It’s a staple of sports, a concept coaches constantly preach and extol. It’s called teamwork, and when it comes to amusements such as basketball and football, it’s readily accepted and easily understood.
But race car drivers, especially those on the Winston Cup circuit, aren’t they the last of the rugged individualists, the direct descendants of Junior Johnson and those other hard chargers who honed their skills running moonshine down country roads? Well, yes. And no.
That was proven again at Sunday’s Daytona 500, where teammates Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte and Ricky Craven finished one-two-three after ganging up on Bill Elliott five laps from the finish. The trio, of course, drives for Rick Hendrick, and–says Elliott–“When they hooked up, I was history. I was a sitting duck. I was dead meat.”
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But did they plan to hook up or did that simply happen by chance? Well, yes. And no.
It does turn out that Craven, the newcomer to the trio, approached Gordon just days before the race, and asked, “Do you think we could all three sit down and work something out?”
“Rickey,” Gordon replied, “I’ve had teammates for four years and it’s real hard to come out with a definite strategy and plan you can live and die by.”
“I went to Terry, and he kind of said the same thing,” Gordon recalled. “We all talked and the whole thing came down to we can’t figure this thing out, so let’s try to work together and hope we can be working together at the end of the race. That’s the way we left the conversation.
“I’ve heard that somebody said Bill Elliott said we had planned it (the way it turned out). I can tell you it definitely wasn’t planned that way.”
And what does an outsider think of all this?
“You can talk about teammates all you want,” says former Daytona champ Dale Jarrett, who finished 23rd this year. “But it’s every man for himself out there. If you get a chance to help each other, that’s great. But the object of this game is to win the race.”
No rush to judgment: Shaquille O’Neal is in the middle of just his fifth season in the NBA, but already he has been acclaimed one of the game’s all-time 50 best. Gordon, too, is beginning just his fifth season on the Winston Cup circuit, but there has been no clamor–let alone marketing need–to put him in the pantheon aside legends such as Richard Petty (No. 1 on the Winston Cup career-win list with 200) or David Pearson (second on that list with 105).
Still, the 20 victories the 25-year old Gordon has rung up in just 94 starts indicate he will end up there someday. Just consider. Darrell Waltrip, the leading active driver in victories with 84, didn’t pick up his 20th until the middle of his seventh season. And Dale Earnhardt, the seven-time Winston Cup champ, didn’t get his 20th until his eighth season.
“I don’t get caught up in the age thing because you never know how long you’re going to be in the sport,” Gordon said. “You never know when things are going to happen and when it’s going to be your turn to end it.”
And while we’re on age: The word rookie usually calls up images of fresh-faced kids just off the farm or smart-mouthed kids just off some college campus. But get this. Mike Skinner, the Winston Cup rookie who sat on the pole at Daytona, turns 40 in June. And the two drivers expected to challenge him for rookie-of-the-year honors are Robby Gordon, who is 28, and David Green, who is 39.
“This isn’t a sport where you go right out of college into the pros at 20 or 21,” says 39-year-old Sterling Marlin, who didn’t pick up his first Winston Cup victory until he was 36. “I didn’t get my first full-time ride until I was 30. You have to wait awhile in this sport.”
“Stock car racing is different than stick-and-ball sports,” added 40-year-old Rusty Wallace, who registered his first victory at the spritely age of 30. “It’s not how strong and physical you are. It’s how much you know, how strong you are in the mind. It’s the springs and shocks and the been there, done that.”
Quickly: Schaumburg-based Motorola has signed to be the title sponsor of the PPG CART World Series race to be run May 24 at the Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill. The track, five minutes outside St. Louis, also recently has inked a deal with CBS, which will telecast the NASCAR Busch Series race to be run there July 26. . . . There have been reports veteran Emerson Fittipaldi, whose 1996 CART season was cut short by injuries, has retired. Not so. “I will not make any decision for 1997 or the future,” he said. “My right arm and right hand are weak, and driving an Indy car, I would not be fast or quick. You need to be 100 percent, and I’m not there yet.”
And finally: Gordon is surely feeling good after his Daytona triumph, but here are a couple stats that might give him pause. The last time the Daytona winner went on to take the Winston Cup championship was when Petty did it in 1979. And, since 1971, only two drivers (Petty and Cale Yarborough) have pulled off that double.