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Survival exercise Stewart gets third win of the year in wild Bristol race
Updated: Monday August 27, 2001 10:40 PM
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com BRISTOL, Tenn. -- For a time at least, the possibilities seemed endless. Mix the tenacious Kevin Harvick, the incendiary Tony Stewart and the quixotic Bristol Motor Speedway and all manner of chaos seemed not only imminent but highly likely. And though Harvick stalked Stewart through the waning laps of the Sharpie 500 on Saturday night, in the end, the delicious possibility of a dramatic confrontation never materialized as Stewart fairly coasted to his third win of the year. "He was just a little bit better than we were on long runs," Harvick said of Stewart. I think our only chance there at the end was for him to get stacked up behind the lapped cars. But, it wasn't meant to be." Harvick, though, did maintain second place, almost a half-second behind Stewart. Jeff Gordon, who led more laps than any other driver (199 of the 500) finished third and, in the process, extended his lead in the race for the Winston Cup championship to 308 points on second-place Ricky Rudd, who finished fourth. Dale Jarrett, who finished sixth, stays in third in the standings and Sterling Marlin remains in fourth, one spot ahead of Stewart.
"For the most part it was pretty uneventful as far as the excitement level," Stewart said of his win. "Most of the time you get wrecked at least a couple of times here, but I didn't have much contact. It was a pretty painless run." For Stewart maybe, but very few others were quite so fortunate. The night race at Bristol, widely considered a jewel of NASCAR's crown, offered enough banging and bumping to satisfy any race fan. The race was slowed by 16 cautions, just short of the record (20). Then, of course, there's Bristol itself, which is its own satisfaction: lights shining, cameras flashing, cars screaming and fans screeching. It's known as Thunder Valley, and for good reason. Bristol isn't just chest-rumbling or teeth-chattering loud -- Bristol is eardrum rattling, earth-shaking, equilibrium-altering loud.
Saturday's race was a schizophrenic affair, one characterized both by periods of long, green-flag runs and periods where cautions fell in bunches. "There were a lot of yellows that came in a very short amount of time," Stewart said. "It just seemed that our car wouldn't come together." In the early going, pole winner Jeff Green led the first 71 laps (before being knocked out with a busted front end) which were slowed by two brief cautions. Contrast that with a 75-lap stretch that was marred by seven cautions. Finally, the final 98 laps of the race ran caution-free, a circumstance that clearly benefited Stewart more than it did anyone else. "As the race went on, it seemed the green-flag runs went longer and longer," Stewart said. "At the beginning of the last run, the car felt really good. Probably with about 80 to go, that was the best the car felt all night. I'm not sure we lost much more than four- or five-tenths [of a second] over those last 80 laps. It was just awesome to have the car be so good on that last run." Timing, of course, is everything.
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