MOTOR SPORTS ROUNDUP : Labonte Learns Quickly Enough to Win

Jeff Gordon learned about this restart business in a week. Bobby Labonte was a quicker study.

Gordon, who missed a shift on a restart after a caution flag a week ago at Pocono, Pa., costing him a race, hit Labonte’s Chevrolet in the rear on a restart Sunday in the Miller Genuine Draft 400 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, knocking his car off line. Then he passed Labonte to take the lead with 17 laps to go.

Labonte took the lead back five laps later, then held it on another restart to win the race in the third NASCAR Winston Cup showdown between the two this season.

Gordon, 23, won the other two.

“Jeff’s awful tough,” Labonte, 31, said. “He snookered me on that restart, you know. He’s been doing this up-front stuff a lot longer than I have.”

Labonte won by 0.27 seconds, averaged 134.141 m.p.h. and earned $84,080.

The race was slowed by eight caution flags, including one for a crash involving Dale Earnhardt that knocked him out of the race and the Winston Cup points lead.

Earnhardt finished 35th and dropped to second behind Sterling Marlin, who finished seventh.

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Mario Andretti wrecked in the fourth hour, then spent the next 20 hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with French teammates Bob Wollek and Eric Helary creeping up on the McLaren BMW F1 GTR driven by the eventual winners Yannick Dalmas, J.J. Lehto of Finland and Massanori Sekiya of Japan.

The Andretti team’s Courage-Porsche C34 lost 30 minutes in repairs and finished three minutes behind the winners, who covered 2,520 miles, or 298 laps around the wet 8.45-mile course.