Jarrett Heading to Rockingham With Good Feeling

If somebody tried to put together a highlight reel of Dale Jarrett’s 2003 season, it would start and end with the February race at North Carolina Speedway.

Jarrett won the Subway 400, the second race of the year. After that, it was mostly downhill for the 1999 Winston Cup champion, with no more top-fives, only six top-10s and a career-worst 26th-place finish in the points.

“That was a shining moment in a difficult season, but it kind of went along with the rest of the season,” Jarrett said as his Robert Yates Racing team prepared for today’s race on the 1.017-mile oval in the sand hills of North Carolina. “We fought and fought throughout the day.

“It wasn’t like we were dominating throughout that race. We worked on the car and then, finally, at the end got it to where it could compete.”

Jarrett called it the type of race “that you really remember.”

The rest of the season was pretty forgettable.

So far, things have looked a lot better in 2004.

With added power from the new engine-building alliance of Yates and fellow team owner Jack Roush, Jarrett won the Budweiser Shootout exhibition race, then finished a respectable 10th in the Daytona 500.

Teammate Elliott Sadler also showed some power, winning one of the 125-mile Daytona qualifying races and finishing seventh in the 500.

“We went to Daytona with a lot of new people and with the team totally reorganized,” Jarrett said. “I think the guys did an excellent job of getting us prepared. All in all, it was a pretty good week for Robert Yates Racing.”

Though Jarrett has notched only two victories at the track in Rockingham, he has come up with 12 top-fives and 15 top-10s in 33 starts there.

“Rockingham is about getting your car handling and being able to take care of the tires and getting yourself in the right position at the end of the race,” he said.

And Jarrett is hopeful that another good race at Rockingham will be a lead-in to continued success this season.

“There’s a whole new feeling on this team,” he said. “I think everybody believes we’re going to have a good season, and everybody’s working as hard as they can to make it happen.”

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The search goes on for a full-time primary sponsor for Jeff Burton’s No. 99 Roush Racing Ford.

Meanwhile, the team announced this week that Pennzoil, which sponsors the Busch series car shared by Burton, Mark Martin and Matt Kenseth, will be the primary sponsor on the No. 99 Taurus next week in Las Vegas and on Greg Biffle’s Nextel Cup car at the June Pocono race.

“There is a lot of interest in the program right now,” Burton said. “The team needs to stay focused on the racing right now while our marketing department does their job. We have a lot of irons in the fire and I feel confident that we’ll have more announcements in the future.”

Burton is a two-time Las Vegas race winner.

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If one North Carolina Speedway race had to be taken off the schedule, Jeff Gordon is glad it’s the fall date.

Gordon came into the weekend with four wins, two poles, eight top-fives and 10 top-10s in 22 career starts at The Rock.

Three of the wins, both poles and six of the top-10s have come in the spring race. In addition, of the 945 laps he has led there, 730 have come in February.

In NASCAR’s schedule realignment, Darlington lost its Labor Day weekend race to California Speedway but got Rockingham’s November date.

“I’ve always enjoyed racing here and I hate to see one of the events taken off the schedule,” said Gordon, a four-time Winston Cup champion. “But I also understand the decision to move the race to a different market in an effort to grow the sport.

“While I enjoy racing here because you can run low, middle or high through the corners, it can be frustrating as well. Tires fall off quickly, which could mean a long day if your car isn’t handling just right. You can also have a frustrating day with a good car.”

That’s exactly what happened to him last November.

Gordon battled back to regain a lap lost early in the race, then lost several laps when a caution flag came out just after he completed a green-flag pit stop.

Gordon made up one of those laps before the same set of circumstances hit again and he wound up 22nd, three laps behind winner Bill Elliott.

“We had a good car, we just couldn’t catch a break,” Gordon said.

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Bobby Labonte has dominated at Rockingham over the last 10 races. The 2000 Winston Cup champion has eight top-10 finishes during that period, including his only victory at The Rock in February 2000. Five of those top-10 finishes were third or better.