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By KEVIN KELLY
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 21, 2000
Triumph and tragedy.
No two words better describe the 2000 auto racing season, which ended with the NAPA 500 Monday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Because for every milestone victory such as Juan Montoya's in the Indianapolis 500, Michael Schumacher's in the U.S. Grand Prix or Bill France Jr.'s over cancer, there was extreme sadness.
Kyle Petty lost a son and a grandfather. Felix Sabates lost a friend. Bryn and Taryn Bettenhausen lost a mother and father. Sam Schmidt lost the ability to walk. With that in mind, the following are the top 10 auto racing stories from this season.
It was an incredibly tough year for the Pettys, who lost their past and their future.
Lee Petty, the patriarch of the famous auto racing family, died on April 5 due to complications from stomach surgery.
A three-time NASCAR champion and 55-time winner, he was 86.
One month later, Adam Petty died after his car struck the Turn 3 wall during a Busch Grand National practice May 12 at New Hampshire International Speedway.
The 19-year-old son of Kyle and grandson of NASCAR's winningest driver, Richard, was scheduled to drive full time in Winston Cup next season.
"You see very few 19-year-old kids that have touched as many people as what Adam has," Richard said.
Eight weeks after Petty's fatal crash, Winston Cup driver Kenny Irwin was killed in an eerily similar crash in the same turn at the same track.
An accomplished sprint-car driver and 1998 Winston Cup rookie of the year, the 30-year-old was in his third full season.
"I think he was about one step away from being great," said Sabates, the car's owner. "I think all that Kenny needed was one win."
Tony Roper, a veteran of 60 Craftsman Truck events, died Oct. 13 after hitting the frontstretch wall during the O'Reilly 400 at Texas Motor Speedway. He was 35.
Tony Bettenhausen, who drove Indy cars before becoming a team owner, and his wife, Shirley, died in a Feb. 14 plane crash in Kentucky. He was 48.
Indy Racing driver Schmidt, 35, was left paralyzed after a crash during testing for the Delphi Indy 200 at Walt Disney World Speedway.
The on-track tragedies focused attention on driver safety, especially at New Hampshire.
Though no cause was ever officially cited for Petty's or Irwin's crashes, the problem was thought to be stuck accelerators.
NASCAR responded in early August by mandating engine kill switches in the cockpit. Head and neck support systems were used by some teams. New seats and braking systems were installed. Energy-absorbing foam barriers were tested to soften the impact against concrete walls.
Upon return to New Hampshire in September, NASCAR required horsepower-reducing restrictor plates be used for the first time at a track other than Daytona or Talladega.
Jeff Burton led all 300 laps and there were no serious injuries.
Reconciliation is still a ways off for CART and its open-wheel rival, Indy Racing.
But for one Sunday in May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the two raced side by side.
Montoya, the reigning CART champion, led 167 of 200 laps of the Indianapolis 500 and beat Indy Racing driver Buddy Lazier by more than 7 seconds to become the first rookie winner of the race since Graham Hill in 1966.
Schumacher's victory in the U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway gave the 31-year-old the Formula One points lead and sent the largest crowd (more than 225,000) ever to witness an F1 race into a frenzy. It was the first F1 race in this country since 1991.
"I hope this puts to rest any concern about whether it would be viable to do this or not," track president Tony George said.
Nine years after starting Joe Gibbs Racing, the Hall of Fame coach watched as Bobby Labonte won the Winston Cup championship.
Sophomore teammate Tony Stewart won a series-best six races.
"People always ask me if I thought about championships when I got into racing," Gibbs said. "I've got to tell the truth. The only thing I was thinking about was surviving."
No other driver in motorsports was as dominating as John Force this season.
The 51-year-old Funny Car driver broke Bob Glidden's NHRA career victory total of 85 in June.
He then capped his record-setting season with his 10th championship.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. made his Winston Cup debut and immediately proved bloodlines account for something in racing.
He won two points races (Texas, Richmond) and The Winston all-star race before fading late in the season.
Not to be outdone, his father re-emerged as a contender to win a record eighth Winston Cup title.
Dale Earnhardt won two races before late inconsistency took him out of the championship chase.
Like many champions, perhaps Darrell Waltrip hung on too long.
The three-time champion and 84-race winner limped through his final season on his way to the broadcast booth next year.
Asked recently whether his victory in the 1989 Daytona 500 was the biggest of his career, Waltrip just smiled.
"Buddy, I've got 83 others that are all memorable," he said. "I ain't got no bad ones."
France met with drivers and car owners before the Pennzoil 400 on Nov. 12 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The visit marked the return of NASCAR's 67-year-old president, who has been undergoing chemotherapy for an undisclosed form of cancer and treatments for a neuromuscular disease.
Friends say France is completely rid of the cancer.
"It was a great thrill to be back at the track and see a race in person after watching it on television for most of the season," France said. "I consider being at the track today a major step in my recovery."
After parting with Al Unser Jr. and losing one driver and another that he had signed in fatal crashes in 1999, Roger Penske came back stronger than ever.
Gil de Ferran and Helio Castroneves were hired to drive. Tim Cindrich took over as team manager. The team switched to the Honda V-8 Turbo engines, dumped the Penske chassis for Reynard and turned to Firestone tires.
Penske drivers won five races and de Ferran captured his first, and Penske's 10th, CART championship.
- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.