Tom Higgins' Scuffs

The Blowout 400

   Awful...
   Disgraceful...
   Pathetic...
   Pitiful...
   Wretched...
   Attach any negative adjective you wish to Sunday's running of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and it applies.
   How could a sanctioning body like NASCAR and its many multi-million dollar racing teams, loaded with genius engineers and incredible technology, not have foreseen the fiasco involving tire wear--or lack thereof--coming well before what some consider the Sprint Cup Series' second biggest show?
   What an embarrassment  for a sport that promotes itself as major league as big-time baseball, the NFL and the PGA.

   

   That the right side tires dangerously wore to the cords after only 10 laps on the famous 2.5-mile track is something like the stitches falling off baseballs and footballs.  Or golf balls exploding on the tee.
   There should be, and probably are, a rash of red faces at various NASCAR offices right now and at Goodyear headquarters, too, on how poorly the tires failed at Indy on NASCAR's so-called "Car Of Tomorrow."  (Any bets on how long before the vehicle become the "COY," or Car Of Yesterday?) 
   The excessive tire wear forced NASCAR officials to call for "competition yellow flags" every 10 laps as the 400 WORE on and WORE on and WORE on.
   I'm glad they made the call to provide for the saftey both of the competitors and of the fans, who might have been hurt if shredding pieces of tires or metal from wrecking cars happened to fly over the retaining fences.
   However, NASCAR-type racing it wasn't, not until Jimmy Johnson held off Carl Edwards in a seven-lap  sprint to take the checkered flag.
   I wasn't at Indianapolis Motor  Speedway on Sunday--and thankfully so.
   However, I was covering the Talladega 500 at the big 2.66-mile track then known as Alabama International Motor Speedway on Sept. 14, 1969.
   The facility's opening had been ballyhooed acrosss the south and was widely-anticipated because Big Bill France Sr., founder of both NASCAR and the Alabama speedway, had predicted the sanctioning body's first qualifying speeds in excess of 200 mph.
   France wasn't far off.
   Bobby Isaac won the pole in a winged Dodge at 196.386 mph.  However, Chargin' Charlie Glotzbach was the top qualifier on the second day of time trials at 199.466 mph in a similar Dodge.
   Then, as on Sunday, the tire manufacturers, Goodyear and Firestone, both were In NASCAR back then,  couldn't match the rubber to the road.  The high speeds turned both makes of tires into what looked like black, smoking strands of spaghetti after only two or so laps in practice.  Firestone pulled out 48 hours before the race, but France convinced Goodyear to stay.
   The top drivers implored France to postpone the 500 until a reliable tire compound could be developed.  But France, an immensely proud man, said the show would go on. He was as solid as a block of granite on this point.
   Something else was at play here, too.  Most of the drivers had signed on to join a fledgling union, the Professional Drivers' Association, and they saw the tire trouble at Talladega as a way of forcing France to recognize the organization, which wanted a say in how the sport was operated.
   France refused, and practically every top driver in NASCAR boycotted the race, including Richard Petty, David Pearson, LeeRoy Yarbrough, Cale Yarborough, Buddy Baker, Chargin' Charlie and the brothers Allison, Bobby and Donnie.
   France waived practically every stipulation in his own NASCAR rulebook and rolled out a field of 36 cars for the 500, including 23 Grand Touring Division machines that had raced at Talladega the day before.
   Drivers were privately and strictly warned to keep the rpms down and speeds relatively slow, otherwise they'd be blackflagged and parked in the garage.  They complied.
   As at Indy on Sunday, cautions were planned every few laps to enable the crews to put new tires on their cars.  Only at Talladega, NASCAR officials fibbed and claimed the yellow flags were "for debris on the track." 
   Most of the fans bought it, but other longtime NASCAR followers and  veteran newsmen didn't.
   Like the Brickyard 400, the inaugural Talladega 500 wasn't raced, but more or less staged.
   With about a dozen laps to go, NASCAR "gave the green light for full speed ahead," indicating it was every driver for himself to run as fast as his courage and tires would allow.
   A relative unknown driver from little Rocky River, N.C., Richard Brickhouse, applied all the substantial power available in his Dodge, fielded by Ray Nichels and prepared by Mack Howard,.  Taking the lead with 11 laps to go, Brickhouse literally charged away to beat Charlottean Jim Vandiver by 7 seconds.  Just how fast Brickhouse actually could run had the crowd gasping in disbelief.
    Brickhouse was in the car qualified by Glotzbach.  Vandiver drove a Ray Fox Dodge.  Vandiver, who led 102 of the 186 laps, contends to this day that a scoring error during one of the confused, controversial seven caution periods cost him the race.
   Brickhouse, driving a car nicknamed "Plum Crazy" because of its unique purple paint scheme, never won again at NASCAR's top level.
   Big Bill France, an imaginative and ingenious promoter, fully realized that the estimated 62,000 attending at Talladega that steamy September sabbath 39 years ago hadn't seen the spectacular show he'd been billing while the speedway was under construction.
   He issued this statement:
   "The ticket stubs for this Talladega 500 can be turned in for a free ticket to any future race at Daytona or Talladega," declared France.  Daytona International Speedway is Talladega's sister track.
   After Sunday's debacle, NASCAR and  Goodyear should pitch in, share the cost, and be equally as generous in regards to next year's Brickyard 400.
   Lord knows, they've got the money.

