The King makes his way back to throne

Monday, Oct. 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

PHOENIX -- Under normal circumstances, Terry Labonte's gutsy run in the NASCAR Winston Cup Dura-Lube 500 at Phoenix International Raceway would have grabbed all the headlines.

Two days after breaking a finger during a pre-qualifying practice-lap crash, Labonte drove his Chevrolet Monte Carlo to a third-place finish Sunday and increased his series points lead to 47 over defending champion Jeff Gordon with one race remaining.

But Labonte's heroics were overshadowed by the return to victory lane of a bona fide legend on the NASCAR circuit. Richard Petty, the most popular figure in stock-car racing, made his 201st trip to the winner's circle -- but his first as a car owner.

Bobby Hamilton, driving the Petty-owned blue and red STP Pontiac from the 17th starting position, took the lead from Geoff Bodine on lap 283 and kept his ride in front for the final 30 laps to earn his first NASCAR victory in his 167th start.

"Bobby Hamilton won this race, but Richard Petty will be mentioned in the stories," Petty acknowledged in victory lane as a PIR-record crowd of 104,000 cheered Petty and, to a lesser extent, Hamilton.

Petty, who chalked up an unparalleled 200 Winston Cup victories during his driving career, retired following the 1992 season to become a full-time owner. Petty predicted Sunday's victory would be the first of many wins for his team.

"It's been a long, long time," Petty said of the victory. "It feels great, just like any of them that I've ever been in before. In 1978, we didn't win any races and we came out here (to Phoenix) and ran a Winston West race and happened to win the race here in the fall. That got us jacked up for '79 and we went and had a pretty good year in '79 and won the championship.

"I think this is sort of the same situation -- once my crowd knows what winning is about, then I think we're going to come back and win some more races."

Hamilton, who had two top-five and nine top-10 finishes prior to Sunday, said his team's win was no fluke.

"We've been wanting a win because we've got so close; it's not like we just popped up and won a race," Hamilton said. "It's not like it's anything brand new. We've been so close we could taste it and now we know what it feels like."

Midway through the race, Hamilton wasn't sure if he was going to have that feeling. A myriad of problems -- some imagined -- cropped up during the final 30 laps, causing the 39-year-old driver to question whether he could maintain the lead.

"I picked up a bad vibration about halfway through the race and I knew it was the driveline because we had had that problem before," Hamilton said. "With about 10 laps to go, it seemed like that vibration got worse, then my front end starting pushing and I said, 'Oh, my God, I got a tire going down.'

"Then I thought I heard a miss in the motor, but your mind just runs wild. Then there were a couple cars smoking on the race track, running right in our groove, and all that stuff was working on me the last (few laps). That was bugging me pretty bad."

Hamilton held off a hard-charging Mark Martin by 1.23 seconds in a race-record time of 2:50:38. Martin and Labonte were followed in the top five by Ted Musgrave and Gordon. Bodine wound up sixth and pole sitter Bobby Labonte finished ninth.

Despite his broken finger, Terry Labonte drove his Chevy from the 30th starting position to the lead on lap 196 and led the race on two separate occasions for a total of 61 laps. Wearing a soft cast and a device that sent electrical impulses into his hand to block the pain, Labonte said the hand was never an issue in the race.

"We injected my hand with something -- something painful when it went in," he said. "I still really can't feel anything."

What he felt after the race was a sense of relief at not surrendering any ground to Gordon -- and actually picking up points toward the $1.5 million series championship. Labonte leads Gordon by 47 points heading to Atlanta in two weeks for the series finale.

"If you would have given me a top-10 yesterday, I would have taken it and said, 'Let's go on,'" Labonte said. "This was a bonus today, finishing third. We don't have a big enough lead going into Atlanta ... we need about 160 to be comfortable.

"We've got to go down there and run good and do the same thing we've done the past few weeks. It's too close. If we had a big lead, it would be different; you would ride around and stay out of trouble, but we don't have that big a lead."

Labonte can wrap up his second Winston Cup championship -- and first since 1984 -- by finishing eighth or better at Atlanta, no matter what Gordon or third-place Dale Jarrett do in the race.