Earnhardt Drives to Sixth Series Championship

The finishing touch to Dale Earnhardt’s sixth Winston Cup championship did not have much suspense.

Earnhardt had the title won before the midway point in Sunday’s season-ending Hooters 500 at Hampton, Ga., and spent most of the last half of the race watching Rusty Wallace, his closest rival in the points race, dominate and win the 328-lap event.

“No matter whether you’re six-time champion or not, that don’t make you King Kong in the corners,” said Earnhardt, who finished 10th after damaging his car in a late-race bump with Greg Sacks. “It got me back down to earth. If we hadn’t got in that little skirmish, I think we had a shot at the top three.”

Earnhardt, who has won six races this year but none since July at Talladega, Ala., earned a champion’s bonus of $1.25 million. Wallace will receive $350,000.

Wallace, driving a Pontiac Grand Prix, got his 10th victory of the season, the 31st of his career. He led 189 of the 328 laps on the 1.522-mile oval.

Wallace, the 1989 champion who started the race 126 points behind Earnhardt, finished 80 points behind him.

Both Earnhardt and Wallace paid tribute to 1992 champion Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison, both killed in air crashes this year, by driving a clockwise lap around the track with Kulwicki’s No. 7 and Allison’s No. 28 flags waving from their driver’s window.

Earnhardt, 42, has the opportunity to equal Richard Petty’s record of seven titles.

“Hopefully, we can win seven now,” Earnhardt said. “We couldn’t think about doing that until we’d won six, and now we’ve done that.”

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A storm that produced as much as three inches of rain forced postponement of the Slick 50 Sprint Car World Series opener at Peoria, Ariz.

Soccer

Kevin Legg scored two overtime goals to lead unranked University of San Diego (14-6) to a 4-2 victory over second-ranked UCLA (18-3) in an NCAA qualifying game at UCLA’s North soccer field.

Miscellany

Cuba accused the organizers of the Central American and Caribbean Games of encouraging Cuban athletes to defect, an organizing committee official said.

The games will open Friday.

Mary Slaney set a course record of 32 minutes 38 seconds in winning her division of the New Times Phoenix 10K. Slaney, 35, broke the mark of 32:42 set last year by Kristy Johnson.

Brett Hauer, Ted Crowley and Brian Rolston scored first-period goals as the U.S. Olympic hockey team extended its unbeaten streak to 14 games with a 7-1 victory over France at Grenoble.

Weightlifter Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey returned from a 16-month break to sweep all three gold medals in the 64-kilogram class at the world championships in Melbourne.