The Indy, Bobby And Dale Show!

    It seemed, at long last, that my hope of someday covering an Indianapolis 500 was at hand.
   The chance, in 1986, came out of the blue.  Or, more correctly, the black.
  But  first, a bit of background...   
   I had just punched the period onto the final sentence of the last story I would be filing  for The Charlotte Observer on the night of May 25, '86 about the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
   It had been a long, tough, controversial week at the track now known as Lowes Motor Speedway, as most of the races there usually were.  For example, Richard Petty, the King of NASCAR racing, had been hurt in a crash during pratice.  Per the rules at that time, officials wouldn't let him roll out and drive a backup car.  So driver/teamowner D.K. Ulrich loaned him a car instead.
   The 600 itself was OK.  Dale Earnhardt won the 600 by 1.59 seconds over runnerup Tim Richmond.  It appeared Bill Elliott had by far the stronger car, but he was getting terrible fuel milage and wound up finishing sixth.
   Anyway, I tapped that final period, hit the send button on the rather rustic computers were using in those days and my story was en route to The Observer at 600 South Tryon St. in Charlotte.
   In keeping with tradition, I yelled to my fellows in the press box, "Boys and girls, it ain't good, but it's finished and filed, and that makes it great!"
   As always, there was a bit of laughter and applause.
  That's when the phone rang...

