Burton gets first Winston win in Texas

Monday, April 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

SUN WIRE REPORTS

Ask most NASCAR drivers if experience from a Busch Grand National race can be carried over to a Winston Cup event and they'll say no way. Jeff Burton would say yes. And he proved it Sunday.

Burton used tips about the new Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth that he picked up during Saturday's Coca-Cola 300 to make his way to Victory Lane on a Sunday for the first time in his career, winning the wreck-filled Interstate Batteries 500 going away.

"I learned a lot from yesterday," said Burton, who finished third to Roush Racing teammate Mark Martin in the BGN event. "You sure didn't want to get out of the (racing) groove, but as long as you didn't get too high, it was OK.

"Today, every hole I saw I dove into. When it's hard to pass somewhere, you've got to take advantage of every chance you get. If you don't do it right then, it might be 30 laps."

Burton, driving a Ford, started fifth, but fell a lap behind early. He regained the lead lap when Martin, who was out front at the time, blew his engine on lap 143. Burton clawed ahead for the 234th and 235th laps, then went in front for good with 58 laps to go. He averaged 125.105 mph.

"Several times last year, we put ourselves in position to win," Burton said. "When that last green flag would come out, or we had a chance to make a run at it toward the end of those races, I would take myself out of position to win it. The problem was me not communicating to the team what the car was doing.

"To win a Winston Cup race, you can't be good. You've got to be perfect. When the race ended today, it was the best the car was all day long. Even when it was good, we kept working on it."

The win came in the 96th start for the 29-year-old driver from South Boston, Va. His previous bests were two third-place finishes.

He picked a good time for his first win; the victory paid $354,350, the sixth-biggest purse in stock car history. It also shot him from 11th on the money list to third.

For team owner Jack Roush, it was the first Winston Cup victory since Martin won at Charlotte 18 months ago. This is Burton's second year with the team.

Dale Jarrett's two-race winning streak ended when he finished second. Not bad considering he lost his clutch, then his third gear.

Texas-born brothers Bobby and Terry Labonte finished third and fourth, followed by Ricky Rudd, Dale Earnhardt, the winner's older brother Ward Burton and Sterling Marlin, the last driver on the lead lap.

This was the first feature event at the $130 million facility built on the plains 20 miles north of downtown Fort Worth, and it drew a crowd estimated at 185,000 -- exceeded in NASCAR only by the turnouts of just over 300,000 for each of the three Brickyard 400s at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It was not a pretty race, with 73 laps run under 10 caution flags and a lot of single-file racing. The tone was set when Darrell Waltrip ignited a pileup on the first turn of the first lap around the 1 1/2 -mile oval.

"It's so difficult to drive out there," said Rusty Wallace, whose day ended when he slammed the wall coming off the fourth turn midway through the race. "I really believe they are going to have to do a total reconstruction to get it right, and I'm sure they will. They really want to make this place great.

"It's just unfortunate that it's tearing so many cars up. Turn four is just terrible. You can't hardly maneuver through it at all. I don't think there's no way in the world we will come back here with the track in its current condition."

* CART: Perseverence, determination and a little bit of luck helped American Scott Pruett win the Australian IndyCarnival PPG Cup race at Surfers Paradise. The Lake Tahoe resident, using his third car of the weekend after one was sidelined by a faulty gearbox and another lost an engine, took the lead for good Sunday when race leaders Paul Tracy and Alex Zanardi crashed on the 42nd lap. The scheduled 65-lap race was shortened to 57 by a two-hour time limit. It was was imposed because of an hour delay waiting for a restart after a second-lap accident that left Brazilian Christian Fittipaldi with a broken right leg. With eventual second-place finisher Greg Moore of Canada chasing him around the 2.795-mile Surfers Paradise temporary street circuit, Pruett held on to win a race that had five caution flags for a total of 24 laps. Michael Andretti, starting from 12th and the winner of the opening Miami race on March 3, finished third. Zanardi was fourth, Gil de Ferran fifth and Andre Ribeiro sixth. Las Vegan Jimmy Vasser started third but finished 12th and Richie Hearn of Henderson wound up 13th after starting 20th.

* NHRA: John Force and Kenny Bernstein were the winners in the rain-marred Winston Invitational at Rockingham (N.C.) Dragway. The duo beat the track and Mother Nature as rain halted action before the finals of Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle could be completed. Force collected his third straight Funny Car win at "The Rock" while Bernstein earned his first trip to victory lane at the non-points event for the stars of the NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series. Each driver earned $100,000 from the victory.