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Notebook B. Labonte escapes injury after crash on Lap 215Posted: Sunday July 13, 2003 10:55 PMJOLIET, Ill. (AP) -- It was a scary few moments as Bobby Labonte sat inside his still-moving race car completely surrounded by flames. Labonte's Chevrolet hit the wall during a five-car crash late in the race. It appeared the fuel lines broke and the flames that began under the car spread and grew. The 2000 Winston Cup champion struggled to unhook himself from his safety equipment as his battered car slid into the infield grass. He then scrambled out the window, stumbled after hitting the ground and fell awkwardly onto the grass, but appeared fine after sitting with his head on his knees for several minutes as safety workers talked to him. "We backed into the fence and then we had this problem with the fuel cell blowing up again, and it makes for a bad scene," said Labonte, who was not injured. "It looked worse than it was." Bad daySeries leader Matt Kenseth had a difficult day that turned out pretty well. "We all tried really hard, we just made poor decisions," said Kenseth, who finished a lap down in 12th and lost 15 points off his lead in the standings. "I started making them, got the wrong tires on the car and just the way the pit stops worked out and everything just go so far behind we could just never come back from it." The Roush Racing driver said he was lucky to finish as high as he did. "To mess up as many things as we mess up and finish 12th is a great job, so I'm real proud of our team," Kenseth said. "I'm just happy that we salvaged a terrible day with a decent finish and go to next week and try to do better." Kenseth will go into next Sunday's race in Loudon, N.H., with a 165-point lead over four-time series champion Jeff Gordon. Another bad dayRusty Wallace looked like he was on the way to a top-10 finish, and possibly his first win since April 2001, before an unlucky pit stop on lap 194 of the 267-lap race. Wallace was third before heading into the pits. "Everything was looking real good," the former Winston Cup champion said. "Then we ran out of gas. As we came down pit road to put gas in, we had an extra guy jump over the pit wall. It cost us a 15-second penalty and that put us a lap down." Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 8 car then spun off in the second turn. "I was trying to get underneath him and I downshifted into third gear," Wallace said. "As I did that, I got back in the gas and it just tore the gears right out of the transmission." Wallace went back out after repairs and wound up 32nd, 18 laps behind the winner, teammate Ryan Newman. New teamThe newly formed Arnold Motorsports team will field Winston Cup cars for short track star Billy Bigley in an abbreviated schedule this season and all 36 races in 2004. Florida land developer Don Arnold created the team with the help of longtime NASCAR star and Hall of Famer Bobby Allison, who will be a vice president and consultant. "We started full bore in November when we told NASCAR we wanted to form a team," Arnold said. "We hope to have 10 to 12 cars finished before the end of the year." Bigley, who will drive a No. 47 Dodge Intrepid, will make his Cup debut at the Brickyard 400. "If a new team can come in and make that race, that would be something to be proud of," Bigley said. "If we don't make the race, we can hold our heads up and be proud of the effort." The team plans to run as many as seven races this year, including the ARCA race at Talladega. Spark plugsRyan Newman's three victories this season are the only wins for Dodge in the first 18 races. ... Newman's win paid $191,000, but runner-up Tony Stewart topped that with $213,468, thanks to contingency money from sponsors. ... Defending Winston Cup champion Stewart's finish Sunday moved him from 11th to eighth in the season points. He had fallen to 20th following the Coca-Cola 600 in May, seven races ago. |
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