   Frank Barrows, The Observer sports editor in that era, was on the other end of the paper's direct hookup to the speedway press box.
   "Tom, you want to do something diffirent and exciting!?" gushed Frank, who wasn't bashful of trying the bizarre.  "Since the Indy 500 was rained out today, why don't you go up there and cover it?! We'll be the only major daily newspaper in the country with the same motorsports writer at both the 500 and 600!" 
   The 500 had been rescheduled for Monday, Memorial Day.
   I was tired.  I wanted to sleep in late and then join my pals Junior Wong, Bill Webb and Buddy Baker to go fishing.
   However, Frank's pitch was exciting.
   "Two BIG, BIG problems, Frank,"  I said.  "First, how do I go to Indianapolis?  Second, on such short notice, how do I get a credential to get into the press areas?"
   "You have enough contacts from over the years to get the credential," said Frank.  "Get on it and call me back in 15 minutes.  If you have it, I'll have a plane to fly you up there first thing in the morning."
    It took one call.
   My longtime friend, the late Harvey Duck, a former Chicaco sportswriter who had become a public relations representative for STP, readily offered the credential and said he'd even pick me up at the Indy airport.
   "Your plane leaves at 6 a.m.," said Barrows.
   I groaned.  It was now nearly midnight.
   I knew there was a big problem when we broke through the low ceiling and finally could see the ground at Indianapolis.  The Goodyear Blimp was still secured to its mooring.
   Harvey greeted me with a grin but also a shake of the head in the terminal.
   "It's going to rain all day," he said.  "What a mess."
   What a mess indeed.
   For the last three or so miles driving to the speedway trash was piled shoulder-high on both sides of a multi-lane highway.  It had been left there by fans waiting for the infield gates to open a couple days earlier.  It looked like a New York garbarge strike.
   I was enthralled to  finally see from the inside the massive grandeur of Indianapolis Motor Speedway's homestretch--cavernous grandstands off each side of turn four,  the distinctive scoring pylon, the pagoda, the yard of brick at the start/finish line.   Never mind that a constant drizzle and a low fog of gloom hung over the place, I was awed.
   Harvey Duck suggested that we visit the infield media center.
   We walked in and I knew quite a few of the guys in there.  We had covered many Daytona 500s together.  They were surprised to see me.
   Within seconds they started laying their best one-liners on me.  It mainly was gallows humor about what was going to happen with the 1986 Indianapolis 500.
   Here's a sampling:
   --There has not been a signting of a blue whale at one of the water holes on the infield portion of the track's golf course.  It was only a large carp.
   --Commemorative sculptures  made of infield mud will not be available in the gift shops today.  They haven't dried yet.
   --There is not a beer shortage.  A special convoy of 1,000 trucks left Milwaukee at 6 a.m. and there will be suds in The Snake Pit by 3 p.m. (The Snake Pit is the infamous First Turn area usually staked out by motorcycle gangs).
   --The Women's Christiran Temperence Union will  not attempt to intercept the convoy from Milkwaukee at its terminus.  The Ladies visited the Snake Pit on Sunday during the rainout and are not expected to be out of the sanitoriums before August.
   Meanwhile, that gray Memorial Day, the rain In Indy continued to fall.  However, Speedway officials wouldn't budge.  They wanted to run if possible.  Drivers, team owners, crewmen were in almost open rebellion as 4 p.m. approached.  They'd been in Indy for a month.  Make a decision!  Finally, it came, forced by ABC-TV which held the telecast rights.  The 500 would be held the following Saturday.
   So, after all this effort, I wasn't going to get to cover the Indianapolis 500 after all, the race at the world-famous track where the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard is scheuled Sunday for NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series teams.
   My immediate problem became how to get out of Indy, competeing with  so many thousands of fans for flights.  I had to get to Riversdie, Calif., to cover NASCAR's Budweiser 400 on June 1.
   Arriving at the downtown hotel Harvey Duck had booked for me I saw some sad sights.  Two couples from Norway stood bawling in the lobby, trying to sell their tickets for the 500.   They'd saved for years to come see the race, and now they had to travel home without seeing a single car go around the track.  Last time I checked they had no buyers.
   I managed to make it out of Indy and reach Riverside on Thursday.
   I deeply wanted to see that Indy 500, as did several of my pals.  But how to do it while keeping a check on Winston Cup Series proceedings at the Riverside road course?
   Bobby Allison and his Stavola Brothers team came up with a solution.  They rented a big screen TV, placed it in the team's transporter in the garage area, rigged up a special antenna and --voila!--there was the Indy 500.
   A few were asked in to share the telecast.  Thank goodness, I was among them.
   Of course, Bobby Allison was there.  So was Dale Earnhardt.
   As if the rain-plauged Indy 500 hadn't experienced enough problems, the popular Tom Sneva veered off  course on the final pace lap and crashed at the exit of turn two.  Almost simultaneously, further down the backstretch, some unruly fan set off a yellow smoke bomb.
   Chaos reigned.
   But, finally, they got the race going.
   The 500 was a good one that came down to which driver did the best on a green flag restart among frontrunner Kevin Cogan, Rick Mears and Bobby Rahal with two laps to go.
   "Whoever gets the best jump will win," predicted Allison, who ran the Indy 500 twice in the 1970s.
   "If I was the other two, they'd get no chance at me," said Earnhardt.  I'd jump that sucker (green flag) on the backstretch and  be gone.  I'd get a running start and gamble about being penalized.  I'd wave bye-bye.!"
   Allison howled in delight.
   "You'd do it, too!  I know you would!" said Bobby,  pointing accusingly at Earnhardt.
   Allison grabbed me by the arm.  "Write that!  Write that in your notes!"  a beaming Bobby shouted.  "I want a clipping to carry around in my billfold for ammunition with NASCAR for the rest of Dale's career!"
   About this time Bobby Rahal was beating Kevin Cogan by 1.4 seconds to win the '86 Indy 500.
  Earnhardt  flashed one of his half-smile, half-sneers which many followers came to know so well.
  "Not a bad race...For Indy," he said.
   I still never have covered an Indianapolis 500 in person.   And with the laps of time running down on my life, I doubt I ever will.
   However, the one I watched in absentia with Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt makes up for it.

