A Late Move Give Martin IROC Win

Bobby Labonte wasn’t supposed to be there, but figured that since he was, why not make the best of things?

Labonte, sitting in a car that was supposed to be driven by the injured Robby Gordon, did everything but make it to Victory Lane on Saturday in the third leg of the four-race International Race of Champions at California Speedway.

Labonte made Mark Martin work for his fourth victory in his last five IROC events over the last two years--he was second in the other--and also made Martin sweat out the pass he made to take the lead for good with three laps remaining.

Martin could have just about clinched the series with the five bonus points for leading the most laps of the 50-lap event over the new two-mile California Speedway. He led 19 laps, while Labonte led 25.

As it is, Martin needs only to finish ninth in the final race at Michigan Speedway on July 27 to become the first three-time winner in the series’ 24-year history.

“I did everything to keep him behind me, but I couldn’t,” said Martin, who lost the lead to Labonte on Lap 23 and ran behind him until making his winning move on the backstretch of Lap 47. “At the end, I was kind of counting points on one hand and on the other hand I knew I had to stay on the gas or [Terry Labonte] would have been trying to slip up on me.”

Bobby Labonte had taken the lead from Martin by slipping down to the grass just past the start/finish line, then getting him on the backstretch.

Martin returned the favor on Lap 47.

“I got a little too tight off Turn Two and Mark got up underneath me,” said Bobby Labonte, who was named to drive the IROC car when Gordon was injured in a crash Friday while practicing for today’s California 500. “That let Terry [Labonte] get up underneath me too, because the preferred line is on the bottom going under the corners.”

Terry Labonte followed Martin and took over second place, but Bobby Labonte passed his brother to finish the race as the runner-up. Terry Labonte was third.

Martin, who averaged 164.384 mph, holds a 65-46 lead in points over Gordon, who got the points that Bobby Labonte earned in the race.

Al Unser Jr., who finished the race in sixth place, is third in the points standings with 45.

At stake is $225,000, which goes to the series winner from the $760,000 purse. Martin has a cheering section in his Winston Cup crew, which has nothing to do with IROC, a race contested among 12 drivers from stock car, Indy car and road racing series competing in identically prepared Pontiac Trans-Ams.

Martin, who has said he will share his winnings with the crew, started in the 12th position but moved up quickly after the race survived the first-lap antics of Alex Zanardi, a CART driver who was the pole-sitter.

First, Zanardi jumped the start, which meant the race would have to be restarted, and crashed into the third-turn wall in the process. He was allowed to use a backup car and that one lasted four laps before he crashed into the Turn Two wall.

“The first time, in Turn Three, I broke something in the tire,” Zanardi said. “The second one was completely my fault. This is the most embarrassing day in my life, smashing two cars in five minutes.”

The start of the race was delayed more than one hour because Zanardi and Jimmy Vasser had to be flown in from Portland, Ore., where they qualified for today’s Indy-car race.