Earnhardt Gets Taste of His Own Medicine

This time, the Intimidator was pushed aside on the final lap.

And racing fans who have seen Dale Earnhardt do that so often to others, stood and cheered Jeremy Mayfield after he won the Pocono 500 Monday at Long Pond, Pa.

“I just wanted to rattle his cage a little bit,” Mayfield said after a race that had been delayed a day because of rain and fog.

Those were the words Earnhardt used after the most infamous of his last-lap taps sent a victory-bound Terry Labonte spinning out of the lead last August at Bristol, Tenn.

“I don’t think he can say anything about what happened today,” said Mayfield, who says Earnhardt has messed with him many times. “If he comes back and gets me again, we’ll come back and get him again.”

Earnhardt said little about the contact in the fourth turn at Pocono International Raceway, a tap just a quarter-mile before he would have taken the checkered flag for his 76th career victory. But he drove up alongside Mayfield on the cool-down lap, put his arm out the window and extended a finger.

“I told him he was No. 1,” Earnhardt said of the gesture.

It was still a profitable day for Earnhardt, who fell to fourth before regaining control of his Chevrolet. He picked up 41 points on series leader Bobby Labonte, and now trails by only 57 in his bid for an unprecedented eighth Winston Cup championship.

The win was the third in the career for Mayfield, a 31-year-old driver from Owensboro, Ky., who got his breakthrough victory in this race in 1998.

Mayfield’s team has been penalized twice this season for rules violation. He lost 151 points and seven positions in the Winston Cup chase for one violation and his team was fined for another after he won in April at California Speedway in Fontana.

On Monday, he beat Jarrett by .581 seconds. In third place was Jarrett’s teammate, Ricky Rudd.

Pole-sitter Rusty Wallace, who led the most laps--107--wound up 10th.

This was only the second postponement--and first in 21 years--since Pocono began holding NASCAR events in 1974.

Auto Racing Notes

Unfinished Nashville Superspeedway has landed an Indy Racing League race for next season. A 300-lap race will be held July 21, 2001, and televised by ESPN. The 1.33-mile superspeedway is being built just outside Nashville and is scheduled to open in April. . . . Lowe’s Motor Speedway outside Charlotte, N.C., announced it will move qualifying from Wednesday to Thursday nights for its two annual NASCAR races, beginning next season.