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Special delivery Jarrett extends points lead with Harrah's 500 win
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com FORT WORTH, Texas -- Dale Jarrett has to be a little bummed right about now. Dude goes and wins his second race of the year, which makes it juuuust a bit more difficult to peddle that old "Us Ford drivers are at a disadvantage to everyone else" sob story, now doesn't it? Well, if Jarrett's recent results make it less likely that he can expect any additional rules changes for the Ford any time soon, he can take some small satisfaction from the knowledge that by winning Sunday's Harrah's 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, he lengthened his lead in the Winston Cup points race. Having earned 10 bonus points and leading a race-high 122 laps, Jarrett's lead over the second-place Jeff Gordon, who finished fifth, is now 75 points. Johnny Benson, who finished third, moves into third in points, and Steve Park, runner-up to Jarrett for the second time in three weeks, is now fourth. Say this for Jarrett, though: The man is tenacious. Asked after the race to respond to Park's good-natured barbs about his carping, Jarrett was defiant. "What [this rules package] has done is make us work in other areas," he said. "We have the wind tunnel numbers and we can talk about them all day long, but these are the rules we've got to work with them. Todd [Parrott, his crew chief] and the crew should be commended for working hard and making some progress in other areas. I can't say we're satisfied, but I'm not going to discuss [the rules]. We'll just continue to work hard."
Indeed, there's little question that Jarrett owes his second victory in the last three weeks to precisely that: hard work. As they did two weeks ago in Darlington, Jarrett's pit crew turned in a sterling effort on the final pit stop of the day, setting up Jarrett beautifully for the 26th win of his career. When the leaders pitted with 21 laps to go, Jarrett, Park and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were the only drivers who changed all four tires. Asked what made the difference in the race, Parrott said, "We've got Dale Jarrett behind the wheel. He got on the top of the wheel and drove his heart out." "Once again, our pit crew did an incredible job," Jarrett said. "They got us out first, ahead of the guys who took four tires, Park and Junior, and that was the key to the whole thing." Just how important those four tires were was amply demonstrated by Johnny Benson, who chose to stay out on the track rather than stop for fresh rubber on the final caution, brought out when Elliott Sadler bounced off the first-turn wall on lap 312. While the decision did enable Benson to take the lead for 14 laps -- and bring him tantalizingly close to his first Cup win -- Jarrett, who began the restart on lap 316 in fifth, was ultimately able to pass Gordon, Park and then rookie Kurt Busch before burying Benson. "We had to do that," Benson said of the decision to stay out. "We were running eighth, ninth most of the day and weren't able to move forward. So, when [crew chief James Ince] asked me what I thought about staying out, I just stayed out. I was fairly confident about holding off the guys who took on two tires, but I wasn't that confident about holding off the guys on four. The guys on four got through traffic pretty quick." They certainly did. Park, who led 78 laps Sunday and who again had one of the strongest cars on the day, began the final restart in seventh. Four laps later, he was in sixth. With seven laps to go, he was fourth. With only four laps remaining, Park was as close to Jarrett as he was going to get.
Benson was followed across the finish line by rookie Kurt Busch, Gordon, Dave Blaney and rookie Kevin Harvick. Gordon's fifth-place showing was his best finish in five races at Texas Motor Speedway. He finished 25th last year, and failed to finish the first three races at TMS. Park's Chevrolet was obviously the fastest car at the end, but he had too much ground to make up. He managed to pass Benson for second with three laps remaining, but ran out of time and finished 0.703-seconds -- about 10 car-lengths -- behind Jarrett. "We got ourselves in a little bit of trouble because the car didn't take as much gas as we thought it would," Park said. "It showed how strong the Pennzoil team is to able to come back. "The back of that No. 88 car is getting pretty familiar," Park said, "and I'm not really liking it too much. The only consolation to anything is to look where we were a year ago, when we weren't even contending for a win." Now if only Jarrett could take some consolation in winning.
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