The Indy, Bobby And Dale Show!

    It seemed, at long last, that my hope of someday covering an Indianapolis 500 was at hand.
   The chance, in 1986, came out of the blue.  Or, more correctly, the black.
  But  first, a bit of background...   
   I had just punched the period onto the final sentence of the last story I would be filing  for The Charlotte Observer on the night of May 25, '86 about the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
   It had been a long, tough, controversial week at the track now known as Lowes Motor Speedway, as most of the races there usually were.  For example, Richard Petty, the King of NASCAR racing, had been hurt in a crash during pratice.  Per the rules at that time, officials wouldn't let him roll out and drive a backup car.  So driver/teamowner D.K. Ulrich loaned him a car instead.
   The 600 itself was OK.  Dale Earnhardt won the 600 by 1.59 seconds over runnerup Tim Richmond.  It appeared Bill Elliott had by far the stronger car, but he was getting terrible fuel milage and wound up finishing sixth.
   Anyway, I tapped that final period, hit the send button on the rather rustic computers were using in those days and my story was en route to The Observer at 600 South Tryon St. in Charlotte.
   In keeping with tradition, I yelled to my fellows in the press box, "Boys and girls, it ain't good, but it's finished and filed, and that makes it great!"
   As always, there was a bit of laughter and applause.
  That's when the phone rang...

