Earnhardt Hopes 18th Is Charm

Drafting has been a way of life in NASCAR Winston Cup racing since the 1960s, when Junior Johnson discovered that two or more 3,400-pound stock cars running nose to tail could run faster than a single car.

And that two or three cars in a lead pack could pull away from the rest of the field if the trailing cars were trying to pass one another.

Drafting has been the key to winning hundreds of races, especially on the high-banked super-speedways of NASCAR, but rarely has the prospect of freight-train racing loomed as significantly as it does for today’s 38th running of the Daytona 500, stock car racing’s premier event.

“With the [carburetor] restricter plates and downsizing of the engines, finding a partner to draft with is going to be a big deal because so many cars seem to be running with about the same power,” said Dale Earnhardt, the pole-sitter with a qualifying speed of 189.510 mph and the favorite in Richard Childress’ Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

Last year’s pole-winning speed was 193.498 mph.

“I don’t know, it seems like some guys are making it a Chevy-versus-Ford deal, and some of the teams with two or three drivers talk like they might hook up and make it a team sport,” Earnhardt continued. “But our car was developed for Daytona and hopefully it’ll be the car to beat.”

Winning the Daytona 500 would probably mean more to Earnhardt than to many of the 42 other starters. The second-generation driver from Kannapolis, N.C., that fans call “the Intimidator” has won seven Winston Cup championships and 68 races, but never the Daytona 500.

It’s not that he doesn’t know how to drive the peculiar 2 1/2-mile tri-oval. He has won 28 times here in a variety of other races, including two this week, one of the twin 125-mile qualifying heats on Thursday and the International Race of Champions on Friday.

“We know that winning the Daytona 500 is what it’s all about, we’ve just been unfortunate to be close a lot of times and somebody passes us on the last lap,” he said. “That’s the way it’s happened, but we hope it doesn’t happen that way this time.”

Twice in the last five years, Earnhardt has lost the race on the last lap. In 1990 he was nearly half a lap ahead when a cut tire slowed his Chevrolet on the third turn of the final lap, allowing little-known Derrike Cope to win. In 1993, Dale Jarrett’s pass in Turn 4 extended Earnhardt’s frustration.

This will be his 18th 500, and the 13th for car owner Childress, who is also winless in the big race here.

“I never won on a road course until last year and I never sat on the pole for the 500 before. Maybe this will be the time I’ll break my string in the 500,” Earnhardt said. “The car ran real good in the twin 125 and I don’t know why we won’t be around when it comes to those last couple of laps.”

Winning one of the qualifying races has not been a measure of success in the past, however. Earnhardt has won seven in a row, and only six times has a twin 125 winner gone on to win Sunday’s race.

Sterling Marlin, two-time defending 500 champion who will try to become the first to win three in a row, finished a tight second to Earnhardt in their 125 heat, but he foresees Earnhardt and him helping each other today in a draft of Monte Carlos.

“When them other guys start working together, maybe Dale and I will do the same thing,” Marlin said. “Our cars were pretty close in the qualifier. We had a heck of a race, but our best stuff was in the truck. We’ll bring out last year’s car for the 500.”

Fords have done well here during Speed Weeks and will present a major obstacle to Earnhardt, Marlin and Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon, whose Chevrolets were dominant last season.

Ernie Irvan, making a dramatic return to Winston Cup racing after having nearly been killed in a practice-session crash Aug. 29, 1994, at Michigan, still wears a patch over his left eye, but it didn’t appear to bother him as he won Thursday’s other 125.

Dale Jarrett, Irvan’s teammate in Robert Yates-owned Thunderbirds, won the 50-mile Busch Clash last Sunday in an impressive display of horsepower that might have put an end to the Ford teams’ complaints that the Monte Carlos had an unfair aerodynamic advantage.

“There’s nothing you can do when you don’t have any help,” Jarrett said. “I felt like a lone gunman out there [in the 125] trying to fight off three Chevrolets, but I know that help’s on the way. Ernie was in the other 125, but Sunday we can team together. It’ll make a big difference.”

After Irvan’s accident, when it seemed unlikely that the Salinas driver would return to racing, Yates hired Jarrett to drive the No. 28 car. Last year, as Irvan continued to recover, Jarrett’s future seemed uncertain until Yates announced that he would campaign two cars this year.

“Dale’s not a substitute driver this year, and he knows that,” Yates said. “We’ve said all along that we would treat both cars equally and we’re going to do everything we can to finish 1-2. We don’t want anyone to feel short-changed. We don’t have two teams--we have one team with two cars and two drivers.”

Irvan says working with Jarrett will be fine--until the 500 miles start dwindling down.

“When you’re out there racing and the finish is near, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a Ford or a Chevrolet,” Irvan, the 1991 winner, said. “You just want to get to Victory Lane, to get to the finish line first. When they throw that white flag [signaling one lap left], everybody’s there and it doesn’t matter if they’ve got a [Chevy] bow tie or a Ford emblem.”

There are 24 Fords, 13 Chevrolets and six Pontiacs in the race, but up front, four of the first five are Chevies.

Ken Schrader, who will start in the second row alongside Marlin, is part of the powerful Rick Hendrick team that includes Gordon and Terry Labonte, another former Winston Cup champion looking for his first Daytona 500 win.

“Sometimes it’s a pain to have a teammate out there,” Schrader said. “It’s nice if you’re both running well but if the other guy’s not running so good, you hate to drop him [from the draft] if he’s your teammate. Especially if he helped get you up toward the front.”

Gordon, who has never had much success in the 500, says the new NASCAR-mandated 14-1 compression ratio engines for races at Daytona and Talladega will make for closer competition than usual.

“With the drop in horsepower with the new engines, it’s made it harder to pass without hurting yourself,” Gordon said. “If you pull out of the draft to get by another car, more than likely you’ll get shuffled to the back instead.

“That’s why there were such long trains running single file in the 125s. Nobody wanted to take a chance. In the 500, it’ll be different, toward the end at least, because it’s NASCAR’s Super Bowl and everybody wants to win it. At times like that, you let it all hang out.”