MOTOR RACING : NASCAR AT HAMPTON, GA. : Wallace in Control of Destiny

The Winston Cup stock car racing championship and its $1-million bonus is Rusty Wallace’s to win--or lose.

For the first time since NASCAR introduced its points-fund payoff, three drivers--Wallace in a Pontiac, Mark Martin in a Ford and three-time champion Dale Earnhardt in a Chevrolet--go into the final race of the season, today’s Atlanta Journal 500, with a chance at the championship. But only Wallace can control his destiny.

Wallace leads Martin by 78 points and Earnhardt by 79. If the driver from Fenton, Mo., finishes 18th or better today he will win his first championship, even if Martin or Earnhardt wins everything else.

It sounds simple, but it might not be.

Last year, when he found himself in almost the same position Martin and Earnhardt are in today, Wallace bitterly criticized Bill Elliott for not running hard and going for the win as well as the championship. Elliott started the final race here 79 points ahead of Wallace, finished 11th and won his first Winston Cup title by 24 points.

“A man ought to be ashamed of himself, running like that,” Wallace, the runner-up, said. “I’d never ‘stroke’ along like he did. I’d run for it like a champion ought to.”

Now Wallace is on the spot.

Will he run for the lead and maybe take a chance of breaking, as he said he would a year ago? Or will be swallow his pride, pull an Elliott and cruise along safely toward the $1 million?

Wallace maintains that he knows only one way to run, and that is to go all out from the starting flag to the checkered flag.

“That’s what got me here, so why should I change now?” he asks questioners.

On the other hand, he has almost apologized for the way he chastised Elliott last year. “I probably got carried away and hit him too hard, but it was frustrating for me to work so hard and see him cruising along in the middle of the pack winning the big prize,” Wallace said.

He had won the pole, led the most laps and won the race, all in vain.

“There’s no speculation on what Mark and Dale will do,” Wallace said. “They’ll try and do exactly what I did last year and hope something happens to me. It’s simple for them, as far as strategy is concerned. There isn’t any, except to go flat out all the way. As far as what I do, I won’t decide until they drop the green flag. The competition will dictate what I do, but I guarantee you, I’ll drive as hard as I can, like I always do.”

Elliott, who is not in the hunt today because of a slow start caused when he broke an arm while practicing last February in Daytona, had a word of caution for Wallace. “If I was Rusty, or if I was running Rusty’s team, I’d go in with a conservative approach,” Elliott said of his fellow redhead. “He criticized me pretty good for the way I ran here last year, but the way we looked at it, it was only one race in a complete season. The season is a total of 29 races and where you finish in every one counts.”

There can be pitfalls no matter what course Wallace takes.

Five times this year he has failed to make it to 18th place. He finished 31st three times, here at Atlanta in the spring race, at Martinsville on the short track and at Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600. Each time his engine failed.

Failed oil pressure left him 22nd in the Miller 500 at Pocono and he wrecked on lap 26 at Talladega and finished 37th.

“Running hard and running up front isn’t what breaks engines or cuts tires,” Wallace said. “I’d feel a lot worse in the middle of the pack, wondering who was around me. I like to get out front, where I know the guys. When you’re in the middle, it can be a hornet’s nest.

“Sure, I’m going to take it easy on the gears and not go scorching out of the pits at 200 m.p.h., and I’ll watch my step when I’m lapping cars. I’ll give some of them a wide berth, but it won’t be ‘stroking.’ It’ll be being careful.”

Wallace might have learned his lesson two weeks ago at Phoenix, when he was nearly taken out by Stan Barrett in a situation that was as much carelessness on Wallace’s part as inexperience on Barrett’s.

Wallace had an 18-second lead and seemed on the verge of clinching the championship when he passed the Hollywood stunt man between the first and second turns. But Wallace, in his haste to get back in the high-speed groove, cut in front of Barrett too quickly. When Barrett’s brakes faded, his car clipped the rear end of Wallace’s, sending it into the wall.

Fortunately for Wallace, it didn’t put him out of the race but he did lose a lot of time in the pits and instead of winning, finished 16th.

“I told him he ought to be more careful than that,” said Earnhardt, who is a close friend of Wallace.

Earnhardt, who prepared for today’s race by hunting last week near Calgary, Canada, where he bagged a 250-pound, 11-point white-tailed deer, said it would take a mistake on Wallace’s part if he or Martin were to have a chance.

“I don’t want to wish my buddy any bad luck, but I’m going to watch him close and if he’s stroking, I’m going to call him stroker. And if he wins the championship, I’ll call him champion stroker.

“The points can change in a hurry, though. I know. I lost 110 points in a single race at Charlotte. That’s what put Rusty out in front and let Mark catch up.

“Whatever happens, if he wins, or I win, or Mark wins, it ain’t going to make a bit of difference what I’m doing Sunday night. No matter what, I’m heading for Alabama to do some deer hunting. I didn’t get enough of it up in Canada.”