MOTOR RACING ROUNDUP : Elliott Blows Engine, Earnhardt Gets Win

Dale Earnhardt knew Bill Elliott was going to win Sunday’s Miller 400 unless something bad befell the leader.

But when it did, Earnhardt wasn’t in any position to gloat.

“It wasn’t good or bad. I didn’t cheer or anything,” Earnhardt said after winning the race at Michigan International Speedway, in Brooklyn. “I just gave a sigh of relief.

“I knew there was the No. 4 car (Ernie Irvan) left to race. It wasn’t over.”

Elliott led 102 of the 200 laps on the two-mile, high-banked oval and appeared ready to get his first victory of the year. But a plume of smoke from the rear of the car signaled the end of his race on lap 186.

That left the battle to three-time Winston Cup champion Earnhardt and winless Irvan, a rising star in NASCAR’s premier stock car series.

Earnhardt’s Chevrolet Lumina inherited the lead when Elliott’s engine blew, but Irvan drove his Oldsmobile Cutlass into the top spot on lap 188 and held Earnhardt off for eight laps.

Earnhardt regained the lead on lap 195 and held off Irvan to win by 0.14 seconds.

Irvan, whose best previous finish was third at Atlanta in March in his first race with the Morgan-McClure team, said, “We had a good close run, but Dale had a good car. Who would have known that Dale could have come through there like that and win? He had a good strong car.”

Elliott, who had won seven of the previous 12 stock car races here, said, “That last restart (after the fourth and final caution period), it felt like it was vibrating a little bit, and the oil pressure was dropping a little bit. I didn’t think it would last the race. That’s just been our luck all year.”

Earnhardt, who earned his fourth victory of the season and 43rd of his career, ended a string of poor showings that saw him drop from the Winston Cup point lead to fifth.

During that period, he finished 30th, 31st, 34th and 13th with a variety of mechanical and tire problems. That erased a 90-point series lead and left him 133 behind Martin heading into Sunday’s race.

Earnhardt won $72,950 and averaged 150.219 m.p.h. in a race slowed by four caution flags for 16 laps.

Geoff Bodine passed Martin for third place late in the race, with Harry Gant, the winner last week at Pocono, fifth.

Michael Andretti charged to the lead at the start and staved off a challenge from his father, Mario, to win the Budweiser-G.I. Joe’s 200 in Portland.

It was Michael’s second Indy-car victory in as many weeks.

The younger Andretti led all but three laps, falling briefly behind his father only because of pit stops.

Michael finished 3.92 seconds ahead of his father. His average speed of 110.673 m.p.h. was a track record, breaking the mark of 103.984 set by Emerson Fittipaldi last year.

Al Unser Jr. finished third, holding off a late challenge from Danny Sullivan. Sullivan started from the pole but was passed by Mario Andretti on the 26th lap and lost further ground during his second pit stop.

In 1986, the Andrettis finished 1-2 at Portland. But in that Father’s Day race, Michael ran out of fuel on the last lap and lost to his father by .07 of a second, the closed finish in modern Indy-car history.

World champion Alain Prost of France, racing in a Ferrari, got his 41st career victory in a Mexican Grand Prix motor race in Mexico City.

Prost, who started on the seventh, charged through the field, overtaking Ayrton Senna on the 61st lap of the 69-lap race. Senna, who had problems with tire wear, relinquished the lead when his left rear wheel climbed a curb as he negotiated a series of quicks turns. The tire shredded. Senna finished 20th.

Once in front, Prost had no trouble earning his second victory of the year.

Nigel Mansell, of Britain, won a dramatic duel with Austrian Gerhard Berger in the last three laps to finish second.

With the top fuel and funny car finals postponed by darkness, pro stock racer Jerry Eckman of Ventura ended up in the spotlight at the NHRA Le Grandnational Molson race at Sanair International Dragstrip in St. Pie, Canada, outside of Quebec.

Eckman drove his Pennzoil Pontiac Trams Am to a final-round elapsed time of 7.324 seconds and a speed of 186.10 m.p.h. to defeat Darrell Alderman of Fairfield, Ill. Alderman had a time of 7.358 seconds and a speed of 186.64 m.p.h.