Fords May Now Have Edge Over The Chevys

The victory by Rusty Wallace last Sunday at Pocono Raceway was only the seventh for Ford in the first 17 Winston Cup events this season.

But with Thunderbirds sweeping the top four spots and seven of the top 10 in the finishing order, it appears things have turned around.

Chevrolet Monte Carlos had most of the success early in the season, with six straight victories following the season-opening win by Ford’s Dale Jarrett. But, since then, Ford has won six of 10, including the last two in a row and three of the last four.

“We told NASCAR when (Ford) started getting their act together, it was going to be bad,” said Richard Childress, owner of Dale Earnhardt’s Chevy. “It’s just going to keep getting worse. The more frustrated we get is just going to make it worse.”

The sanctioning body has made several aerodynamic changes this season and last year in what it says is an effort to even out the playing field. But the Chevrolet teams insist it’s gone too far toward the Ford camp, even though Monte Carlo drives Terry Labonte, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon still are out front in the season points.

“If we could chop our tops three inches, it would be good,” Labonte said after a very uncompetitive 18th-place finish Sunday. “We’d be even with them.

“Have you seen the back of one of those (Thunderbirds)?” he asked. “I got to see the backs of a lot of them Sunday. They change the rules so much, who knows what they are now.”

Out front

Terry Labonte goes into today’s DieHard 500 at Talladega holding a 12-point lead over seven-time series champion Dale Earnhardt and just 80 points ahead of defending champion Jeff Gordon.

Still, he’s happy to be in that position with 14 races left in the 31-race season.

“That’s a lot of races and a lot of places to go, but I’d rather be ahead than behind, and I think our team will be stronger the second half of the season,” said Labonte, the 1984 Winston Cup champ.

“We want to win some more races and keep the points lead. But we’re not going to approach anything differently than we did three weeks ago when we didn’t have the points lead. We’re going to take our best cars, try to qualify as well as we can and run a good, smart race.”

So far, Labonte has one win, 10 top-fives and 13 top-10s in 17 starts.

Tough going

Dale Earnhardt, easily the most successful Winston Cup driver over the past 20 years, thinks it’s getting tougher to succeed in the growing stock car sport.

“The competitiveness has driven the competition to the next level,” Earnhardt said. “It gets bigger and better every year and you wonder how much bigger it can get.

“It’s about driven it to where you have to have at least two cars to gain the knowledge and competition level to drive. You’ve got more tests and more people working toward the same thing. People are feeding off each other for information.”

But Earnhardt is not a traditionalist who wishes things would remain what they were.

“I like expansion,” he said. “I like going to California and Texas and everywhere we’re going.”

But he adds a word of caution.

“I feel like (NASCAR) should try to pace themselves,” he said. “They’re talking about bringing 34 races in instead of 31. The time’s not there. The teams are maxed out now.”

Movin’ on up

Ernie Irvan followed up his first victory in nearly two years with a solid fourth-place finish at Pocono, keeping alive a streak that has seen him move from 17th to 10th in the season points in less than two months.

During that stretch Irvan, who nearly lost his life in a crash at Michigan on Aug. 20, 1994, and was out of racing for 14 months, has posted six top-10 finishes in his last seven starts.

He also is riding a string of four straight top-five finishes - fifth, fifth, first and fourth - going to Talladega.

Long dry spell

Before Terry Labonte took the series point lead from Earnhardt two weeks ago at Loudon, N.H., he had not led the standings in more than 10 years.

And that previous lead didn’t last as long as this one has.

Labonte won on the now-defunct road course at Riverside, Calif., on June 2, 1985, taking the points lead from Bill Elliott, who regained it the next week.

Darrell Waltrip wound up beating out Elliott for the title, while Labonte finished seventh.

Stat of the week

Terry Labonte, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon and Dale Jarrett have failed to finish a total of 10 races so far this season, while fifth-place Ricky Rudd has completed all 17 events.