AUTO RACING : Familiar NASCAR Names Are Missing From Race Win List

One race into the second half of the NASCAR Winston Cup season, there are some familiar names missing from the list of race winners in 1993.

Bill Elliott, with 39 victories, including five last season, has failed to finish better than sixth this season.

Darrell Waltrip, owner of 84 career wins and three last year, is winless in 1993, as are Harry Gant and Mark Martin, both of whom won twice in 1992.

Waltrip does have four top-10 finishes this season, with a fourth-place at Martinsville his best so far.

Gant, who was 53 when he won those races last year and is the oldest man to win a Winston Cup event, has finished better than 10th only three times this year, including a third-place finish last month at Pocono.

Martin has the best record of the winless quartet, with nine-10 finishes, including second place at Darlington in April and Sunday at Loudon, N.H. He dominated the race last month at Michigan, only to finish sixth after having to make a late gas stop.

“It’s getting harder and harder to win in this series,” Waltrip said. “You know you can be strong and still wind up out of the top 10. The main thing is that you have to be there week after week. Then, when it’s your turn to win, you get the checkered flag.

“We just haven’t been up front enough. But it’s coming. We’re getting stronger and I’m looking forward to a strong second half.”

Martin echoed Waltrip, adding, “We can’t really be all that unhappy because we really have been racing good. We haven’t reached our potential yet, at least in results. But we’re pretty close to it in performance.

“I feel like we’re doing everything we know how to do to be up front.”

Rusty Wallace leads this year’s winner’s list with five, followed by Dale Earnhardt with four. Nobody else has won more than once.

STERLING MARLIN is also winless this season, as he has been for his entire Winston Cup career. In fact, the man who finished second for the ninth time two weeks ago at Daytona, has now gone 264 events with a victory.

Only journeyman Jimmy Means, who has started 448 Winston Cup races, has gone longer without a win among active drivers.

CHEVROLET HAS a 13-point lead over Pontiac in NASCAR’s manufacturers’ championship, with Ford third.

Luminas have accumulated 111 points in the first 16 events of the 30-race season, followed by the Grand Prixs with 98 and Thunderbirds with 95.

The victory Sunday by Rusty Wallace gives Pontiac six wins this season, moving the manufacturer within two victories of tying its best-ever season in 1988. That year, Wallace led Pontiac with six wins.

Points are awarded on a 9-6-4 basis.

Chevrolet has won nine of the last 10 manufacturers’ championships and 17 of 21 in NASCAR’s modern era, which began in 1972. Ford won in 1992.

TERRY LABONTE and team owner Billy Hagan will part company at the end of this season, but there are still some strong feelings between the two men who worked together to win the 1984 Winston Cup championship.

Labonte has announced he will join Hendrick Motorsports in 1994, while Hagan reportedly is talking to several drivers, including highly regarded Winston Cup driver Ted Musgrave and unemployed Indy-car racer John Andretti.

“I’d love to win a race for this team before I leave,” Labonte said. “We’re going to do our very best every week and try to do just that. I think these guys (on Hagan’s team) want to do the same thing.”

It won’t be easy, though. Labonte, who has 10 career victories, has not won since driving for Junior Johnson in 1989. And, despite running well in numerous races this season, his best finish is eighth at Charlotte.

NEIL BONNETT’s scheduled return to racing July 24 at Talladega would be quite an accomplishment for the 46-year-old racer from Alabama.

He suffered a serious head injury in a crash at Darlington in April 1990, and it was assumed by most people inside and out of racing that the popular driver would remain on the sidelines.

“I never gave up hope that I could get back in a race car, though,” Bonnett said. “I just didn’t want my racing to end like that.”

It is his close friendship with Dale Earnhardt that is providing this opportunity to give racing at least one more try. He will be in a Chevrolet provided by Richard Childress, Earnhardt’s car owner.

“Dale brought a Winston Cup car to Charlotte a year ago and asked me if I’d like to test it. I did, and the hardest thing I ever had to do was get out of it and tell him I couldn’t do it because I was still dizzy.

“But the injury has been getting progressively better. I tested before Daytona (in February) and Talladega (in May), and I haven’t had any problems at all in the car.”

BRETT BODINE won’t join the ranks of owner-drivers after all--at least not in 1994.

Bodine, the younger brother of Geoff Bodine, says he’ll continue to negotiate with Kenny Bernstein and hopes to return as Bernstein’s driver next season.

In his fourth season driving for Bernstein, Bodine has won one pole and has three top-10 finishes.

“We’ve struggled quite a bit and had some bad luck, but this is basically a very good race team that is capable of winning,” Bodine said. “I believe we will get it going in the second half (of 1993).”