   Frank Barrows, The Observer sports editor in that era, was on the other end of the paper's direct hookup to the speedway press box.
   "Tom, you want to do something diffirent and exciting!?" gushed Frank, who wasn't bashful of trying the bizarre.  "Since the Indy 500 was rained out today, why don't you go up there and cover it?! We'll be the only major daily newspaper in the country with the same motorsports writer at both the 500 and 600!" 
   The 500 had been rescheduled for Monday, Memorial Day.
   I was tired.  I wanted to sleep in late and then join my pals Junior Wong, Bill Webb and Buddy Baker to go fishing.
   However, Frank's pitch was exciting.
   "Two BIG, BIG problems, Frank,"  I said.  "First, how do I go to Indianapolis?  Second, on such short notice, how do I get a credential to get into the press areas?"
   "You have enought contacts from over the years to get the credential," said Frank.  "Get on it and call me back in 15 minutes.  If you have it, I'll have a plane to fly you up there first thing in the morning."
    It took one call.
   My longtime friend, the late Harvey Duck, a former Chicaco sportswriter who had become a public relations representative for STP, readily offered the credential and said he'd even pick me up at the Indy airport.
   "Your plane leaves at 6 a.m.," said Barrows.
   I groaned.  It was now nearly midnight.
   I knew there was a big problem when we broke through the low ceiling and finally could see the ground at Indianapolis.  The Goodyear Blimp was still secured to its mooring.
   Harvey greeted me with a grin but also a shake of the head in the terminal.
   "It's going to rain all day," he said.  "What a mess."
   What a mess indeed/
   For the last three or so miles driving to the speedway trash was piled shoulder-high on both sides of a multi-lane highway.  It had been left there by fans waiting for the infield gates to open a couple days earlier.
   I was enthralled to  finally see from the inside the massive grandeur of Indianapolis Motor Speedway's homestretch--the distinctive scoring pylon, the pagoda, the yard of brick at the start/finish line.   Never mind that a constant drizzle and a low fog of gloom hung over the place, I was awed.
   Harvey Duck suggested that we visit the infield media center.
   We walked in and I knew quite a few of the guys in there.  We had covered many Daytona 500s together.  They were surprised to see me.
   Within seconds they started laying their best one-liners on me.  It mainly was gallows humor about what was going to happen with the 1986 Indianapolis 500.
   Here's a sampling:
   --There has not be a signting of a blue whale at one of the water holes on the infield portion of the track's golf course.  It was only a large carp.
   --Commemorative sculputers made of infield mud will not be available in the gift shops today.  They haven't dried year.
   --There is not a beer shortage.  A special convoy of 1,000 trucks left Milwaukee at 6 a.m. and there will be suds in The Snake Pit by 3 p.m. (The Snake Pit is the infamous First Turn area usually staked out by motorcycle gangs).
   --The Women's Christiran Temperence Union will  not attempt to intercept the convoy from Milkwaukee at its terminus.  The Ladies visited the Snake Pit on Sunday during the rainout and are not expected to be out of the sanitoriums before August.
   Meanwhile, that gray Memorial Day, the rain In Indy continued to fall.  However, Speedway officials wouldn't budge.  They wanted to run if possible.  Drivers, team owners, crewmen were in almost open rebellion.  They'd been in Indy for a month.  Make a decision!  Finally, it came, forced by ABC-TV which held the telecast rights.  The 500 would be held the following Saturday.
   So, after all this effort, I wasn't going to get to cover the Indianapolis 500 after all.
   The immediate problem became how to get out of Indy, competeing with  so many thousands of fans for flights.  I had to get to Riversdie, Calif., to cover NASCAR's Budweiser 400 on June 1.
   Arriving at the downtown hotel Harvey Duck had booked for me I saw some sad sights.  Two couples from Norway stood bawling in the lobby, trying to sell their tickets for the 500.   They'd saved for years to come see the race, and now they had to travel home without seeing a single car go around the track.  Last time I checked they had no buyers.
   I managed to make it out of Indy and reach Riverside on Thursday.
   I deeply wanted to see that Indy 500, as did several of my pals.  But how to do it while keeping a check on Winston Cup Series proceedings at the Riverside road course?
   Bobby Allison and his Stavola Brothers team came up with a solution.  They rented a big screen TV, placed it in the team's transporter in the garage area, rigged up a special antenna and --voila!--there was the Indy 500.
   A few were asked in to share the telecast.  Thank goodness, I was among them.
   Of course, Bobby Allison was there.  So was Dale Earnhardt.
   As if the rain-plauged Indy 500 hadn't experienced enough problems, the popular Tom Sneva veered off  course on the final pace lap and crashed at the exit of turn two.  Almost simultaneously, further down the backstretch, some unruly fan set off a yellow smoke bomb.
   Chaos reigned.
   But, finally, they got going.
   The 500 was a good one that came down to which driver did the best on a green flag restart among frontrunner Kevin Cogan, Rick Mears and Bobby Rahal with two laps to go.
   "Whoever gets the best jump will win," predicted Allison, who ran the Indy 500 twice in the 1970s.
   "If I was the other two, they'd get no chance at me," said Earnhardt.  I'd jump that sucker (green flag) on the backstretch and  be gone.  I'd get a running startr and ggamble about being penalized.  I'd wave bye-bye.!"
   Allison howled in delight.
   You'd do it, too!  I know you would!" pointing accusingly at Earnhardt.
   Allison grabbed m by the arm.  "Write that!  Write that in your notes!"  a beaming Bobby shouted.  "I want a clipping to carry around in my billfold for ammunition with NASCAR for the rest of Dale's career!"
   About this time Bobby Rahal was beating Kevin Cogan by 1.4 seconds to win the '86 Indy 500.
  Earnhardt  flashed a half-smile, half-sneer which many followers came to know so well.
  "Not a bad race...For Indy," he said.
   I still never have covered an Indianapolis 500 in persons.   And with the laps of time running down on my life, I doubt I ever will.
   However, the one I watched in absentia with Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt makes up for it.

On The Mark!

   Hooray for Mark Martin!
   The best NASCAR news I've heard in quite some time is that Martin, the affable, popular driver who grew up in Arkansas, will return to the Sprint Cup Series for a full season in 2009.
   In replacing Casey Mears at Hendrick Motorsports next year, Martin, who'll be 50 on Jan. 9, will be going for a chmpionship that has eluded him in a career dating to 1981, sometimes very cruelly.
   He has been the runnerup for the title four times--1990, '94, '98 and 2002.
   The worst of these disappointments came in 1990, when Martin and his Jack Roush-owned team finished second in the standings to Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress Racing by 26 points.
   The differenece was a 46-point penalty Martin , the winner that day, incurred at Richmond on Feb.25 in a NASCAR decision that still is disputed even today.  Martin didn't learn of the big points-takeway until arriving home near Greensboro, N.C.
   The rules violation involved what Roush called a "gray area" involving a caburetor spacer plate.
   "This could be devastating to us," predicted Martin.  And, of course, it eventually proved to be, along with an ill-conceived late pit stop for tires in the year-'s next-to-last race a Phoenix.      

