AUTO RACING : Streak by Drivers of Indy Cars Is Snapped by Dale Earnhardt

Dale Earnhardt’s selection as the 1994 Driver of the Year ended a string of five straight years in which the Indy-car PPG Cup champion had won the motorsports version of the Heisman Trophy.

Earnhardt, the 1987 Driver of the Year and 1994 NASCAR Winston Cup champion, beat out Indy-car champion Al Unser Jr. in the voting by a national panel of motorsports writers and broadcasters.

The last Winston Cup driver to take the annual award was Bill Elliott in his championship season of 1988.

Emerson Fittipaldi won in 1989, followed by Unser, Michael Andretti, Bobby Rahal and Nigel Mansell.

Overall, NASCAR drivers have won Driver of the Year honors 14 times, Indy-car drivers 13 times and Mario Andretti, who has won it three times--once in each of the last decades--took the honor for his Formula One championship year in 1978.

MONEY MONEY: Twenty-three-year-old Jeff Gordon, who finished eighth in the Winston Cup standings, wound up No. 1 on the race earnings list with $1,607,010, helped considerably by the record $613,000 he pocketed for winning the inaugural Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.

In all, seven drivers finished the 31-race season with more than $1 million in earnings from race purses, the first time that has happened.

Dale Earnhardt, who also won the $1.25 million bonus from series sponsor Winston for taking the title, will get checks totaling more than $3 million on Dec. 2 when NASCAR’s top stars gather at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotal for the annual Awards Banquet.

He won $1,528,895 from season purses, followed by eight-race winner Rusty Wallace with $1,494,620, Ernie Irvan--who missed the last 11 races while recuperating from injuries--with $1,164,455, Geoff Bodine $1,147,238, series runner-up Mark Martin $1,096,236 and Daytona 500 winner Sterling Marlin $1,025,310.

Just missing seven figures in race earnings was Terry Labonte, who won $974,845.

FLYING MILE: Don Miller, president and general manager of Penske Racing South is a racer himself.

Miller, who is a partner in the Winston Cup team along with principal owner Roger Penske and driver Rusty Wallace, on Nov. 5 established a flying mile speed record for Supercharged Flathead Ford Roadsters.

The former drag racing champion drove his 296-cubic inch V8-powered 1929 Roadster to a speed of 156.410 m.p.h.

The record run took place during the FIA-sanctioned East Coast Speed Trials on a 2.8-mile course at the former Spence Air Force Base near Moultrie, Ga. He beat the previous record of 153.322 set in 1992 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

Miller’s record run had more than the usual excitement, too.

“On a dare from Rusty, I made my initial run without using a parachute for braking and wound up doing, as they say, some agricultural racing,” Miller said with a chuckle. “Long story made short is that after being clocked at 153 miles per hour, I was 100 yards into a cornfield before I was able to get the car stopped. I’m just thankful that Farmer John had harvested his corn or it really would have been a hell of a mess.”

MATCHING UP: Everybody knows that trading cards have become a popular collector’s item for NASCAR fans, but, if TreeHouse Match Co. has any say in the matter, its new ’94 Autograph Series of racing matchbooks will be the next big seller.

It is the first set of matchbooks ever produced for Winston Cup drivers and the Charlotte-based company plans to issue a new set each year, just like trading cards.

The ’94 set includes 39 different matchbooks with color photos of Winston Cup drivers on one side and the drivers’ autograph reproduced in gold foil on the back. The inside of the matchbooks contain the drivers’ racing biography and statistics.

“Matchbooks are actually the third most collected item in the world, right behind stamps and coins,” said Jim McCulloch, president of the company.

McCulloch is the same man who founded Maxx Race Cards in 1988. A first edition Maxx NASCAR set is now valued at close to $1,000--and McCulloch says he kept only one set.

“I won’t let that happen again,’ he said.

RESTRUCTURING: Dennis Swan, who was crew chief for Al Unser Jr. when he won the Indy-car PPG Cup championship in 1990, is the heir apparent to the job of competition director held for the past 15 years by Wally Dallenbach.

Dallenbach, will continue in the job but will train Swan, who has joined IndyCar as vice president of logistics, as his eventual successor.

Kirk Russell, longtime technical director of IndyCar, has been named competition vice president and will work with Dallenbach and Swan and will continue to direct all racing and technical areas.

Billy Kamphausen will become director of logistics and Bill Luchow will be transportation manager. Both Kamphausen and Luchow have been longtime Indy-car officials.

SEARS ON BOARD: Craftsman Tools, a subsidiary of Sears, Roebuck and Co., will be the sponsor of the new NASCAR SuperTruck Series, beginning in 1995.

The $500,000 SuperTruck series will feature full-sized pickup trucks made especially for racing. A 20-race series that will race coast-to-coast, on 18 different tracks in 15 states, will begin on Feb. 5 at Phoenix International Raceway.

All of the races will be televised with ABC, CBS, ESPN and TNN splitting the shows.

“One of the original goals set in the early stages of the series was for each race to be televised nationally because we knew we had a product that good,” said Brian France, NASCAR’s vice president for marketing and corporate communications. “We’ve achieved that goal, proving other people think we have a good product as well.”