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Sunday, May 27
Stewart caps day with third-place finish
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.C. – Jeff Burton snapped out of a season-long
slump Sunday night, pulling away for an easy victory in the
Coca-Cola 600 to give Roush Racing its first win of the year.
Burton elected not to pit on the sixth and final caution of the
race on lap 337 and took the lead when Kevin Harvick went in for
gas and fresh tires. Burton led the final 73 laps, opening up a
huge advantage and beating Harvick to the finish line by 3.190
seconds.
|  | | Jeff Burton won his 16th career Cup race on Sunday. |
Burton's crew ran over to the fence at the start-finish line and
climbed it, mimicking what Helio Castroneves and his crew did after
winning the Indianapolis 500 earlier Sunday.
"We need to do more of this," Burton said. "We've still got
some hard days ahead of us, but this is a good start."
Tony Stewart, who raced in both the Indianapolis 500 and the
NASCAR race, finished third.
He was sixth in the Indy 500, then jumped on a plane for the
90-minute flight to North Carolina. In all, he completed 1,100
miles over roughly 10 hours.
"I don't feel too bad, if I could find a dirt track I'd
probably go run a sprint race or a midget right now," Stewart
said. "For all those people who said I was an idiot for putting
people in danger by trying to race in over 1,100 miles, they're the
idiots because I was the fastest car on the race track there at the
end."
Mark Martin, Burton's teammate at Roush Racing, was fourth.
Bobby Labonte finished fifth, followed by Jimmy Spencer, Ricky Rudd
and Dale Jarrett.
Burton, a preseason favorite to challenge for the championship,
came into the race 25th in the points standings. His best finish
was a third last month and he had only two top 10s.
His performances mimicked that of the entire Roush team, which
has struggled all year in their Fords and had hardly even
challenged in any races.
But Burton led a race-high 126 laps, and gave Roush its third
straight victory in the 600. Matt Kenseth won last year and Burton
took the title in 1999.
"There are still some struggles ahead of us," Burton said.
"But we believed and decided we were going to stick to our game
plan and not worry about what everyone else in the garage is
doing."
For the second year in a row, Jerry Nadeau was hit with bad
luck.
Nadeau led 115 laps last May, only to blow an engine with 40
laps to go and finish 38th. This time, he ran up front all night
and was in second place when his car slipped out of gear and fell
off the pace.
"I can't believe my luck here in Charlotte!" he screamed over
his radio.
He recovered slightly and finished 13th.
Things like that happen over the course of the 600-mile race,
NASCAR's longest. To win, a team must be able to make the needed
adjustments to conform to the changing track conditions of the
day-into-night 400-lap race and the driver must remain focused for
the entire four-plus hours.
Labonte briefly lost his concentration late, and it probably
cost him the race.
After leading four times for 74 laps, he was chasing Nadeau to
re-take lead on lap 337 when his car fish-tailed slightly and sent
him to a full spin across the track.
He saved it in time to prevent a wreck, but fell back into the
field. Burton took over the lead during the caution and Labonte
never challenged him.
Jeff Gordon, winner of The Winston here last week, had a
dominant car early but suffered front-end damage in a pit road
collision with Kenny Wallace after caution came out on lap 52.
Gordon, who led 27 of the first 52 laps, was coming out of his
pit when Wallace cut in front of him to enter his stall. The front
of Gordon's car rammed into the rear of Wallace's, causing enough
damage to Gordon's car to force him to re-enter the pits three more
times under the caution flag for work.
By the time the caution was lifted, Gordon had fallen to 39th
position and had a damaged car.
"Don't worry about it, it's a long race," crew chief Robbie
Loomis told him over the radio. "The car is OK. She don't look
like a Cadillac, but she looks pretty good."
But the car was far from OK.
Gordon couldn't prevent the leaders from putting him a lap down,
had to pit earlier than planned to go another lap down and then mad
an unscheduled pit stop that put him four laps behind after 150
laps.
He ended up 29th and, after coming into the race trailing
Jarrett by just 14 points in the standings, fell 75 points back. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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