Fans Revved Up as Irvan Makes a Race of It : Motor sports: His charge from 22nd to first in NASCAR SuperTruck event gets crowd on its feet, but Skinner wins.

Ernie Irvan didn’t win NASCAR’s SuperTruck race Sunday at Mesa Marin Raceway, but his dramatic charge from 22nd to the front sent the largest crowd in the track’s history home about as satisfied as if he had.

After Irvan, racing with a patch over his left eye, took the lead from Ron Hornaday Jr. on lap 169 of the Spears Manufacturing 200, the crowd rose in approval. Cries of “Ernie, Ernie, Errr-Neeee!” greeted his No. 28 each time it passed the grandstand.

Mike Skinner, the SuperTruck series leader, spoiled Irvan’s party when he finally forced his Chevrolet past Irvan’s Ford with 15 laps remaining--but not until after the pair had raced side by side for four turns around Mesa Marin’s half-mile banked oval.

Mike Bliss, in a Ford, dropped Irvan to third on a last-lap pass.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Irvan said enthusiastically after the race. “I’ll bet the way Skinner and I were going at it, it probably looked like it was a staged deal.”

All the way around, lap after lap, Irvan was on the outside, Skinner on the inside--on Irvan’s blind side.

“I thought to a certain degree about how maybe he couldn’t see me, but from the way he was driving, it wasn’t making any difference,” Skinner said. “I thought I put him away when I got by, but darned if he didn’t get stronger and come right back.

“It was like running open comp races here years ago.”

Skinner drove in about 30 races at Mesa Marin when he lived in Susanville, before he moved to Randleman, N.C., to pursue his racing career, much as Irvan did after winning the Stockton track championship while living in Salinas.

Richard Childress, who owns Skinner’s truck and also the Chevrolet that Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt drives, was impressed by Irvan’s outing, only his second race since being out for more than 13 months because of head injuries.

“Ernie’s back, no doubt about it,” Childress said. “He’s as good as ever. He drove a hell of a race.”

When his left eye would not respond to treatment after his accident, Irvan put a patch over it and convinced his doctors and NASCAR officials that he was ready to return to racing. Two weeks ago, at North Wilkesboro, N.C., he made his debut. He drove in a truck race, but his truck gave out halfway through. The following day, he finished sixth in a Winston Cup race.

Tires, or the way drivers used them, were the difference, Skinner and Irvan agreed.

“This track is very abrasive,” Skinner said. “Goodyear brought a great tire, but you’ve got to run with the old egg-under-the-throttle approach in order to save the tires. This track will wear out the best of them pretty quick.”

Irvan, in only his second SuperTruck race, said he still wasn’t used to its different racing tactics.

“These guys are used to being kind to their tires, but I’m still racing with a Winston Cup mind-set,” Irvan said. “I get in a car and race as hard as I can and if the tires go bad, I come in and get new ones. That’s the way it is in Winston Cup. In these trucks, they change ‘em at the halfway point, and that’s it.”

Tire marks on the sides of most of the 36 starters--black doughnuts--indicated the closeness of racing during the 1-hour, 28-minute race. Skinner averaged 61.193 m.p.h., a speed slowed by 64 laps run under the yellow caution flag.

In the first 100-lap segment, once the field settled down after four early caution flags, Irvan quietly began threading his way through the field. He had picked off 14 trucks before the mandatory halfway stop.

After the restart, with new tires, he passed Skinner for seventh place, then Jack Sprague for sixth and Joe Ruttman for fifth in the first 20 laps.

On lap 136, Irvan drove around Geoff Bodine on the east end of the track and Bliss on the west end. As he shot into third place, behind local favorites Bill Sedgwick of Acton and Ron Hornaday Jr. of Palmdale, you’d have thought he had already won the race, from the crowd’s reaction.

Four laps later, he passed Sedgwick as if he were stalled and set out after Hornaday, who had about an eight-car-length lead.

Former national motocross champion Rick Johnson, driving in his first SuperTruck race, spiced the action by first spinning out, then colliding twice with Steve Portenga--bringing out the caution flag three times in 40 laps.

The cautions enabled Irvan to close in on Hornaday, and he finally got in front on lap 169, just as Hornaday slowed with a flat tire.

“It was a great day, I mean I had a good truck and you always get these problems,” Hornaday said. “You know you win one and we lose one and we come back and race hard. It was great racing Ernie out there.”

Hornaday, a six-time winner in the series, finished 15th.

Skinner’s victory gave him an 88-point lead over Ruttman after 19 of 20 races. One remains, Oct. 28 at Phoenix International Raceway.

“I’m going to sleep a little better tonight,” Childress said. “Winning this championship is important too. Now we can go to Phoenix and run hard. It’ll be a pretty nervous weekend for me, with Dale racing Jeff [Gordon] in the Winston Cup race.

“I’m really enjoying these truck races. They’re a lot of fun, and I beat Dale too.”

Earnhardt is the owner of Hornaday’s truck, which is third in points, 288 behind Skinner and out of contention for the championship.

Marion Collins, owner-president of the Mesa Marin track, estimated the crowd at close to 10,000, the most crammed into the track since it opened in 1977.