Rookies Off To Slow Start On Nascar Circuit

There’s a lot of attention on the four drivers competing for rookie of the year in NASCAR’s Winston Cup series.

Kenny Irwin Jr., Steve Park, Jerry Nadeau and Kevin LePage are considered talented drivers with bright futures. But being a rookie in the big leagues of any sport can be difficult.

After two races, the best finish by any of the four was 19th by Irwin in the season-opening Daytona 500. LePage failed to qualify for the race last Sunday at Rockingham.

Jeff Gordon, who was rookie of the year in 1993 and finished 14th in the points, remembers what it was like.

“If a veteran comes up behind a rookie, he’s going to expect him to just pull out of the way,” said Gordon, now a two-time series champion. “It’s not that you want a guy to pull out of the way, you want the people to make smart decisions and get comfortable with racing side by side.”

In Gordon’s first Daytona 500, his car was capable of running with Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett, Mark Martin and some other veterans, “so they really didn’t have a choice of whether to run with me or not.”

To earn the respect of the veterans, Gordon says a rookie has to learn to run side by side with them “without bouncing off you or bouncing off the walls.

“That’s how veterans learn to respect the younger guys coming in,” he said.

First timers

Winning the inaugural race at a new track is always something of a coup. That’s why so many Winston Cup drivers are looking forward to the first Las Vegas 400 today.

For years, there were no new tracks on the Winston Cup schedule. But since Watkins Glen got its first NASCAR event in 1986, there have been several of them.

Tim Richmond won the first race at the upstate New York track, Alan Kulwicki won the initial NASCAR race at Phoenix in 1988, and Ricky Rudd took the inaugural at Sears Point in Sonoma, Calif., in 1989.

New Hampshire’s first Winston Cup race in 1993 was won by Rusty Wallace and, the next year, Gordon was the winner of the first Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Last year, Jeff Burton was the first Winston Cup winner at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and Gordon won the inaugural at California Speedway in Fontana.

“Winning the first race at a track is something special,” Wallace said. “It makes you a big part of the history of that track. I won the first race at Loudon (N.H.) and I won the first race in Japan (an exhibition at Suzuka in 1996). Those were real big wins for me. I’d like to do it again at Las Vegas.”

Numbers game

Ford’s new NASCAR Taurus, the replacement for the discontinued Thunderbird on the stock car circuit, is quite different than the Taurus SE that’s being sold in dealerships.

The racing Taurus, the first four-door model to run the full Winston Cup schedule, is 195 inches long, 71-1/2 inches wide and 51 inches high, while the Taurus SE is 197-1/2 inches long, 73 inches wide and 55.1 inches high.

The NASCAR model’s wheelbase, 110 inches, is 1-1/2 inches longer and its 3,400-pound weight is 47 pounds more than the street model.

There’s quite a big difference in engines, too. The Taurus SE’s 3.0 liter, 183 cubic-inch engine produces about 200 horsepower. The NASCAR Taurus, with a 5.8 liter, 358 cubic-inch motor, races with about 700 horsepower.

Terrible start

Ricky Rudd, who holds the longest active string of seasons with at least one win (15), is off to a miserable start because of engine problems at the first two races. He was 42nd at Daytona and 43rd at Rockingham and stands 43rd in the season-points standings after completing just 217 of a possible 593 laps.

“This is tough,” Rudd said. “I can’t ever remember starting a season like this with two motor failures two weeks in a row.”

Making it worse, even before the engine problems occurred, Rudd’s Ford was not competitive.

“It’s not like we’re up front challenging for the win, so we’ve got some work to do.”

Stat of the week

Today’s Las Vegas 400 will not be the first Winston Cup race to be run in the Nevada gambling mecca.

On Oct. 15, 1955, NASCAR’s top division made its only appearance on a new 1-mile dirt track in Las Vegas.

Norm Nelson, driving a Carl Kiekhaefer-owned Chrysler 300, avoided a 12-car wreck on the 74th lap and got his only major stock car win. Thanks to a long cleanup following that accident, the race was called after 111 of the scheduled 200 laps due to impending darkness.

Growing by leaps

When Firestone returned to Indy-car racing in 1995 after a 21-year absence from the sport, it was with five cars in the CART series.

Now, heading into the 1998 CART FedEx Championship opener on March 15 in Homestead, Fla., the manufacturer will have 20 cars on its tires.

Firestone’s car count each season has risen in increments of five. The company now has its tires on two-thirds of the CART field.

Firestone is coming off its most successful CART season in 1997, having won 13 of 17 races and 11 poles.