NASCAR makes winning car extinct as dinosaur

Thursday, May 7, 1998 | 5:55 a.m.

The Chevrolet Monte Carlo in which Jeff Gordon won The Winston all-star race last year had a dinosaur on its hood.

How appropriate.

The car - sponsored in part by Universal Studios' "The Lost World" - is extinct.

NASCAR didn't appreciate the creativity of the Hendrick Motorsports research and development team's "T-Rex" project - one that produced a new chassis, which was allowed by the sanctioning body at the time.

Its advantage was obvious in the non-points race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

"NASCAR basically made new rules because of that car," said Ray Evernham, Gordon's crew chief. "With the new rules, the car was just no good."

Evernham said it was a prototype for Hendrick's 1998 cars and that the non-points race was the perfect testing ground. NASCAR's decision has put the team a year behind in its chassis program, Evernham says.

"We were sent back to the drawing board," he said. "It's forced us to run a lot of older cars during the first part of the '98 season."

Eddie Dickerson, manager of chassis engineering for Hendrick, which also includes drivers Terry Labonte and Randy LaJoie, is as frustrated as Evernham.

"We sat down with all the guys in the chassis shop and revisited every component on the car," Dickerson said. "We went through the rule book and whenever there was a real gray area or no specifics concerning certain components, we worked hard in that area with new things.

"We built pieces that conformed to the rules, but the car made them rewrite the rule book. We did not do anything illegal with the car."

Where is the car now?

"We cut it up and changed some of the pieces NASCAR didn't like," Dickerson said. "The car didn't work as well with these changes, so we basically cut it up and used some of the components as a show car."

Gordon, the reigning Winston Cup champion, has won two of 10 races and is third in the points race this season.

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LONG TIME, NO WIN: It's been almost a year since the last of Paul Tracy's 13 CART victories.

That came at Gateway International Speedway, just outside St. Louis, on the Memorial Day weekend. It capped a three-race winning streak for the Canadian driver.

Since then, he has fallen on hard times. He lost his ride with elite Marlboro Team Penske and is starting over rebuilding Team Kool Green.

Tracy is 10th in the PPG Cup race, but winless in his last 15 starts. He will try to end the run of futility Sunday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - where he will defend his title in the Rio 400.

"Rio was one of the more unusual wins of my career," he said. "I started fifth but spun on an early restart and had to come back from 10th place, all the while saving fuel."

He managed to reach second late in the race, but three-time series champion Bobby Rahal was solidly in the lead. But Rahal ran out of fuel two laps from the end.

"I knew Bobby was tight on fuel, so I kept the pressure on," Tracy explained. "I couldn't believe my luck when he slowed. We didn't have much fuel left, but we had enough to finish."

Tracy is convinced he's ready to win again with his new team, which won the CART FedEx Championship Series title in 1995 with reigning Formula One champion Jacques Villeneuve at the wheel.

"There's probably 10 different guys who can win this race, and, naturally, I think I'm one of them," Tracy said. "But we've got to have a perfect race to do it.

"We've got a good handle on the car setup, and I'm confident we can race up front again. We just need to work on our pit stops."

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BY DESIGN: David Bruns, one of the premier car designers in American motorsports, has been signed by Dan Gurney's All American Racers team as senior design engineer for advanced projects.

Before joining Gurney, Bruns was vice president of engineering at Swift Engineering Inc., the chief designer for the 1997-98 Champ car programs.

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CLOSE COMPETITION: Jack Sprague and Ron Hornaday, champions the last two years in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, are locked in a close race this season.

Hornaday trails Sprague by just eight points heading into the NAPACARD 200 on Saturday at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Wash.

"Sure, we have beat on each other this year, but that is just hard racing," said Hornaday, the 1996 series champ. "I'm sure we'll put a few more dings on each other's trucks before the year is finished."

Hornaday, who has one victory at Evergreen, is the winningest driver in the series. With his 20th career victory Saturday night, Hornaday would break a tie with former truck champion Mike Skinner for the most short-track victories.

Both have won 12 times on tracks less than a mile long.