Wild Winston

Drivers pull out all stops for run at big bucks in all-star race

CONCORD, N.C. -- A full moon it wasn't, but with big bucks on the line, Saturday night's all-star race at Lowe's Motor Speedway didn't lack for drama.

The end of The Winston, NASCAR's non-points event, certainly measured up as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. stalked rookie winner Ryan Newman in a last-laps duel. Yet it was all the hijinks and hot air in between that provided the most entertainment -- until Junior caught Newman's runaway train.

"It was pretty wild there for most of the evening," Earnhardt said.

With five laps left in the night's third and final 20-lap sprint session, Earnhardt roared out of a restart pack and gradually pulled onto Newman's bumper in turn two. The front of his No. 8 Chevrolet air-rattled Newman's No. 12 Ford; the latter bobbled, but saved his car and the lead, and Earnhardt -- who captured The Winston two years ago as rookie -- settled for second.

"That would kind of been bittersweet," he said of the possibility of spinning out Newman to claim the night's $750,000 purse. "That's a huge amount of money, but it ain't worth all the people you'd piss off to get it."

There were plenty of irate people almost from the beginning. Fourteen laps into The Winston's first segment, a 40-lap sprint, four veterans -- Bobby Hamilton, Dale Jarrett, Rusty Wallace and points leader Sterling Marlin -- wrecked out. The incident started when Ward Burton tapped Marlin's right rear bumper, and nobody was happy about it.

"I don't know what Ward's problem was," Marlin said. "You'll have to ask him."

"He's a great driver and I wouldn't have wrecked him for anything in the world," Burton said. "But I was racing him for position and going down low."

"This race pays a lot of money, but you have to remember this is a race for the fans," said Todd Parrott, Jarrett's crew chief. "So with that in mind, we built this car for the race fans. Any fan who watched the race tonight can stop by Robert Yates Racing next week during the Coca-Cola 600 and buy a piece of sheet metal off this very same car."

Even Newman didn't escape controversy. Three laps into The Winston's second segment -- a 30-lap sprint for the top 20 drivers from the first segment -- Elliott Sadler backed to a wall, ending his evening. He blamed Newman for an assistant shove. As the field circled under caution, Sadler hurled his helmet at Newman's car but it bounced back down the track to its owner.

"I probably shouldn't have done it," Sadler said afterward. "But damnit, this is The Winston, and I wanted to win it."

"He did a heck of lot better job of playing baseball than he did accepting what happened," said Newman, who called Sadler's wreck a racing incident.

The night's freakiest occurrence grounded last year's champion Jeff Gordon. Running comfortably in the top 10 during The Winston's second segment -- only the top-10 drivers advanced to the final 20-lap sprint -- Gordon pitted, usually uneventful for the Rainbow Warriors. But in the final seconds, a windshield washer attachment popped off its pole, and crewmember Tony Gibson tried to snag it. He failed, and NASCAR sent Gordon to the rear of the field on the restart because the attachment had fallen out of the pit box, a no-no.

Gordon finished the segment in 11th place.

"That's kind of been the way our luck has gone this year," he said.

In the end, it was sportsmanship that left the final impression: Earnhardt backing off Newman, then sprinting to victory lane to congratulate him on "a good save."

"My hat's off to him, too," Newman said. "He could've done me wrong and gone on to win, but he didn't."

 

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