Auto Racing Roundup : Earnhardt Closes In on Championship

Dale Earnhardt overcame a two-lap deficit and moved closer to his second driving championship with a victory Sunday in the Oakwood Homes 500 NASCAR stock car race at Harrisburg, N.C., Motor Speedway.

Earnhardt lost two laps early in the 500-mile race because of a tire problem, but regained the lead lap with the help of a pair of caution flags and a lot of hard driving.

Winner of the Winston Cup title in 1980, Earnhardt then had to catch Harry Gant late in the race. He took the lead 38 laps from the end of the 334-lap event, then held off Gant to win by 1.9 seconds.

Earnhardt averaged 132.403 m.p.h. in earning first-place money of $82,050, pushing him past $1 million for the season. He joined fellow stock car drivers Bill Elliott and Darrell Waltrip and Indy-car racer Bobby Rahal as the only drivers to win more than $1 million in a season.

It was Earnhardt’s fourth victory of the season and increased his season point lead over defending champion Darrell Waltrip and Tim Richmond. He now leads second-place Waltrip by 156 points and Richmond, who finished 27th Sunday and lost 88 points to the leader, by 232.

Earnhardt, driving a Chevrolet, led early, but was forced to pit when he felt a vibration on lap 37. The stop for a left-side tire change cost him one lap.

He went back out and the vibration remained, so Earnhardt came back in on lap 47 to change the right-side tires, losing another lap. His crew found the right-rear tire had a small cut. The second stop solved the problem and Earnhardt, who obviously had the fastest car in the first half of the race, came out in pursuit of the leaders.

The team of Bob Wollek and Scott Pruett took the lead on the 41st lap and held on to win the Columbus, Ohio, 500 road race.

The winners averaged a record 83.500 m.p.h. over the 2.3-mile road course that wound through the center of Columbus.

Wollek, who finished second a year ago as a co-driver in the inaugural 500-kilometer event, was at the wheel when the leading car of Elliott Forbes-Robinson went to the pits on lap 41.

Wollek and Pruett, driving a Porsche 962, then took over and never looked back, winning by the 136-lap event by a margin of one lap plus 16.633 seconds.

The victory was worth $40,000.

Italians Piercarlo Ghinzani and Paolo Barilla, driving a Porsche 956, won the 625-mile 1986 World Endurance Championship at Gotemba, Japan.

The two covered 226 laps on the 2.7-mile Fuji International Speedway circuit in 5 hours 29 minutes 25.332 seconds for an average speed of 109.683 m.p.h.