MOTOR RACING ROUNDUP : Allison Placed First After Rudd Penalized

Davey Allison was awarded the victory in Sunday’s 300-kilometer NASCAR race at Sonoma, Calif., after Ricky Rudd, the apparent winner, was penalized at the finish for rough driving.

Rudd took the lead with one lap remaining when he bumped the rear of Allison’s car, turning the Ford Thunderbird around and seemingly assuring Rudd of his second victory at the Sears Point International Raceway in three years.

NASCAR officials told Rudd’s team to bring him into the pits on the final lap around the 2.52-mile circuit for a stop-and-go penalty. But Rudd drove past the pit entrance and continued to the finish line, where starter Doyle Ford showed him a black flag and saved the checkered flag for Allison, who was six seconds back.

Almost immediately, Rudd and his crew started a heated debate with NASCAR officials. After reviewing videotape of the last two laps and discussing the incident with representatives of Hendrick Motorsports, Rudd’s team, NASCAR ruled Allison the winner and penalized Rudd by pushing him back to second place. The ruling cannot be appealed.

Les Richter, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, made the announcement 2 hours 10 minutes after the end of the race, saying, “We’re trying to maintain law and order out there and that’s what it’s all about.”

Richter said Rudd’s bump on Allison’s rear bumper was a flagrant violation and that the time penalty was a device to put him back to second place, where he was before the incident took place.

“It would have been more difficult (to judge) if Ricky would have been on the quarter panel of (Allison’s) car,” Richter said. “It wasn’t. He hit Davey in the rear end and spun Davey out. He was running very hard into the corner, racing hard to win. But there comes a time when you have to call balls and strikes, to make a judgment call.”

Allison, who scored his second Winston Cup victory of the season, said: “I was leading the race. I went into that corner protecting the line, driving straight, not doing anything wrong, and somebody got into the back of me and turn me around.”

Only moments earlier, Allison had said in a television interview that Rudd’s bump was done intentionally, but later he said: “If the roles would have been reversed, that wouldn’t have happened because I would have raced him clean. I’m not saying he did it on purpose, but there had to be another way.”

Rusty Wallace, the defending champion and the man who dominated most of Sunday’s race, finished third, followed by Ernie Irvan, Rudd’s teammate Ken Schrader, Terry Labonte and series points leader Dale Earnhardt.

This was not the first time that Rudd has been involved in a controversial finish here. In the inaugural Winston Cup race at Sears Point in 1989, Rudd and Wallace bumped midway through the final lap. Wallace went off course and Rudd came away with the victory.

The previous year, on the road course at Watkins Glen, N.Y., the drivers bumped in the last turn of the race as Wallace tried to pass. Wallace got sideways for a moment and Rudd was the winner.

In both of those situations, however, Wallace said Rudd did nothing wrong and that they were simply racing incidents.

The only serious crash in the event came on Lap 63 when seven-time Winston cup champion Richard Petty slammed into a tire wall on the hill above the first turn. Petty, 53, did not appear to be injured but was taken to a hospital for precautionary X-rays.

Don Prudhomme, who built his drag-racing career in the funny car ranks, earned his first top fuel victory in 21 years by defeating Joe Amato in the finals of the NHRA Springnationals at Kirkersville, Ohio.

Mike Dunn defeated Jim White in the funny car finals, and Darrell Alderman topped Warren Johnson in pro stock.

It was Prudhomme’s 41st career victory, including six in top fuel. He switched to the funny car class in 1971 and moved back to top fuel in 1990. He was winless last year after accumulating four Winston Series funny car titles.

Prudhomme drove past Amato in the finals with a time of 5.08 seconds at 281.86 m.p.h. on the quarter-mile track. Amato lost traction at the starting line and finished in 7.91 at 98.57.

Prudhomme failed to qualify for the 16-car fields in six of the 19 events last year. But his fortunes have improved since hiring crew chief John Medlen for 1991.

“We struggled all last year,” said Prudhomme, who had been 0-3 in final rounds this year. “We needed a win, and we finally got it. I couldn’t be any happier.”