Wallace Not Rusty Despite Outcomes In Early Goings

Don’t try to convince Rusty Wallace he’s in trouble just because he hasn’t won a race yet and is ninth in the season points after the first six races of 1995.

“A lot of people are missing the big picture scheme of things as far as our team goes,” said Wallace, who trails Winston Cup leader Dale Earnhardt by 218 points. “We’re actually ahead of where we were at this time last season, if you look at the points and the whole statistical deal.”

Wallace was, in fact, 10th a year ago, trailing the same leader by 253 points. He had won a race - Rockingham - by this point in 1994, but his average finished after six events was 18.0, compared to 16.0 this season.

The Penske South Racing team has recorded two top-five finishes and three top 10s, which is exactly the same as last year at this juncture.

“When there are two guys out there (Jeff Gordon and Sterling Marlin) who have won five of the six races, there’s pretty much slim pickings left for everybody else,” said Wallace, who is coming off a second-place finish to three-time winner Gordon in today’s race at Bristol.

“When you’ve had only three different race winners so far, that makes for a helluva lot of drivers and teams in the same situation as we are in, looking for that first win. There were 12 different drivers who won races last season, even with our team winning eight of them.

“But, look at history,” he added. “It seems like the last couple of years we’ve really had our ups and downs for the first five races and then used Bristol to get it turned around and headed in the right direction. We’re hoping that’s the same deal for us this time, too.”

Wallace, who came back to finish third last season, should be pretty optimistic going into today’s race at North Wilkesboro, N.C., too, considering he has two victories and has finished no worse than fourth in the last six races on the .625-mile oval.

Fast start

Dale Earnhardt is only leading Sterling Marlin by 17 points after the first six races of the Winton Cup season, but the two-time defending series champion is off to his best start ever.

And that despite his 25th-place finish in last Sunday’s race at Bristol, Tenn. Before that, Earnhardt had finished in the top four in all five starts.

The bad news for his competitors is that the seventime Winston Cup champion just loves North Wilkesboro Speedway’s .625-mile oval, where he will be racing today.

In 32 starts at the North Carolina short track, Earnhardt has 28 top 10 finishes and has completed 12,375 of a possible 12,800 laps. He also has four victories, trailing only Cale Yarborough (five), Darrell Waltrip (10) and Richard Petty (15).

“My dad brought me to this track years ago, and every time he went on the track, I would study every move he made,” said Earnhardt, whose father, Ralph, was a short track ace in the early days of NASCAR. “Eventually, I found myself making the same moves I watched him make when I was a kid. It was deja vu.”

Fumbling Fords

Ford has failed to win in the first six Winston Cup races of the season, and it doesn’t appear like today’s race at North Wilkesboro Speedway is likely to bring the boys from Dearborn, Mich., to victory lane.

In the modern era of NASCAR, dating to 1972 when the schedule was cut to no more than 31 races, Fords have won just six times on the short oval, although the last win was in October by Geoff Bodine.

That makes the new Monte Carlos, which have won every race so far this season, a definite favorite again.

And, despite the data from those recent wind tunnel tests, it may not be all aerodynamics that are making Chevy’s newest race car a big winner.

Last Sunday at Bristol, Tenn., series point leader Dale Earnhardt crashed his Monte Carlo hard after driving it from 25th to third early in the race. The battered car needed extensive front-end repairs.

His crew stripped off the twisted hood and front fenders, replaced the radiator, oil pump and oil lines and sent Earnhardt back into the race 20 laps later. Running without the benefit of any front end aerodynamics, Earnhardt ran with the leaders the rest of the way, making up one lost lap and finishing 25th.

“I don’t know if Dale was racing a Monte or a Carlo,” joked team owner Richard Childress. “But he was out there with half a car for more than half the race.”

Gordon’s gains

Jeff Gordon has three wins and three poles in the first six races of 1995, and the 23-year-old charger is the only driver to have led at least one lap in each event.

So far, his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets have led 1,002 of a possible 2,213 laps. That’s 45.3 percent.

His latest victory was a big one, as far as Winston Cup points go. He jumped from eighth, 251 points behind leader Dale Earnhardt, to fourth, 154 back.

Time out

After seven consecutive weekends of racing to start the 1995 season, as well as an extra weekend at Daytona Beach, NASCAR Busch Series teams have their time off this week.

The next race on the schedule will be Saturday at the Sundrop 300 in Hickory, N.C. After that, the Grand national teams will have three weeks off before the May 13 race at Loudon, N.H. That long break is because of the cancellation of the April 29 event at Orange County, N.C., Speedway.

“This will give us a chance to get caught up,” said Clyde McLeod, crew chief for Mike McLaughlin. “Most people don’t realize that the Busch teams don’t have as many people in their shops as the Winston Cup teams do.

“Between changing engines (from V-6s to V-8s), and changing from (Chevrolet) Luminas to Monte Carlos, we’ve been pretty busy,” he added.

The Grand National teams better make good use of the time off, though. The New Hampshire races begins a stretch of seven races in eight weeks.