Jarrett didn’t overwhelm anybody

Mike Harris

Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1999 | 4:15 a.m.

By the time Dale Jarrett took the final victory lap of the NASCAR season, there was little excitement over his first championship.

Granted, the lap following a second place-finish last Sunday came a week after Jarrett won the Winston Cup title. And his post-race ride around Atlanta Motor Speedway was more a celebration of consistency than anything else.

He won the championship with just four victories - only one after the halfway point of the season - and no poles. But Jarrett isn't apologizing.

"If you told me that we were only going to win one race next year, but we could win the championship, I'd take that deal," Jarrett said. "The championship is what it's all about."

Jarrett's road to the top was paved with 24 top-five finishes and 29 top-10s in 34 races. Those were numbers Jeff Gordon, Jeff Burton and Bobby Labonte - all of whom won more often - were unable to match.

"You'd always like to win every week, but to say that we're disappointed we didn't get into victory lane more, no," Jarrett explained. "We did our jobs."

The others didn't do theirs as well.

Gordon won a season-best seven races, but failed to finish seven times. Gambles he took to get back in the hunt didn't work.

Jarrett, who seized control of the championship chase a third of the way through the season, didn't have to take any chances.

"We know what racing for a championship is about," he said. "If you're going to put yourself in a position week in and week out to try to make it into victory lane, then you're taking chances not only with the chassis but on the engine side of it.

"You don't win championships that way."

Sometimes, they are won by overcoming adversity. Jarrett proved he could do that early on.

The season began with a terrible day in which the two-time Daytona 500 champion got caught up in an accident and finished 37th in NASCAR's premier race.

"Man, we were low after Daytona," Jarrett said. "You spend so much time preparing for that race in the offseason. You focus on it, and you want to get a really good start on the season and, bang, it's over and you're in a hole."

Jarrett, who'll celebrate his 43rd birthday this weekend, knows all about climbing out of holes. For much of his career, he was considered a journeyman. But he persevered, and this year it finally paid off.

After the disastrous start, Jarrett immediately began the turnaround that enabled him to add a third family championship to the ones his father, Ned, won in the 1960s. Jarrett gives much of the credit to his crew.

"This team doesn't ever quit, never!" he said. "They just sucked it up and got it turned around in a hurry."

Jarrett came back from Daytona with a second-place finish the following Sunday in Rockingham, N.C. It was one of six runner-up finishes in 1999.

He wound up 11th in Las Vegas, then ran off a string of 19 races in which his Robert Yates Racing Ford won four times and finished as low as eighth only once.

Following the Pepsi 400 on Aug. 22 at Michigan Speedway, Jarrett held a season-best lead of 314 points over Mark Martin and 347 over Labonte.

"After that, we got tested a little bit," said team owner Yates. "We had a couple of bad races in a row, lost part of our lead and had to decide if we were going to let it get away from us."

Jarrett had finished 38th in Bristol, Tenn., on Aug. 28, and 16th on Labor Day weekend in Darlington, S.C. Those poor showings allowed Martin, who wound up third in the standings behind Jarrett and Labonte, to cut the lead to 168 points with 10 races remaining.

But no one in the Jarrett camp wavered, and he wound up winning by 201 points.

"We never lost any confidence," crew chief Todd Parrott said. "The main thing is we knew what we were capable of and what we had been doing all year long. "Nobody panicked and nobody quit. In fact, we all worked a little harder."

It paid off the week after Darlington, when Jarrett finished third in Richmond, Va. - on the same track where he had taken the points lead four months earlier. Thereafter, all Jarrett needed to do was avoid horrendous finishes.

He eliminated the competition - and spoiled the script for the finale in Hampton, Ga. - by finishing fifth Nov. 14 in Homestead, Fla.

To Parrott, point-producing finishes were far more important than gambles designed to carry the driver to the winner's circle.

"If we couldn't win the race, we took a top-five," Parrott said. "If we didn't have a car capable of finishing in the top 20, we tried to fight back to get it into the top 10, and that's the sort of thing that Dale's done all year long."

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