doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (10/21/85)
In the South African GP, Williams/Honda finished 1-2, with Nigel Mansell
winning, Keke Rosberg second. Alain Prost ran out of fuel on the final
lap but finished third. The Australian GP remains to be run.
In NASCAR's American 500 at Rockingham NC, Darrell Waltrip won and Ron
Bouchard finished second in one of his best recent runs. Bouchard
didn't just "stumble into" second place, he ran with the leaders all
day and led a number of laps; he might have won except that toward the
end he gambled on staying with his worn but known tires and Waltrip
went with unknown but new tires which turned out to be just right.
Harry Gant dropped way, way back in the early going, but amazingly
fought his way back to finish third. Bill Elliott was extremely
disappointed with his fourth-place finish, complaining that the car
never did handle right.
The new surface at Rockingham didn't cause as much trouble for the
Grand National cars as it had for the previous day's Late Model
Sportsman cars. After just a few laps, Joe Ruttman was running
fourth when he lost it and hit the wall; Kyle Petty bounced off of
Ruttman's car and hit Neil Bonnett. Ruttman was out for the day,
Bonnett lost a handful of laps, and Kyle lost about 80 laps plus
when he did come back out he was the slowest car on the track. Kyle
finished 31st in a field of 40.
The Goody's Headache Award when to Cale Yarborough -- after leading
more laps than anyone else, he got a bad set of tires which made his
car even more "loose" than he usually keeps it. Too loose; he got
sideways in turn 2, corrected but hit the wall, then careered down
the track into an unfortunate Lake Speed (who'd been running a
respectable eighth or so). Both cars were destroyed.
Richard Petty deserves a mention. He ran in the lead group for the
first half of the race, one of his best performances in years. But
much of the time he had oil smoke coming from the exhaust in the turns,
and the engine finally packed it in.
Oh, and Terry Labonte also ran very well in the first half. In fact,
he collected the $10,000 award for leading at the half-way point.
The last two GN races are November 3 at Atlanta, and November 17 at
Riverside. Waltrip now leads the points race by 40 points; if either
Elliott or Waltrip fails to finish either of the those races it will
probably hand the championship to the other.
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Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {calcom1,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug