Skinner looking for elusive first win

Jenna Fryer

Thursday, April 20, 2000 | 7:55 a.m.

There have been nine different winners in nine Winston Cup races this season. Mike Skinner wasn't one of them.

In a year when no driver has dominated, Skinner can't seem to get going. In fact, he's still searching for his first career victory.

Each time he appears to know the route to the winner's circle, the 42-year-old Californian takes on the look of a tourist reading a road map while the locals zip by. Skinner figures he should have two or three wins this season alone.

"It's the same old story, you've heard it 100 times," Skinner said. "We should have won in Atlanta, we could have won in Martinsville. It's always coulda, woulda, shoulda."

Entering his fourth season on the circuit, the 1997 Rookie of the Year has had two victories in the non-points NASCAR races in Japan, and in 1999 got his first top-10 finish in the series standings.

So Skinner, a teammate of seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt with Richard Childress Racing, had good reason to believe this would be his breakthrough season. If not for bad luck, it could have been.

After leading 191 laps last month in Hampton, Ga., Skinner looked uncatchable. But with 20 laps to go, his dream of victory went up in smoke with his Chevrolet engine.

"We were so good at Atlanta, I said to myself there was nothing taking it away from us," crew chief Larry McReynolds said. "When we lost that motor, it was an unbelievably bad break."

Luck went against Skinner again two weeks ago in Martinsville, Va. When race leader Rusty Wallace gave up track position by changing four tires during a late pit stop, Skinner should have been rehearsing his victory speech. But a bad alternator pushed him back to 19th.

Disappointed again, McReynolds and Skinner vowed not to let it bring the team down. Instead, they focused on how close they had been and how they could carry it into another week.

"I definitely saw a bounce in the team's step after both Atlanta and Martinsville," McReynolds said. "To be so close and know we had done a good job was a consolation.

"It wasn't as good as a win would have been, but it was enough to know that someday, somewhere we're going to get it all together on the same day."

That day almost came last Sunday in Talladega, Ala., when Skinner found himself on the rear bumper of three-time champion Jeff Gordon with five laps to go. Skinner tried several times to pass Gordon but couldn't get around him.

Skinner knew he could win by bumping Gordon out of the way. Plenty of drivers do it, but Skinner refused.

"I want to win my first race, but I don't want to get it because I knocked somebody out who had raced me clean all day," Skinner said.

He ended up with a career-best finish of second, and the admiration of Gordon, who beat him by two car-lengths for his 50th career victory.

"Skinner is a gentleman and a clean racer," Gordon said. "I think it was either bump me or go to the grass. He could have done either to spin me out and he didn't."

After a week off, Skinner heads for California Speedway in search of that painfully elusive victory. He'd love to get it in his home state, and Childress thinks that might happen.

"If Mike could just get a little luck on his side, he'd have a bunch of wins already," the car owner said. "He's led several of the races and been a contender to win, always coming up just a little short."

If it doesn't come, Skinner won't force it. For now, he's content just being a contender.

"You appreciate that you're acknowledged as a threat to win," he said. "I know that as long as we're running up front and in contention, sooner or later our day is going to come."

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On The Net:

Mike Skinner: http://www.rcrracing.com/

NASCAR: http://www.nascar.com

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