|
|
 |
 |
  |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Late charge Defending Cup champ takes exciting Pocono win
Updated: Sunday July 29, 2001 9:51 PM
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com With less than 10 laps remaining in Sunday's Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway, Bobby Labonte took hold of a race that was dominated by others and made it his own -- and what resulted was one of the most exciting finishes of the year. With 13 laps to go, Labonte trailed race leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. by almost 2.5 seconds. With 10 to go, Labonte's deficit was still almost 1.5 seconds. With seven to go, it was down to less than a second. With less than five remaining, Labonte was dogging Earnhardt, the nose of his Pontiac virtually locked to the bumper of Earnhardt's Chevrolet. For the next three laps, the two engaged in a furious nip-and-tuck battle that Labonte was able to win thanks to a daring pass with less than two laps to go. "With 10 to go, I was thinking, 'It's going to be close,'" Labonte said. "With five to go, I thought, 'We're going to catch him.' I still had no idea where we were going to be able to pass him, but I was thinking we might just break even." Labonte pulled alongside Earnhardt at the start/finish line with two laps to go. Labonte then dropped back again, broke even again and then bobbed and weaved before he swooped past Junior on the outside.
"I tried to do everything I could in my power to outrun him," Earnhardt Jr. said, "but I could try probably 10 more times and have the same result. I ain't never seen nobody go through that corner like that. You don't want to go into that corner on the outside but he got such a good run, he went in 15, 20 car lengths harder than anybody else all day long. I wasn't going to do it. He wanted it worse than I did, apparently." If Labonte wanted it worse than Junior did, it is simply the result of the fact that the defending Winston Cup champion hadn't won a race since Oct. 8 and has found himself something of a forgotten character in the race for the championship. Indeed, Sunday's win, the 17th of Labonte's career, moves him from 10th to eighth. "I wanted it pretty bad, I can tell you that," Labonte said. "It's been a while since we've been that close to a checkered flag without 15 cars passing [the flag] before us -- no doubt we wanted it really bad." But however much Labonte wanted to end his drought and despite Earnhardt's impression of that final pass, Labonte was unconvinced that he had done anything rash there at the end.
"For the most part, you don't want to run side-by-side here. But there at the end, I had as much grip on the outside and through the tunnel turn as anywhere all day. And when you're on the outside of somebody with three laps to go you've got to try something and that was the right time to do it." For much of the afternoon and for the second consecutive race, time seemed to be at Jeff Gordon's beck and call. As he had at New Hampshire, Gordon led more laps than anyone -- 121, to Labonte's three -- and seemed well on his way to an easy victory. But, as he had been the previous week, Gordon was denied. When Dale Jarrett brought out the fifth caution on lap 159, Gordon was shuffled from first all the way to 21st, effectively ending any chance he had at the win. However, Gordon recovered from there to finish eighth and, as a result of Jarrett's 41st -place finish, moves into sole possession of first in the chase for the championship. Ricky Rudd, who finished 11th, leapfrogs his teammate Jarrett into second, 45 points behind Gordon. In the end, the championship took a second place to Labonte's thrilling battle with Earnhardt. "That was pretty special," he said of the last few laps. "He reminds you so much of his dad and knowing that, you knew he wasn't going to give anything. But we raced hard and we raced clean, and that was cool."
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
