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EVENTS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
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Closer Look Marlin's last-lap move puts Earnhardt to shame
Updated: Thursday February 15, 2001 7:01 PM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt and Sterling Marlin, neck-and-neck, jockeying for the lead on the last lap at Daytona. Who you gonna pick? Wrong this time. Marlin pulled a move Earnhardt would have loved to call his own on the last lap in the first of the Gatorade 125s on Thursday, beating The Intimidator to the finish line and snagging the $125,000 first prize. It was a bold gamble that started near the wall and finished on the apron, the kind of move that Earnhardt fans are used to seeing from their guy. Instead, it was a mistake from their guy that probably enabled Marlin to make his move. "I think Dale kind of brake-checked everybody," Marlin said after the win, which sticks him behind pole-sitter Bill Elliott for the Daytona 500 on Sunday. "I think Dale let off real early ... and got too big a lead." The first of the two races Thursday looked a lot like Sunday's Budweiser Shootout -- a lot of lead changes, a lot of jockeying and some plain, old-fashioned hard racing. It came down to a mad last-lap dash when the field came off of a yellow flag with one lap to go.
Earnhardt led the pack out of the caution and slowed down, but he still had a big lead. It was, he said, too big a lead. "The green flag is waving and you got to go sometime," Earnhardt said. "I could have jammed on the brakes and wrecked them all and then win, I 'reckon." He stayed in front going into turn 2 at the 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway track. But in a race where drafting and aerodynamic pushes from the rear are critical -- especially with the new rules NASCAR has implemented regarding the aerodynamic makeup of the cars -- Earnhardt quickly found himself in no man's land. No draft from ahead. No push from behind. He was so much NASCAR meat. Earnhardt took the outside line, Marlin led a pack through the inside and it was all but over. "I guess Dale didn't know where the line went," Marlin said. "He was still out on the outside wall and here we come. He was trying to cut us off, but we were coming too fast." Marlin went way down on the apron, along with Jerry Nadeau and several other cars. Nadeau finished second ahead of Earnhardt. "You do the best you can to hold what you can off," Earnhardt said. "I was lucky to come home third, really. I'm surprised we weren't back around 15th." The final-lap slingshot was just what NASCAR was looking for when officials decided to put on the new aerodynamics package. But it took someone who knew what he was doing to pull it off. This time, it was Sterling Marlin, not Dale Earnhardt, who did the trick.
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