MOTOR RACING ROUNDUP : John Andretti Drives 820 Miles for ‘Double’

John Andretti held up fine Sunday in his quest to become the first driver to complete an 1,100-mile racing adventure. His cars didn’t do as well.

After completing 490 of a possible 500 miles for a 10th-place finish at the Indianapolis 500, Andretti caught a plane to compete in the Coca-Cola 600 at Concord, N.C. A broken crankshaft ended his day on lap 220, after 330 miles.

In all, he drove 820 miles. A good day for the common motorist, but far short of what Andretti had hoped for.

“Yeah, it was worth it,” Andretti said to reporters in front of the tractor-trailer that was to take his Chevrolet back to the team’s headquarters.

“There’s no question that it was worth it. We didn’t run as good as I wanted to down here, and we didn’t run as good at Indy as I would have hoped. But it’s not from a lack of effort from my guys.

“Physically, I’m fine,” he said. “Mentally, you want more. You want to run better. You want to be more up front.”

After completing his run at Indy, Andretti caught a helicopter from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that took him to a chartered jet for Concord. Throughout the trip, he received fluids intravenously to keep him hydrated.

Once in Concord, he took a helicopter to the track and landed moments after the rest of the field had been introduced to the crowd.

“I’m not tired at all,” said Andretti, who started 10th and moved up to as high as third during the Indy 500. “I’m disappointed, but we’ll get over that. . . . I knew the car was going to run all day. At the beginning, we had a pretty good race car, but we couldn’t get it straightened out to go fast all day.”

Andretti blamed his problems at Indianapolis on a slick track that hurt the car’s handling.

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Jeff Gordon got his first Winston Cup victory, tricking the sport’s veterans on a late-race pit stop and pulling away to win the Coca-Cola 600.

While all of the leaders pitted for four tires and fuel with about 20 laps left, the 22-year-old Gordon waited to see what they did, then came in for only two tires and fuel.

The gamble paid off, moving him from third to first, and he easily kept his Chevrolet Lumina up front the rest of the way at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Gordon, the 1993 Winston Cup rookie of the year and the pole-sitter for the 600-mile event, the longest on the circuit, finished 3.91 seconds ahead of Rusty Wallace. Wallace, who led seven times for 187 laps, was trying to give car owner Roger Penske a unique Memorial Day double. Penske’s car driven by Al Unser Jr. won the Indianapolis 500 earlier Sunday.

Geoff Bodine was third, followed by Dale Jarrett and 1994 Winston Cup points leader Ernie Irvan.

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Damon Hill of Britain ended German Michael Schumacher’s four-race winning streak by winning an incident-free Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona.

Schumacher finished second, 24.166 seconds behind Hill. Hill was timed in 1 hour 36 minutes 14.374 seconds for the 65 laps of the 2.95-mile course, a total of 191.727 miles.