   In 2006 Martin indicated plans to retire from NASCAR's top series.  Pundits hailed him as the greatest driver never to take a title.  However, he returned to run 25 in  races in 2007 for the Dale Earnhardt Incoporated/Bobby Ginn team and is running a limited schedule for the Earnhardt operation this season.
   Rick Hendrick, a long-time admirer of Martin (who isn't?) wants the genial guy to get another chance and is going to give that opportunity to him.
   Can Martin hold up to the rigors of a long, tough schedule?
   He probably more able to do so than any driver on the big-time tour.  For  years Martin has been a physical fitness devotee and is in far superior condition to competitors half his age.
   Martin lists 35 major NASCAR victories and 41 poles.  He holds a record 47 Nationwide Tour (formerly the Busch Series) triumphs and won the International Race Of Champions title a record five times.
   I remember the first time that many of us in the southern motorsports media ever saw Mark Martin.  It was in the late 1980s and he came down to run a race at N.C. Motor Speedway near Rockingham.  It was a bitterly cold day during qualifying  for the Busch event and Martin led time trials the pole.  We press guys, being creatures of comfort, asked that Martin be brought to the press box rather than us going to him.
   We were stunned when this lad of about 5-5 or 5-6 walked in.  Mark was around 17 or 18 at the time, but looked like he ought to be in about the fifth grade. 
   He was exceedingly polite, a trait that was to prove a Hallmark of his career.  Also, he was a tad shy.
  Jack Roush made Mark his driver when he came to NASCAR in 1981 for five races, then gave him the ride fulltime in 1988 and for almost the next two decades they produced some magical, memorable moments togeher.
   Among the best recollections for me is Mark's interview in the infield press center at Daytona International Speedway after the won the pole for the 1989 Pepsi 400.  He  talked for about 2 1/2 hours, or almost long as it would take to run the 400-mile race.
   Essentially, Mark told the life's story of how he got into racing.  It's an intriguing tale.
   Here are the highlights:
   --I can remember being about five years old, standing on my daddy's lap, steering his car and running about 80 miles and hour.  We'd head toward those wooden one-lane bridges they had back home at the time and I'd scream, 'You take it!  You take it!'  And he'd say, 'You keep it or we're going to wreck!'.  He loved to see me get scared.  He got a kick out of that."
   --"It was aout 100 miles to Memphis from my hometown, Batesville, and about 125 miles to Little Rock.  I can remember my dad, Julian,  making those trips in a little over an hour on two-lane winding roads.  It always was a big thrill to go."
   --"There no ABC stores, or liquor stores, in our county.  To get alcohol you had to go to a store about 25 miles away.  I loved to pile in the car with my dad and his buddies to go anytime they needed something.  They'd always find a drag race before the night was over."
   --"As fast as dad and his friends drove, they were concious of wrecking.  Whenever there was a fatal accident in the area, he'd take me to the scene where it had happened and tell me things like, 'He had two tires over the edge here and over-corrected too quickly.'  But he never, never said that whoever it was that wrecked was going too fast.
   --"Back where I grew up was like the Wild, Wild West.  There was a lot of lawlessness.  People did what they wanted to, especially while driving.  There wasn't a highway patrolman every 100 square miles.  I'm not picking on Arkansas.  That's just the way it was."
   In 1973 Julian Martin took his son to the Daytona 500.
   "It was an incredible experience for me," continued Martin.  "It just overwhelmed both my dad and me.  Before then we weren't even stock car racing fans, but when we got back home my dad starting building a race car for me.  It was a '55 Chevrolet six-cylinder that we planned to run in the street class on the area short tracks.  The roll bars were made out of heavy water pipe."
   Mark started racing in '74 and was so boyish in appearance that he had a tough time even getting into the garage area at some tracks.  In '75 he won a dozen feature races and the Arkansas state championship in his class.
   A career had begun that was to lead to four American Speed Assoication titles and fame in NASCAR's major league, where he's known as the ultimate "clean" driver and a consommate pro who never harshly is critical of rivals.
   I know that journalists ideally are supposed to be neutral in whatever they cover.  But in the case of Mark Martin, how can you NOT pull for him in 2009!?
   Mark lost his father, Julian, in the crash of a private plane in Nevada on Aug. 18, 1998.   Perhaps, if Mark drives that Hendrick car to title, in some way he 'll relatively be standing on his dad's lap when he takes the decisive checkered flag.         

