Start your engines!
Play RPM.ESPN Stock Car Challenge!
Win a Honda S2000!
Play The CART Challenge powered by Honda!
|
|
Sunday, May 27
Jarrett extends lead in points
By Bill Frederickson
ESPN.com
CONCORD, N.C. -- Things did not look good for Dale Jarrett at the outset of Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
The Winston Cup points leader crashed in Thursday night's qualifying and was forced to start from the rear of the field with a backup car. Then, Jarrett discovered Saturday he had suffered an injury to his ribs.
|  | | Dale Jarrett (No. 88) narrowly missed Tony Stewart's spinning car early in the Coca-Cola 600. |
But, despite the poor starting slot and the extreme discomfort, Jarrett managed to make his way through the pack and post an impressive eighth-place finish. Merely enduring the pain for 600 miles was an accomplishment in its own right.
"I thought I could make it the whole time," Jarrett said. "My biggest problem was that we'd kind of deadened where it had hurt yesterday and had been hurting, but about 100 laps in, for some reason, the pain shot over more toward the middle.
"I had to adjust myself. It just got worse."
And, unfortunately for Jarrett, the better he ran, the worse he felt.
"We went faster as the track cooled off," Jarrett said, "and that made it more difficult for me because it really sat me down in the seat and that's when it would start hurting."
Jarrett raced his way toward the front, running among the top-three in the latter stages of the event.
"At the time, I just kind of put (the pain) out of my mind, that 'OK, now's the time that we have to go fast,'" Jarrett said. "You just have to withstand the pain at that point. I was able to get myself situated in the seat to where, when it did put me down in, the pain wasn't as great.
"You know, I knew we didn't have that far to go. The faster I went, the sooner I was going to get there."
Jarrett thought he had a chance to get out front on the race's final restart, on lap 340. But some contact with rookie Kevin Harvick's car hurt the handling of Jarrett's Ford.
"We got ourselves in a (good) position there, things got jammed up and (Harvick) came by me on the right. He cut back over and caught my right front, and I think it just messed up the toe. The car never drove the same.
"That's what I hate. I was right there, I was good to go. I was hurting and I was tired, but I felt like I could at least keep us in the top-five, if not run up there in second or third."
Jarrett entered the night atop the Winston Cup standings. With a rough night of qualifying and his rib injury to deal with, it's amazing he left the 1.5-mile facility with an even bigger lead in the points.
Jarrett's nearest competitor, Jeff Gordon, posted a disappointing 29th-place finish after starting second and leading laps early in the race. Jarrett now has 1,701 points, 75 more than second-place Gordon.
"We made something of the night," Jarrett said. "I certainly would have liked to have stayed in the top-five. The main thing, after the problems that we've had, to come out of here with a top-10, is good.
"To gain points is just a bonus. We'll try to get healed up this week and get ready for them in Dover." Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
|
