International Race of Champions : Wallace, Starting 12th and Last, Ends Up First

The 50th International Race of Champions turned out to be one of the best.

In a series noted for few lead changes, Friday’s opening round of IROC XIII turned into a bonanza of passes. The 12 identically-prepared Easter egg-colored Camaros exchanged positions so often that they turned Daytona International Speedway into a moving rainbow.

Officially, half of the drivers in the field led at least a lap, but there were many more lead swaps in mid-lap among the NASCAR, Indy car and sports car stars.

Rusty Wallace, a Winston Cup driver making his IROC debut, came from 12th to win, the first time in 50 races that feat has been accomplished.

“I knew if I was going to have any kind of chance, I had to make a strong move on the first lap,” Wallace said. “Down the backstretch, everybody got strung out, and I saw a hole at the top and never lifted. I went right through and had a lot of momentum going through Turn 4. When we came by the starting line I was third or fourth.”

Richard Petty, making his first IROC start in 12 years, had taken the lead from pole-sitter Rick Mears on the second lap but gave way to Dale Earnhardt on the sixth time around the 2.5-mile oval.

For the last half of the race it looked like a tag-team match, with Earnhardt and Wallace, two old NASCAR buddies, hooking up against fellow stock car driver Terry Labonte and defending IROC champion Al Unser Jr., from the Indy car ranks.

Most of the passing was done in tandem as the four swapped positions nearly every time around.

With two laps to go, Wallace had the lead, followed by Labonte, Earnhardt and Unser. Surprisingly, after so many changes, there was no passing on the final two laps as the cars charged around the track in single file.

“I just didn’t get at the right place at the right time on the last lap,” Earnhardt said. “We just sort of had to hang out at the end.”

Wallace said he prevented last-lap passes by first darting down low to cut off Labonte’s momentum and then shifting up high to cut off Earnhardt’s charge.

“It’s not something you’d try on Interstate 95 (the road from Daytona Beach to Miami),” Wallace said.

Wallace and other drivers credited IROC President Jay Signore for making the cars competitive.

“Jay put some tabs on the fenders so that it would feel like the cars are wider and they would be easier to draft,” Wallace said. “Drafting is different than it once was. It’s not like the old notchback days, when you could dart out and go around another guy. When they dart (from behind) you dart in front and block them now.”

In the previous 49 IROC races, 14 had no lead changes and 12 more had only one.

Winston Cup champion Bill Elliott, recovering from a broken wrist, drove the entire 40 laps with one hand--his right--and moved as high as second place early in the race before dropping back and finishing fifth. Last year, Elliott led every lap in the Daytona IROC.

“My wrist is really hurting,” Elliott said. “I know I won’t drive any farther Sunday than I have to. If it weren’t for the wrist, I think I could have been up with those four at the end. I got hung out one time, and that was about it.”

Elliott plans to start Sunday’s Daytona 500 and then turn his Ford Thunderbird over to relief driver Jody Ridley at the first pit stop. Ridley drove the car in Thursday’s 125-mile qualifying race.

The second IROC race will be run April 29 at Nazareth, Pa., a one-mile oval. Drivers start in inverted order from their Daytona finish so Wallace will start last again.

Indy car champion Danny Sullivan, the only driver who was lapped, will start from the pole at Nazareth--a track in which he shares ownership with Indy car owner Roger Penske.