MOTOR RACING / SHAV GLICK : Gordon Gives Hint of Things to Come

Dale Jarrett was a popular winner of the Daytona 500 and Dale Earnhardt was a sympathetic figure in losing last Sunday, but from a historical perspective, the most significant thing that happened might have been Jeff Gordon finishing fifth.

Gordon, 21 and in only his second Winston Cup race, led the first lap. No rookie had ever led the opening lap of stock car racing’s biggest race.

And at the finish, he was running second in a breakaway pack of five drivers as they started the final lap. Around him were Earnhardt, 41; Geoff Bodine, 43; Hut Stricklin, 31; and Jarrett, 36, all experienced campaigners.

Gordon had been a surprise winner the previous Thursday in a 125-mile qualifying heat--the youngest driver ever to win one--but few expected him to be up front after nearly 200 laps of 190-m.p.h. side-by-side racing in 3,800-pound cars.

He still had a yellow rookie’s stripe on the back of his Chevrolet.

“How many rookies do you bring down here for the first time and run like that?” enthused his car owner, Rick Hendrick. “I thought Jeff Gordon did a great job, a really great job.”

Jarrett, whose dramatic last-lap pass of Earnhardt gave him a victory in the race that had eluded his father, two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett, was equally impressed with his young rival’s talent.

“That’s a guy who will win not only the Daytona 500 but a lot of races and we’ll be seeing him in New York on the front row because he will win a championship,” Jarrett said.

NASCAR holds its season-ending victory banquet in New York.

“He doesn’t look like he’s 15, but I think he’s older than 21 by the way he handles himself on the race track,” Jarrett added.

Gordon, who moved from Vallejo, Calif., to the Midwest when he was a teen-ager so he could race sprint cars professionally, was bubbling with excitement after his historic run.

“This made it a perfect weekend,” he said. “Winning the 125 was one thing, but to come back and finish fifth in the Daytona 500, it’s just amazing. I can’t hardly believe I was even in the 500, much less finish fifth.

“We led the first lap, and I’ll never forget that. We didn’t set out to do that, it just worked out that way. I came on the radio and said, ‘Guys, we didn’t just lead a lap, we led the first lap of the Daytona 500.’ ”

Three laps from the finish, Earnhardt was leading, followed closely by Gordon, Jarrett, Bodine and Stricklin. Jarrett started his victory surge on lap 198, when he swept past Gordon and set sail for the leader. As Jarrett pulled alongside Earnhardt with a little more than a lap remaining, Gordon was on Earnhardt’s bumper and Bodine was on Jarrett’s.

The horsepower of the Jarrett-Bodine draft proved too much for the Earnhardt-Gordon combine, with the result that Jarrett led Earnhardt to the finish stripe and Bodine led Gordon. In the shuffle, Stricklin managed to nip Gordon inches from the end.

“I was going to go for Earnhardt with two laps left, but when Jarrett went early it messed up my plans,” Gordon said. “When he pulled even with the No. 3 car (Earnhardt), I had to make a decision. Nine out of 10 times, the right one would be to go with Dale. I guess this was the other time because it didn’t work out, but it was one heck of a day.

“I’m ecstatic. It’s just unbelievable. It was a dream come true.”

Gordon has been dreaming the dream since his stepfather, John Bickford, and his mother, Carol, put him in a quarter-midget when he was “about 5,” he said.

At every level, Gordon was a winner--a precocious one. Before he was 14, he was racing sprint cars. The night he graduated from high school, he drove in a World of Outlaws race at Bloomington (Ind.) Speedway with the likes of Steve Kinser and finished fourth.

“That night, I never thought it would get any better,” Gordon said with a grin. “Now look at me. I drove my first Winston Cup race in the last one Richard Petty was in (last November in Atlanta). That really meant a lot me, getting to race against Petty. And then I made the Daytona 500 and finished fifth.

“Can it ever get any better than this?”

Briefly

DRAG RACING--Kenny Bernstein and Mark Oswald, both of whom had serious crashes last weekend at Pomona, will return to National Hot Rod Assn. action this weekend for the Motorcraft Nationals at Firebird Raceway in Chandler, Ariz. Bernstein, whose top-fuel dragster crashed and burned in the final round against Joe Amato, has a backup dragster ready. Oswald, who ran the quickest, 5.06 seconds, and fastest, 294 m.p.h., in funny car history during practice last week at Pomona before crashing, has his Dodge Daytona repaired and ready to try to make his unofficial record official.

OFF-ROAD--Hometown favorites Rick Johnson of Encinitas and Ivan Stewart of Alpine will hook up in Grand National trucks tonight at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego as part of the second round of the Mickey Thompson Stadium Off-Road series. Johnson won the season opener in a Chevrolet at Anaheim and Stewart won in a Toyota last year in San Diego. Former motocross champion Jeff Ward, who left motocross to drive an Indy Lights car this season, will make his stadium off-road debut in a SuperLite car.

SPRINT CARS--With the World of Outlaws not visiting California this spring, promoter Chuck Prather has scheduled an Outlaw Spring Nationals tonight at Bakersfield Speedway for West Coast winged sprint cars. Entries include Tim Green, Northern Auto Club Racing champion; Brent Kaeding, five-time NARC champion; and Jimmy Sills, 1990 United States Auto Club Silver Crown champion.

STOCK CARS--P.J. Jones, fresh from winning the 24 Hours of Daytona, has signed to drive a Melling Thunderbird in the Motorcraft 400 on March 14 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It will be the Winston Cup debut of Jones, 23, who tested at Daytona last month. P.J. scored his victory at Daytona 25 years after his father, Parnelli, drove a Mercury Cougar to victory in the Paul Revere 250, held the night before the Firecracker 400 on July 4, 1967. Parnelli’s other son, Page, will drive a Busch Grand National car at Atlanta on March 13. . . . Sportsman cars and modifieds will race today at Imperial Raceway, near El Centro.

MOTOCROSS--Final round of the rain-postponed CMC Golden State Nationals is scheduled for Sunday at Sunrise Valley Raceway in Adelanto. . . . Rookie Jeremy McGrath of Murrieta, Calif., will go for an unprecedented fifth consecutive Supercross victory tonight in Gainesville, Fla.

INDY CARS--Lyn St. James, last year’s rookie of the year at the Indianapolis 500, will drive the CART Indy car season this year in a Lola-Ford owned and maintained by Dick and Dianne Simon after getting sponsorship from a partnership of JC Penney, Revlon and Jantzen. St. James will skip the March 21 season opener in Australia, but starting with Phoenix on April 4 will run the entire schedule in the Spirit of the American Woman car. . . . Jeff Andretti, the most seriously injured driver in last year’s Indianapolis 500, will make his first start since last May in this weekend’s Toyota Grand Prix of Miami sports car race and then will be at Indy in a Lola-Buick owned by Allan Pagan of Corpus Christi, Tex.