Burton Reigns in the Rain

The southern Nevada desert was the last place NASCAR expected to have one of its Winston Cup races rained out.

They won’t have to bring the drivers and cars back to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, or hand out refunds to the 140,000 fans, however, because the 148 laps that were run on a bitter cold Sunday in the CarsDirect.com 400 were more than half the scheduled 267 laps. If a race goes one lap past halfway, it can be considered official.

Jeff Burton couldn’t have been more pleased with the rain as his No. 99 Ford Taurus was in front when NASCAR officials stopped the race. It was worth $368,975, plus a $1-million No Bull 5 bonus for the 32-year-old driver from South Boston, Va.

Rain, Las Vegas and the No Bull bonus have been good to Burton in the past year, although this was the first time they meshed.

It was Burton’s second win in two days here, having won the Sam’s Town 300 Busch race Saturday, and it was his second consecutive Winston Cup win on the 1 1/2-mile tri-oval northwest of Las Vegas’ casinos. In his only other race here, Burton finished second to Mark Martin in 1998. It was the third time in less than a year that he won races stopped by rain. Twice last year at Darlington, S.C., first in March and later in September, he had the good fortune to be in front at the right time. In the TransSouth Financial 400 in the spring, his own crash brought out a caution flag and as he limped his car to the finish line rain began to fall.

“If I thought I was going to keep winning races in the rain, I’ll start selling umbrellas,” Burton said.

It was the third $1-million bonus he has collected by winning at designated races. He collected the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. money when he won last year in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte and the rainy Southern 500 at Darlington.

“The key is to put yourself in position,” he said. “We seem to keep not falling into these things because you don’t fall into any wins, but we seem to have ourselves in the right place at the right time. That was why we had a lot of urgency to be leading at the halfway mark.”

Although Burton led three times for a total of 56 laps, his most important move came on lap 136--two laps past halfway--when he passed Martin, his Jack Roush Racing teammate. He held on for the rest of the race, although fast-finishing Tony Stewart was challenging.

“If I had known there were going to be only 10 laps left when Jeff got up on me, we would have had a race on our hands,” Martin said. “But I didn’t know that. Tony [Stewart] and I were maybe one adjustment away from making a real run for it.”

Burton knew that too.

“I had a great car, the best out there when the race was stopped, but I knew Mark and Tony were planning to make changes to make their cars better,” Burton said. “I don’t know what would have happened if we had gone the distance. I know both of them would have been coming.”

Stewart, who started 16th, finished second in Joe Gibbs’ Pontiac, and was followed by Fords driven by Martin and surprising Bill Elliott, who charged all the way from 39th to finish fourth.

It was Elliott’s second top-five finish in three races after having only one in the entire 1999 season.

Of the 148 laps, 28 were run under rain-caused caution flags, holding Burton’s winning speed down to 119.982 mph. The race was also stopped for 20 minutes after 41 laps while sprinkles dampened the track.

Besides Burton, the happiest people at the track were Roush, owner of the Burton and Martin cars, and Joyce Williams, a spectator from Port Isabel, Texas, who won $1 million after drawing Burton’s name in the No Bull 5 contest.

“My bottom lip is swollen from biting it so hard,” she said.

Roush cars have won five consecutive NASCAR races here, two in the Busch series and all three Winston Cups.

“Mark and Jeff are really good at these intermediate size tracks and they’re also good at sorting their cars out,” he said. “People asked me when we came back what our prospects were and I told them I didn’t figure we’d win another race here for 10 years, and here we are again.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave fans a hint of what to expect in the future when he charged from the second row to take the lead from Ricky Rudd on the first lap. Little E, in a red Chevrolet owned by his father, led 42 laps to take rookie honors with a 10th-place finish.

“Tenth place ain’t bad,” he said. “We got to lead a little bit and got to run hard in some situations and saw how the car ran on long runs. I felt like we are improving.”

Another rookie, Indy car veteran Scott Pruett, had a dreadful day in Cal Wells’ Ford. After starting on the front row, he slid backward so quickly that by the ninth lap he was 40th. He finished 42nd, five laps down.