Fourth Of July Fireworks

   Throughout its history, dating to 1959, NASCAR's major July event at Daytona International Speedway has been noted for its pyrotechnics.
   Fittingly, for many years the race was named the Firecracker 400 and always was held on July 4th.  When it's run again on Saturday night it'll be the Coke Zero 400.
   It's likely the Sprint Cup Series event will be a sparkler.
   However, the rockets will have to zoom higher and boom louder to top what happened at the famous 2.5-mile track in July of 1987.
   Bobby Allison won a thriller in which he led just two of the 160 laps--the final two.

    The wild, wild race included Ken Schrader, a suprise contender to win, flipping on the final lap  while running third, going over Harry Gant's car and then sliding sideways across the finish line to finish seventh.
   Runnerup Buddy Baker, who finished 1.5 seconds behind Allison, returned to pit road thinking he'd won  the race.  Baker and most other drivers mistakenly thought Allison was a lap down instead of racing to triumph.
   Dave Marcis, a heavy underdog, seemed to have one of his biggest victories in hand, leading by 3.38 seconds and pulling away from second-place Rick Wilson with just  8 laps to go.
   Then, a tire failed on Wilson's car and he popped the wall coming off the fourth turn, forcing a yellow flag.
   This is where the drama really deepened.
   Throughout he race it had been apparent that Allison had the fastest car on the track.
   However, a tangle wih Sterling Marlin and Cale Yarborough on Lap 32 caused  him to lose a lap.  After this the savvy veteran from Alabama motored along relatively unnoticed by a crowd of 85,000--and his rivals--as he tried to regain the lost lap.  Wilson's accident finally enabled Allison to do so.
   When the restart came with five laps remaining Allison was in 13th place and seemingly faced a daunting task getting past so many other cars in 12.5 miles.
   He made it look easy.
  With drafting help from Baker, Allison swept by driver after driver.  He caught and passed Schrader for the lead in the third turn.
   "Without that last yellow flag we had little chance," conceded Allison.  "We'd have wound up maybe fourth or fifth.  Even with the caution there were a great many cars left in front of me on the restart.  Then there were only a few,  And then there none.  Nobody was left.
   "This just shows you never should give up."
  Both Schrader and Baker said not knowing that Allison wasn't a lap down made no difference.
  "I couldn't have done a thing with Bobby," said Baker.
  Added Schrader, "Bobby checked out.  He was just faster.  It would have made no difference knowing he was going for the win."
   Of his wild wreck, Schrader said,  "We didn't take on tires during the last pit stop, so my car was really pushing (understeering).  I was heading toward the wall, so I rolled out of the throttle by about 15 miles an hour, and someone unavoidably hit me in the rear.  I was aware that I was flipping.  I never blacked out or anything like that.  In fact, even while I was upside down I was looking for the finish line.
   "I finished seventh, huh?  I can't believe that many cars went by in that short a time.  Why, I didn't lift off the throttle the whole time I was upside down!" 
   Marcis wound up third and was deeply disappointed.
   "That last caution killed us," said Marcis.  "I could have held on easy if it hadn't come out.  Bobby Allison was right in front of me, so he at that time essentially was 2.5 miles behind.  I had drafted Bobby to build up my lead over Rick Wilson.
   "Dang!  I really wanted to win one at Daytona, and this probably was the best chance I'll ever have."
   Every NASCAR driver deeply desires a victory at Big-D, likely much more than anywhere else.  This is what leads to the fireworks like those of 1987, and those that probably will ignite Saturday night.