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They remain tied for the points lead after the New England 300.
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 23, 2001
LOUDON, N.H. -- If this is how the race for this year's Winston Cup championship is going to go, the next four months are going to be extremely interesting.
Dale Jarrett passed teammate Ricky Rudd with just less than five laps to go Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway to win the New England 300, a race in which virtually every scintilla of excitement was reserved for the final 70 laps.
Jeff Gordon, the other player in a three-way scrum for the championship, squeezed between Jarrett and Rudd to finish second. The trio led 280 of the 300 laps.
Jarrett and Gordon are even tighter than that in Winston Cup points -- they entered tied and, because Gordon got five extra bonus points for leading the most laps, left tied.
"The three cars that you saw were the best all day were the three cars that are up front in the points," Jarrett said. "I think it shows that you're going to have to be on top of your game each week and that you can't make any mistakes."
Rudd led on a restart after a late caution, but slipped wide off Turn 4 on Lap 296 to open the door for Jarrett.
As Jarrett worked under Rudd, their Robert Yates-owned Fords made contact. Jarrett completed the pass after they crossed the start-finish line and Gordon swept into second before Rudd recovered and settled for third.
Jarrett has four wins this year to three for Gordon and therefore is technically first because wins are the first tiebreaker.
Rudd lost 10 points to both and trails them by 28.
Though frustrated after having the late caution cost him a likely victory, Rudd tried to soothe any hard feelings between his team and Jarrett's over the contact that proved pivotal.
"That bump was probably caused more by me than it was Dale," Rudd said. "I was trying to pinch him off and shut the door on him. ... He had a good run and had good momentum and did exactly what he needed to do."
Jarrett knew that the restart with six laps left was his chance to pass Rudd.
"I could tell on every restart that my car was a little better," Jarrett said. "I could get hooked up a little bit quicker. ... I knew if I didn't take advantage in the first two laps after we went back to green I wasn't going to get a chance.
"Ricky really slowed down getting into Turn 3 to keep it on the bottom, but he got back on the gas and kind of shot up the race track a little bit. He got a little bit loose, and when he came off the wall we touched a little bit, but I was already up beside him and I was able to hang on."
Gordon led 126 of the first 127 laps, but after a minor problem on a pit stop he came out third behind Jarrett and Rudd and never led again.
"I'm not as happy about a second-place finish as I normally would be," Gordon said. "Last week (when he was 17th at Chicagoland Speedway), second would've been really good. This week, second was not something we found real gratifying."
Jarrett led from Laps 128-215 before Rudd passed him.
Jarrett passed Gordon for second on Lap 282 and was trying to run down Rudd when Jerry Nadeau and Jimmy Spencer, battling for fifth, made contact on Lap 291 and Nadeau went into the Turn 3 wall.
That incident led to some post-race fireworks with Nadeau and his spotter, Rodney Combs, confronting Spencer.
The one man who almost couldn't lose in the late-race shuffling was Yates.
"It's pretty tough to cheer when both guys are racing," said Yates, who signed Rudd in 2000 to replace the late Kenny Irwin in the No. 28 car. "I just want them both to be careful, and whoever's the fastest. ... "
Being second on the restart might have been to Jarrett's advantage. A buildup of rubber that began during a Busch North series race Saturday afternoon kept getting worse as Sunday's race went along.
Rudd said it was almost like having to stay in tracks made through a layer of snow to negotiate, and when he was out front on the last restart his car had to make the first tracks through the "gumballs" of rubber.
Five cars skidded into the wall between Turns 1 and 2, as drivers struggled with handling all day. There were no major injuries.
A thin, new layer of asphalt made the track very tricky, as drivers struggled to find an outside passing lane.
What resulted was a less-than-thrilling race on the heels of last year's restrictor-plate experiment at NHIS in which Jeff Burton led all 300 laps.