Jarrett: Steady, but not slow

Friday, Sept. 17, 1999 | 4:27 a.m.

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

When you are as consistent as Dale Jarrett has been in his drive toward the Winston Cup championship, you can afford to have a hiccup or two along the way. But the mark of a true champion - and a true championship team - is the unflinching ability to withstand adversity and gain strength from it.

By all accounts, Jarrett and his Robert Yates Racing crew have succeeded in doing so.

Although it appeared the wheels of his No. 88 Quality Care/Ford Credit Taurus had become a bit wobbly following sub-par performances at Bristol, Tenn., where he started 25th and finished 38th after a spinout in the Aug. 28 Goody's 500, and at Darlington, S.C., where he started 36th and finished 16th in the rain-shortened Pepsi Southern 500, Jarrett and his crew remained unfazed and kept from falling out of the lead in the Winston Cup point standings with a strong third-place effort in the Exide Batteries 400 last Saturday night at Richmond, Va.

It was fitting Jarrett's skid came to an end at Richmond, which Jarrett said was "really a turnaround point for us." Jarrett vaulted to the Winston Cup points lead with his victory in the May 15 Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond, the first of his four wins this season.

"I was awful proud of the team at how hard they worked in being able to overcome a couple of weeks that weren't exactly what we wanted," said Jarrett, speaking via phone from the comfort of his motorcoach parked in the infield of rain-soaked New Hampshire International Speedway Thursday.

"It was nice to get back just to racing toward the front again the other night," he said. "At Darlington we had a good car, Bristol we had a good car and just made a mistake there. Those are the things you hope you can stay away from, but it was very satisfying to get back to being in the top five again, because you kind of get used to it.

"We set our standards pretty high now. We know there's a lot of good race teams out here and we can't win every week and it's tough to even run in the top five, but when you do, it's very gratifying."

Jarrett hopes to be running among the leaders when the NASCAR Winston Cup Series makes its second New England pit stop of the season for Sunday's Dura Lube/ Kmart 300 at NHIS's 1-mile oval.

Jarrett, the 42-year-old native of Hickory, N.C., and son of NASCAR legend Ned Jarrett, will look to pad his 270-point lead over Mark Martin (3,858-3,588) and improve the fourth-place effort he had in his July visit to NHIS, when he was outjockeyed for third place by Jeff Gordon in a last-lap altercation that led to some heated words between the two afterward in the garage area.

Jarrett said Thursday that incident is ancient history as he and Gordon have sorted it out.

"Jeff actually talked to me before we even left here, in a more calmed atmosphere a little bit," Jarrett said. "We sat down and talked in the garage area about what took place and everybody's always going to have a difference of opinion on that as to exactly what happened. I'm OK with it, Jeff's OK with it, and we've raced side by side and battled for position since then, so everything's fine.

"Those are things that are going to happen at a place like this where the racetrack is tight and you're down at the end of the race. My job is to protect the position, and his job is to take it away and that's exactly what took place."

It is unlikely, however, that Gordon, sixth in the points race, will be able to wrest the lead from Jarrett, whose consistency has been his strong suit this season. In 25 races, Jarrett has failed to finish in the top 10 only four times. He has recorded more top 10s (21) and more top 5s (19) than any driver on the Winston Cup Series.

Despite his recent slipups, Jarrett has remained atop the standings since May, a difficult feat. If persistent rain from the remnants of Hurricane Floyd force the cancellation of Friday's pole qualifications - NASCAR officials Thursday scrubbed qualifying for the Busch North Series and Featherlite Modified races - then Jarrett will start from the front of the field based on his standing as the points leader.

How has Jarrett managed to stay in front for so long?

"Obviously our team has really stepped up and made the most of our opportunities," said Jarrett, who learned this week Ricky Rudd would be his teammate next season as driver of the No. 28 Texaco Havoline Ford Taurus. "They've given me great race cars every single week, and that's been the difference in being able to race that hard and up front, week in and week out. As far as the pressure? I've always felt it was something that I could excel at handling that pressure.

"To be quite honest, there's been a lot of pressure, a lot more than I anticipated. But I've always felt that the people who are successful in this business, at being at the top, are the ones who can handle the pressure."

And an occasional hiccup.