MOTOR RACING : Geoff Bodine Ends His Drought in Clash

The short but quick Busch Clash was supposed to offer the first opportunity Saturday to evaluate Winston Cup cars for the NASCAR season, which will open next Sunday with the Daytona 500.

Things didn’t work out that way. Perhaps more will be known after today, when drivers qualify for the two front-row positions in the 500 on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway’s 2.5-mile tri-oval.

Geoff Bodine won the two-segment, 20-lap race for last year’s pole winners, but Harry Gant, last season’s Cinderella senior citizen with his September streak of six consecutive victories, probably put it in the proper perspective when he said: “There wasn’t much to that, was there?”

Bodine was pleased because he finally won a Busch Clash after failing in nine previous events, but it happened only because Bud Moore’s crew was able to make changes on the Ford during a mandatory mid-race stop. Bodine had drawn a front-row starting position alongside his brother Brett, but when the 10 laps were over, Geoff was 13th.

“The car was plain evil those first 10 laps,” the elder Bodine said. “The tires were a problem. We changed them twice, and even in the second segment it was all I could do to hang on the final five laps. I’m sure glad we didn’t have to run 11 laps.”

Next Sunday’s race will be 200 laps.

Bodine started third in the second half but had little difficulty in passing the front row of Rusty Wallace and Gant, who quickly slid backward to finish at the rear of the 15-car field.

“On the last lap, I saw Ernie (Irvan) and Mark (Martin) right behind me, and I knew if I got wide, one of them would move up on me. I was really hanging on,” Bodine said.

In his previous nine starts, Bodine finished second once and fourth five times.

“I’ve got a record 10 races in a row, but I’m glad I won because I wouldn’t want to be the only one one without a win in 10 straight,” he said.

The Fords were supposed to dominate, but even though Bodine won in a Ford and Sterling Marlin led the first 10 laps in a Junior Johnson-prepared Ford, it was not a dominating day.

Michael Waltrip, in a Pontiac, was all over Marlin after moving up from sixth place, and Irvan, last year’s Daytona 500 winner, came close to catching Bodine at the finish line in his Chevrolet.

Irvan was so pleased with the way his car handled that he decided to keep last year’s winning car in the garage today and try for the 500 pole in the one he ran Saturday.

“We built this car for the Clash so we could save the other one for the race,” Irvan said, “but this one handled so well that we decided to go all the way with the newer one.”

Bill Elliott, the pre-race favorite in his first outing as Marlin’s Junior Johnson teammate, never challenged. He started fourth but was running 11th after the first 10 laps and after restarting sixth, he fell back to 11th again at the finish.

Elliott, unlike Irvan, said he would switch cars for today’s front-row qualifying.

“That’s one thing about running two cars--if one’s not going so good, you always figure the other one will do the job,” Elliott said. “With everybody running so close, it’s going to be awfully tight tomorrow. We’re going all out to win the pole, but I still say we’re going to have to deal with the GM cars before the week is out.”

There were a couple of pretty good GM cars that weren’t in the Busch Clash that will be in evidence today.

One, a Chevy Lumina, belongs to Dale Earnhardt, who is starting his quest for a third consecutive Winston Cup championship and his sixth overall. Another belongs to Darrell Waltrip, the 1989 Daytona 500 winner, who won two races last season in his first year as a team owner.

Chevrolets have won five of the last eight Daytona 500s, including the last three in a row with Darrell Waltrip, Derrike Cope and Irvan.

If last season is an indication, today’s fast qualifier will earn the pole by the narrowest of margins. In 29 races last year, the top qualifier beat out the second fastest by an average of 75-thousandths (0.075) of a second.

Bodine averaged 189.076 m.p.h. during Saturday’s race, which lasted only 15 minutes 52 seconds.

Jimmy Horton won his second ARCA 200 in three years in a V6 Chevrolet Saturday in the opening race of the Automobile Racing Club of America’s Super Car series. Bobby Bowsher finished second, 0.016 seconds behind Horton.