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All the way back Rudd returns to Victory Lane with Pocono triumph
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com LONG POND, Pa. -- For 15 laps, Ricky Rudd must have wondered if he was ever going to catch a break. For 15 laps, as he ran a tantalizing second to his teammate Dale Jarrett, Rudd must have wondered if the Pocono 500 was destined to end in a replay of last week's race at Michigan, when he finished a barely-beaten second to Jeff Gordon. Or perhaps Pocono would end in a replay of the Martinsville race two months earlier, where Rudd was again a barely-beaten second, that time to Jarrett. Then, it happened. On lap 176, Rudd caught his break, the one he's been hoping for for the last 2 1/2 winless years. When Jarrett was forced to race a stubborn Dale Earnhardt Jr, clinging desperately to the tail-end of the lead lap and unwilling to give way to the race leader, the 44-year-old Rudd zipped past them both and to the front.
True, Rudd still had 23 laps to contend with when he took the lead, but the end result of Jr. and Jarrett's power play was Rudd's first win in 89 races and the 21st of his 26-year career. Jarrett finished third after a hard-charging Jeff Gordon, who led 86 laps and dominated for the third consecutive week, passed him in a fruitless attempt to catch Rudd. With his win, Rudd moves to third place in Winston Cup points, behind Gordon and Jarrett. But for those 15 laps, Rudd seemed certain to come up just short. Again. "You know, they had a very, very good race car," Rudd said of Jarrett. "Had you asked me this question halfway through the race, I would have told you we can't run with him, and hopefully we can run one position behind him or a couple behind him. We didn't have anything for him." Ultimately, what Rudd had was Earnhardt, apparently angry that Jarrett wouldn't give him track position during an earlier caution. When the race restarted on lap 162 after the seventh and final caution, Earnhardt did everything in his power to stay in front of Jarrett. For 15 laps, he was successful, but at great cost to Jarrett, and, as seems to be the case at most NASCAR races these days, the win was determined by one pivotal moment.
"What Junior was doing for me was keeping Dale penned up," Rudd continued. "What happens here is, the guy following gets dirty air. Had Jarrett been out front, I'm confident he could have run a tenth, two-tenths [of a second] quicker, no question in my mind. But, the No. 8 car is not technically a lap down yet, so he should be able to race him like that. "There's a little more personal going on there than just [blocking]," he added. I think Junior was a little upset that the No. 88 didn't let him have his lap back and that's why I think he raced the wheels off of him. The No. 8 car had the right to do what he did, but it kept Dale pinned up. I was able to get a run at them." According to Gordon, Earnhardt Jr.'s aggressive driving cost Jarrett his fourth win of the year. "I think that cost Dale Jarrett the race," he said. "I think had Junior not been there, Dale Jarrett would have gotten in that clean air and pulled away." Jarrett, ever the gentleman, didn't see it that way. "He was doing his job," Jarrett said of Earnhardt Jr. "That's what he's supposed to do. It looked like that could have cost me, but I wouldn't put it on that." In the end, though, absolutely none of that matters to Rudd, just happy to finally catch his break. "The best thing about winning," he said, "is that I don't have to explain to people why I ran second or third or finished last. It makes the phone conversations a lot easier on Monday."
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