Wise old Waltrip not crazy about multitude of winners

Mike Harris

Sunday, April 30, 2000 | 4:10 a.m.

FONTANA, Calif. - When Darrell Waltrip won 12 races in 1981 and again in 1982, the boobirds came out in droves.

D.W. was the guy in the black hat, the man everybody loved to hate. And it was all because he was winning a lot of races and talking about it.

Now he is a beloved elder statesman, finishing his driving career with what he has named the "Victory Tour," although his chances of adding to his 84 wins - tied for third on the NASCAR career list - appear to be virtually nil.

Even if his driving skills have diminished, the 53-year-old three-time Winston Cup champion is still filled with opinions he does not hesitate to offer to whomever will listen.

Waltrip will start Sunday's NAPA Auto Parts 500 seventh, by far his best qualifying effort of the season. In fact, the 2-mile California Speedway oval has been his best track in recent years.

His fifth-place finish here in 1998 was his last top-five, and his 15th-place finish last May was one of his best efforts in 1999.

That's why Waltrip figures he's got as good a chance as any of this year's non-winners to take the checkered flag Sunday and run the record for opening the season with different winners to 10.

"If we get the car right and don't do anything stupid, I don't see why we can't be there at the end," Waltrip said. "If we're there at the end, we've got as good a chance as anybody to win it."

Although he would be elated to win again - especially when so many people believe he no longer has the ability to do it - Waltrip doesn't believe that so many different winners are necessarily a good thing for the sport.

"Theoretically, it's great, but I think it's like professional golf a few years ago," Waltrip said. "There were all these guys winning and everybody was saying, 'Who are those guys?' I believe you've got to have dominant players.

"You need to have heroes and villains. In other sports, there are hero teams and hero players, and everybody tries to beat the giant."

So many different winners can even hurt the TV ratings, according to Waltrip.

"Heck, if you tune in to see how Jeff Gordon is doing and he's not in the hunt, you might just turn the TV back off and go out and do something else," he said.

Still, there are a whole bunch of drivers who would love nothing more than to continue the current string of new winners on Sunday.

Polesitter Mike Skinner and fellow front-row starter Jimmy Spencer, Waltrip's teammate, join non-winners Ricky Rudd, rookie Scott Pruett, