MOTOR RACING: NASCAR AT DAYTONA : Earnhardt Sweeps Both Halves of Sprint

Dale Earnhardt, who failed to qualify for the last two runnings of the Busch Clash, won both halves of the sprint race for the previous year’s NASCAR pole winners.

Earnhardt, defending Winston Cup champion, earned $25,000 for leading at the halfway point of the 50-mile race. At that point, the race was to be slowed by a caution flag under the new format, breaking the 20-lap event into two halves. The drivers were to get two laps of caution during which they could make adjustments to their cars.

The new format also resulted in the 10th-lap running order being reversed for the restart, with Earnhardt, Ernie Irvan and defending champ Ken Schrader moving to the back of the field.

Earnhardt quickly moved to the middle of the pack by the end of lap 11. As the leaders raced for the finish line on lap 12, defending Daytona 500 winner Derrike Cope slid up the banking into Ricky Rudd and Schrader and those three cars spun out and didn’t continue. Earnhardt led the rest of the way, fighting off the Thunderbird of Mark Martin.

Earnhardt, whose green-flag average speed was 189.474 m.p.h., won $35,000 for his second victory, giving him a total of $60,000 for the day.

A crash on a restart three laps from the finish helped Ben Hess win the Daytona ARCA 200 late-model stock car race.

Defending race winner Jimmy Horton was leading, holding off Hess by a matter of feet, after a yellow flag came out. A car had spun on the backstretch on lap 74 of the 80-lap race.

But Horton ran out of gas on the restart on lap 78, suddenly slowing at the head of the pack. Two cars collided and several others spun, bringing the yellow flag back out and forcing the race to end on the seventh caution of the day.