Looking For A Little Luck Chad Little Hopes Car Changes And New Son Bring Good Fortune

It’s not entirely hopeless.

Chad Little won a big race on a superspeedway from almost this far back two years ago at Daytona.

That was in a Ford, in a Grand National event. Now he’s in a Pontiac, 42nd in the starting grid for today’s Winston 500 at Talladega.

A provisional qualifier after rain washed out Saturday’s second day of time trials, Jesse Little’s dad can only hope that today his car is set up perfectly, his motor performs flawlessly and something happens up front.

Odds on “flawlessly” and “perfectly” coming off in a racing Pontiac are better than they were back in February. And this being Talladega, possibilities of something happening up front abound.

Cars once traveled so fast on this 2.66-mile tri-oval that NASCAR decided that a close brush with tragedy was enough. So a decade ago, when Bobby Allison went airborne at 210 and nearly flew into a section of crowded grandstand, the governors of the game came down on the suspected culprit.

Excessive speed.

They ushered in the controversial carburetor restrictor plate. It was supposed to promote safety and sanity on the two superspeedways, Daytona and Talladega.

What it did was turn this race into a high-tech traffic jam. Talladega, in effect, is a long, dangerous go-kart track, meaning the foot stays on the floor but passing is a lost art.

Patience wears thin here. The race is safer for the fans, but dozens of accidents over the past 10 years defy the logic for the drivers.

Sooner or later something happens.

They’ll race five wide with no way to accelerate out of a pack. If somebody goes sideways it’s a chain reaction. Ten wrecks classified as major and dozens of smaller ones have marred the dozen Winston Cup races at Talladega since ‘91.

The fans keep coming, some, of course, expecting the worst. Weather could dampen the enthusiasm this year, but last year’s crowd count at this race was an awesome 155,000.

They watched Ricky Craven get hurt as part of a 14-car pileup that sent him into the fence high above the first-turn wall.

Hut Stricklin is quoted in a story this week saying, “It’s really not any fun to race there anymore. It’s just a total survival deal there now.”

Given the choice, Little would take his chances up front, since only once in the history of this event has the winner come from outside the top 15 in the starting grid.

Earlier in the week he’d hoped to qualify among the top 25, who nailed starting spots on Friday, before the weather turned.

With second-round qualifying rained out, NASCAR reverted to Friday times to fill positions 26-38. Spots 39-42 went to Jeff Burton, Jeremy Mayfield, Morgan Shepherd and Little based on car-owner points.

Darrell Waltrip got 43rd position on a past-champion’s provisional.

Six other teams were bounced.

That’s one difference Little notices in Winston Cup racing today.

“My (sponsorship) situation is so much better now, but the competition is so much stronger than when dad (Chuck Little) and I ran in ‘91, and when I ran sporadically (in Winston Cup) in ‘92 and ‘93,” Little said. “Now, 47 cars show up every race. Three or four guys go home disappointed every week.”

Little was among them in the year’s first two events, when he failed to qualify at Daytona and Rockingham.

Since then he’s noticed steady improvement in the new Pontiacs he jumps into each week.

The Mark Rypien Motorsports Team tested a race-ready motor the other day at Darrell Waltrip’s garage and found that it “ran just as good as anything they had, which is encouraging,” Little said.

More encouraging was Little’s eighth-place finish two weeks ago at Bristol, Tenn., where he tied his career-best Winston Cup finish (he was eighth at Talladega in ‘92).

Little chose an opportune moment to pit under a caution flag on Lap 281 at Bristol. Eleventh when he went off, Little came back out in 18th. Eight laps later another caution fell, sending most of the leaders in for fuel and new rubber. Little stayed on, assuming second place when racing resumed.

He ran in the top five for some 50 laps until the tires wore out. Earlier he avoided four wrecks in the first half of the race.

The Top 10 finish on the banks of Bristol cheered the sponsor, John Deere, almost as much as Little - because Little had more than a race on his plate.

Jesse Hardin Little - Chad and Donna Little’s first-born - arrived on April 15.

The No. 97 Pontiac came out the next race with a new decal on the driver’s side. In place of Chad’s name was a baby-blue decal with the words “Jesse Little’s Dad.”

That was a first, and last.

“They (the sponsors) wanted to do it,” Little said. “It was a nice P.R. thing, but nothing permanent.”

So it’s back to being Chad Little. Parenthood, which he bubbles about in conversation, is a new world where Mom calls many of the shots.

“When I get home she lets me do some of the work,” said the 33-year-old Little, who grew up in the Spokane Valley. “Then I can be a father, which is strange when I think about it.”

He says he can’t let responsibility cloud his focus.

“Just like before, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what happens if I get hurt,” he said. “If I start weighing those variables when I’m in the car I need to quit. In that way it’s business as usual.”

Business as usual except now in the motorhome with Donna and Chad is their son. They took the infant with them to Talladega.

Which is another reason why an impressive afternoon is not out of the question. With the little guy in tow, Chad might be able to cash in on beginner’s luck.

“After Daytona we knew we were down on horsepower,” he said before making the trip from his Charlotte, N.C., base. “Lately, we’ve been getting more horsepower in our restrictor-plate motors - a 20 percent improvement over what we had at Daytona (in February).

“We should see the improvement at Talladega.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo