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Track type disdained by majority of drivers

By JOANNE KORTH

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 9, 2001

The Winston Cup series makes its second and final road-course appearance of the season Sunday at Watkins Glen International in upstate New York. And for most drivers, two is plenty.

"This is an oval-track thinking crowd," said Jeremy Mayfield, driver of the No. 12 Ford. "If you brought out the PlayStation and hooked the NASCAR game up and let everybody pick the track, 90 percent of them would pick an oval.

"Then you'd have those two or three off in the corner playing against themselves -- Rusty (Wallace), (Jeff) Gordon, Ricky (Rudd) -- and all of those guys would be playing Watkins Glen and Sears Point."

Gordon set a modern-era record with six consecutive road-course victories from 1997-2000. Wallace has six road-course wins and Rudd five, including two each at Watkins Glen.

Better put Mark Martin in that group, too. Martin won races from the pole at Watkins Glen in 1993, '94 and '95, and has 11 top-five finishes in 13 races, including runner-up last year to Steve Park.

EARNHARDT REPORT: NASCAR is expected to reveal on Aug. 21 in Atlanta the findings of its five-month investigation into Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash. The seven-time Winston Cup champion died of a basilar skull fracture after a head-on collision with the outside wall on the last lap of the Daytona 500 in February.

IN THE HOME STRETCH: The worst is over for Kevin Harvick in his effort to compete in both the Winston Cup and Busch Grand National series.

In July, Harvick pulled off three long-distance commutes, back and forth in the same weekends between Daytona and Watkins Glen, Pennsylvania and Colorado and New Hampshire and Illinois.

"The last month has been tough," said Harvick, who has won three races in the past four weeks -- the Cup race at Chicagoland and BGN races at Gateway and Indianapolis Raceway Park. "We've overcome some pretty major obstacles and been fortunate with the weather. It's going to be a lot better from here on."

The BGN series is idle three times in the next three months, including this weekend, and 10 of the final 11 races will be at the same track as the Winston Cup race.

CALLING ALL EXPERTS: Several Winston Cup teams have hired road-course specialists to drive this weekend. Boris Said will substitute for Robert Pressley in the No. 77 Ford, Brian Simo for Hut Stricklin in the No. 90 Ford and Scott Pruett for Jason Leffler in the No. 01 Dodge.

Others will try to make the field in specially arranged entries: Anthony Lazzaro in the No. 68 Chevrolet and Ron Fellows in the No. 87 Chevrolet owned by Joe Nemechek.

VIDEO GAMES, PART 2: Dale Earnhardt Jr. used a video game to prepare for his first trip to Watkins Glen several years ago.

"The game was so realistic that once I was on the track for real, I felt like I knew what I was doing," he said. "The shift points and the braking points were very close, and I really think it helped me gain a couple of seconds per lap."

SWITCHING DRIVERS: Jean Alesi, a Formula One driver for Prost, signed to compete in the final five races of the season for Jordan, which fired Heinz-Harald Frentzen two weeks ago. Frentzen signed to replace Alesi with Prost.

RACING GENES: A.J. Foyt IV, 17-year-old grandson of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner A.J. Foyt, will make his debut in the USAC Silver Bullet Series on Aug. 18 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. The elder Foyt, 66, made his USAC debut at the same track 44 years ago.

"Anthony has been winning races and championships in Go-Karts for years," his grandfather said. "He has shown me that he is ready to step up to something else, and I decided to put him in a dirt champ car."

Ashley Force, 18-year-old daughter of 10-time Funny Car drag racing champion John Force, is preparing to drive a Super Comp dragster owned by her father. A sophomore at Cal State Fullerton, she earned her Super Comp license in February.

"The hardest part of all of this will be working for Dad," she said. "He can drive you crazy. We can't sit together for very long before it's like, 'Okay, Dad, I need to go do something over there.' "

- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.

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