Daytona 500 2000 - A little bump caused big trouble in '99

A little bump caused big trouble in '99
ESPN The Magazine

'99 EARNINGS: $2,304,146 | POINTS: 12th | WINS: 1 | TOP 5: 1 | TOP 10: 7

TERRY LABONTE

What Makes Him Go: Labonte's strong suit is staying out of trouble. He was involved in only four yellow flags for spins and crashes during the 1999 season, and two of those were big, random multi-car wrecks at Daytona and Talladega. Now that his former crew chief from his 1996 championship team, Gary DeHart, is back under his hood, Labonte has a shot at having as many checkered flags as yellow ones in 2000.
What Makes Him Slow: Labonte had unusual difficulty in 1999 at tracks where he had previously excelled. Usually strong on the road courses, he finished 11th and 29th on them last season. He was terrible at Richmond -- 26th and 43rd -- where he has won four times since 1994. And he struggled at the superspeedways, finishing 10th, 34th, 38th and 39th in the four races on those.
Key Stat: 33 That's the number of Winston Cup points lost by finishing eighth at Bristol instead of winning the night race. He should have won 180 points, but received only 147. The difference might as well have been 330 points, considering the depth of Labonte's slump after that event.

The make or break moment in Terry Labonte's 1999 season came shortly before 11 p.m. on August 28 at Bristol Motor Speedway, when he was the victim of the most blatant piece of unpenalized rough driving in the modern history of Winston Cup racing.

A guy gets under you, touches you and you spin -- that's racing. A guy center-punches you in the rear and puts you into the wall -- that's rough driving, whether it be the first lap, a middle lap or the last lap. Just ask Ricky Rudd, who hit Davey Allison in the back at Sears Point in '91 and spun him out while battling for the lead coming to the white flag. Rudd crossed the finish line first, then lost the race when NASCAR penalized him.

But when soft-spoken, two-time Winston Cup champion Terry Labonte got clobbered in the back and put into the backstretch wall by Dale Earnhardt seconds before the checkered flag at Bristol, Earnhardt all but got a pat on the back from NASCAR and a memo from Bill France Jr. saying, "Thanks for spiking the punch."

What it really spiked was Labonte's season.

Labonte finished eighth that night, but received a DNF because he wasn't running at the finish. That hardly mattered, because after Bristol, Labonte couldn't even sniff a top-10 finish. Suddenly, he was finishing 21st at Charlotte; or 28th at Phoenix.

Going into Bristol's night race, the driver of the No. 5 Kellogg's Chevrolet had been having another solid year, with a win at Texas in March and another at Charlotte in May at The Winston. He had struggled a bit for consistency, but his finishing average before Bristol was 16. After Bristol, his finishing average fell to a shocking 30. And he dropped from eighth in Cup points to 12th.

Labonte, 43, is fit and durable. He has a record 636 consecutive starts -- every race for more than 20 years. He's not the type of driver who's in the thick of the championship hunt every year, but 1999 was the first season he fell out of the top 10 since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 1994.

What smarts is that this one blemish came as a result of a gross injustice.

Letting your mind wander for even a nanosecond at 180 mph can be dangerous, even fatal. No thought of the past or the future. Stay fixed on the here and now, or you end up in a sardine can.

But when Terry Labonte's off the track this year, his thoughts will no doubt jump ahead to August 26, when he returns to the scene of the crime that rear-ended what was shaping up to be one of his best seasons of the decade.

Search for on