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Junior achievement Little E wins again at Talladega; Stewart takes points leadPosted: Sunday October 06, 2002 4:19 PMUpdated: Sunday October 06, 2002 9:40 PM
TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) -- It pays to have a friend at Talladega Superspeedway. Tony Stewart gave Dale Earnhardt Jr. assistance on the way to his third straight Talladega victory in Sunday's EA Sports 500. Being a good Samaritan also paid off for the runner-up as Stewart jumped from third into the Winston Cup points lead. "My hat's off to Tony Stewart for being a good friend and helping me out, sticking behind me," Earnhardt said. Stewart, who chose to protect his position and not to take a run at the leader in the waning laps, finished 0.118 seconds behind -- about a car-length. "I never thought about trying to go by Junior," Stewart said. "It's a trust thing that he and I have. I know that if I'm leading the race, he has always stuck with me, and he know that any time I've been behind him like that late in a race that I've always stuck by him.
"It gives him a feeling of security and it gives me a feeling of security knowing he is going to take care of me on the front side. All I've got to worry about are the guys behind me." Asked if he was disappointed the lead pack didn't gang up on Earnhardt and help him push to the front on the last lap, Stewart said, "To be honest, I never saw anything behind me that last lap. I guess I looked in the mirror for a moment in Turn 2 and Turn 4, just to make sure nobody was making a move on me." NASCAR's experiment, cutting the gas tanks from 22 gallons to 12 1/2 in an effort to force more pit stops and spread out the field to avoid a big accident, looked like a failure through most of the caution-free race. But it paid off at the end. The usual packs of 30 or more cars racing two- and three-wide at speeds close to 200 mph formed up within a few laps after each of the early pit stop sequences. However, with fuel mileage a big variable and cars making their final pit stops at different times, the leaders were able to break away in the waning laps. "We already had good fuel mileage, but I lifted [off the gas], especially the last half of the race," said Earnhardt, who ran the last 38 laps -- 101.08 miles -- on has last tank of gas. "I ran out coming down pit road here [after the race], so it was close."
At the end, there were only 10 cars in the lead group that crossed the finish line in single file. "Tony had a good enough car to pass me, but the thing was the pack kind of thinned down to four or five cars [at the front]," the winner explained. "It's hard for just three or four cars to push one guy by the leader. You need a whole pack back there really pushing." Earnhardt -- whose late father won a record 10 races at Talladega -- joined Buddy Baker as the only driver to win three in a row on the fast 2.66-mile oval. Baker did it in the 1970s, Little E's No. 8 Chevrolet was at or near the front of the pack throughout the 188-lap event. Earnhardt took the lead for good on lap 150 and was never challenged, winding up with a race-high 56 laps led. "I was having a good time," said Earnhardt, who has two wins this season -- both at Talladega -- and seven in his career. "The car wasn't doing everything I wanted it to do, but it did enough." By following up his top-five finish at Richmond last month with a victory Sunday, Earnhardt earned $1 million bonuses for himself and a fan chosen from a national drawing by the series sponsor. Ricky Rudd finished third, followed by Kurt Busch, Jeff Green, Earnhardt teammate Steve Park, and rookie Ryan Newman. It was a disastrous day for rookie Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin, who were ahead of Stewart in points, and Jeff Gordon, who came into the race close behind.
Johnson and Martin didn't even make it to the green flag before running into trouble. Martin's steering locked up on the pace lap and he veered down the 33-degree banking, hitting Johnson. The two slid into the grass on the main straightaway and both were forced to pit for repairs. "The steering thing really hurt us, but we fought hard," said Martin, who finished two laps down in 30th. "We were actually OK one lap down if we hadn't had a flat, too." Johnson -- who came into the race leading Martin by 11 points and Stewart by 36 -- fell a lap behind after the pre-race accident and wound up 37th when his engine failed after 173 laps. Gordon, Johnson's teammate, had one of the strongest cars in the field, leading 27 laps before his engine succumbed on the 125th lap. The reigning Winston Cup champion finished 42nd. Stewart came away with a 72-point lead over Martin and an 82-point edge over Johnson. Gordon fell from fourth into a tie with Matt Kenseth for sixth and now trails the leader by 201 points with six races remaining. "It doesn't matter a lot for me to be leading the points right now," Stewart said. "I've led the points before. The day I want to be leading is" at the end of the season. Despite the big packs through most of the race, the competitors avoided the typical multi-car crashes that often characterize races at Talladega and Daytona, where NASCAR requires a horsepower-sapping carburetor restrictor plate to keep cars under 200 mph.
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