Owning IROC
NASCAR's Martin overtakes Vasser for 4th series title
Posted: Friday July 31, 1998 07:34 PM
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Martin won two of the four IROC races this season and earned $225,000 for winning his third consecutive series championship AP |
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Mark Martin passed Jimmy Vasser four laps from the finish Friday, winning the final International Race of Champions event of the season and clinching a record fourth IROC series title in five years.
The race was interrupted for about 40 minutes when Arie Luyendyk crashed in the fourth turn. Luyendyk sustained a slight concussion and was taken to Methodist Hospital for observation. Two spectators hit by debris were treated for minor injuries and released.
Martin, a NASCAR Winston Cup driver, won two of the four IROC races this season and earned $225,000 for winning his third consecutive series championship. No other driver has more than two titles in the all-star series matching 12 drivers in identically prepared Pontiac Trans-Am Firebirds.
"This is the highlight of my career. This is the best," Martin said.
Martin moved from an 11th-place start to third after 19 of the 40 laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He still trailed Vasser and Al Unser Jr., both from Championship Auto Racing Teams, until the 28th lap, when he moved up to second. Then, on the 37th lap, Martin went around Vasser for the lead.
Unser also passed Vasser and finished .247 seconds, about three car lengths, behind Martin.
"I hate that for Jimmy Vasser. He was doing such a fine job," Martin said. "Right there at the end, you hate to lose that close to the end. But I did that to him at Charlotte too [in May].
"He's a great race car driver, doing a great job, but we just had what we needed today."
Vasser started from the pole and led the first 36 laps.
"I was surprised I lasted that long," he said. "I just drove the front tires off the car. I just couldn't get it to hook up off of two and four like Mark, and he got underneath me. I did everything I could as long as I could."
Martin averaged 156.386 mph. Caution laps are not counted in IROC.
Randy LaJoie (NASCAR) was fourth, followed by Terry Labonte (NASCAR), Tony Stewart (Indy Racing League), Dale Jarrett (NASCAR), Dale Earnhardt (NASCAR), Jeff Gordon (NASCAR), Tom Kendall (SCCA), Luyendyk (IRL) and Jeff Burton (NASCAR).
The race was only two laps old when Luyendyk gave a new energy-dissipating wall its first test in a devastating, 160-mph crash that sent pieces of the flexible polyethylene barrier and parts of his car flying across the track.
Luyendyk, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, was awake and alert when the hospital.
"He was going pretty fast when he hit it with his nose, but it was hard to see," Gordon said. "There was so much stuff and debris flying around out there, it got pretty wild. I was on the brakes trying to stay out of it, and Jeff Burton was on the brakes and got into the back of me."
Burton's car had damage to the front end and was unable to continue. Several other cars drove through the debris but were not badly damaged.
The crash was triggered by Kendall, who brushed the outside wall and bounced Luyendyk to the new inside wall, which was installed before the Indy 500 in May but had not yet been tested by a crash.
"I got a little out of the groove coming off of four and picked up a push and just went into the outside wall and tried to keep it up against the wall," said Kendall, the 1997 SCCA Trans-Am series champion. "Arie tried to get by but didn't."
Several cars barely missed striking Luyendyk's spinning race car, which pinballed from the inside back to the outside wall, trailing debris with him.
"I saw it hit the wall, and he hit so hard he was coming back across the track," Burton said. "The only way I could miss him was to run wide open. I knew I was going to run into it [the debris]. I just didn't want to hit him."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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