Allison Takes the Wheel, Leads : Auto racing: After he starts race, Hillin takes over and finishes third for enough points to move past Elliott.

Davey Allison caught a break Sunday and used it to move back in front in the NASCAR Winston Cup points race.

Starting the DieHard 500 at Talladega Superspeedway from the third position, wearing a special cast after breaking his right collarbone, wrist and arm when his car flipped 11 times in last week’s race at Pocono, Allison pulled out of the pack on the parade lap and waited for a caution flag.

Then it rained. On Lap 5, Allison pitted and turned the car over to Bobby Hillin as planned. Hillin drove it to a third-place finish behind winner Ernie Irvan and Sterling Marlin, Allison getting the points and moving back in front of Bill Elliott in the Winston Cup championship race, which is worth $1 million.

Hillin drove well in getting the car into the lead pack. He said he could have done better.

“Davey’s back in front in the points, and that’s what I was paid to do,” said Hillin, whose only Winston Cup victory came in the 1986 DieHard 500. “I’m happy, but I’m frustrated, too. I knew I had the car to win.”

Allison started the race with specific instructions to play it safe.

“We got a lucky break with the early caution flag so we could make the driver change,” said Allison, who quickly put on a headset and stayed in communication with Hillin the rest of the day from a suite above the track.

“We’ve got a good car. Everything feels good. We can win it,” Allison told Hillin.

They almost did.

Hillin was in next-to-last place after the change was made, but he had moved to the lead by the midway point.

Hillin dueled with Irvan and polesitter Marlin until their final pit stops, but Hillin took longer to get out of the pits and couldn’t catch up.

Hillin said he slowed coming out of the pits so he wouldn’t be penalized for exceeding the 70 m.p.h. speed limit.

“The pit thing hurt me,” he said. “I thought I was speeding and I thought Sterling was speeding. . . . I eased up so I would not get a violation, and I thought I would come home the winner. But he got away free, and I couldn’t catch back up to them.”

It didn’t seem to matter to crew chief Larry McReynolds, who was just glad to know that Allison now has a one-point lead over Elliott with two weeks to recover before the next race at Watkins Glen, N.Y.

“Maybe we stressed too much to Bobby to be conservative,” McReynolds said. “We definitely did not want to get a penalty on that last pit stop.”

“The critical thing for us today was we needed to finish,” said team spokesman Brian VanDercook. “We had to preserve as many points as we could.”