhardt 1,221 (160) 2 Jeff Gordon 1,145 (175) 3 Dale Jarrett 1,139 (76) 4 Ricky Craven 1,119 (132) 5 Terry Labonte 1,100 (96) *Record (previous record: Cale Yarborough, 79.336 mph, 1978) He had not done well for most of the early season, failing to place among the top three finishers in a single race and looking more rusty than Rusty. But at the shortest track (.526 of a mile) on the NASCAR circuit, Rusty Wallace passed Jeff Gordon with 12 laps remaining to win the Goody's Headache Powder 500. The victory was Wallace's record fourth straight in the spring race at Martinsville. With the drivers forced to negotiate four turns in the 20 seconds it takes to complete a lap at Martinsville, getting the car set up properly is as important as its horsepower. "Some guys golf and hunt," Wallace said, laughing, after the race. "I get my jollies making the car handle." He ran well early on, but he had to make an emergency pit stop because of a broken wheel lug and fell seven places behind leader Gordon. "It was looking grim," Wallace said. Gordon had led for nearly half the race, but just as Wallace was completing his march back through the field, the '95 NASCAR champ began to fade. "The car started bouncing with about 10 laps to go," Gordon said, "and I knew we were in trouble." And on a day when Terry Labonte broke Richard Petty's record for consecutive starts with his 514th, Ernie Irvan reached a milestone of his own: After qualifying 34th, he passed Gordon in the final laps to take second-his best finish since his 1994 crash at Michigan. Wallace and Irvan also gave Ford its first one-two finish of the season over the dominant Chevrolet Monte Carlos, which before Martinsville had won six of the young season's seven races and held a 27-10 edge since 1995. The day before the Martinsville race NASCAR, in an attempt to equalize the cars aerodynamically, approved a reduction of a half inch in the rear portion of the roofline on all the Ford Thunderbirds—but only at tracks one mile or longer. Short tracks and road courses were exempted, not as a result of any scientific tests but because NASCAR president Bill France said so. "I was told by the boss man straight to my face," Wallace recalled. "He said, 'Rusty, you win all the short tracks and Mark [Martin] wins all the road courses; that's why you're not going to get any help at those tracks.'" Even without rules help, Wallace's Ford left the rest of the field behind. photograph by Don Grassmann/CIA Martin had won three straight races at Watkins Glen ('93-95), and Jack Roush, the owner of Martin's car, wanted to see that road-course dominance continue. "We've got a right to have an advantage at places where our drivers are superior," Roush reasoned. "But they're saying, 'We don't need to give these guys anything at these tracks, because they already run good there.' Well, if they're going to do that, they should put an extra 50 pounds on [Dale] Earnhardt and take 10 cubic inches away from him." Earnhardt, who finished fifth, left Martinsville with the lead in the point standings but looked as if he were already running heavy. "Right now, the 24 [Gordon] and 5 [Labonte] cars are the reason for the rule change," said Richard Childress, Earnhardt's car owner. "We can't outrun them, and we've got a Chevy."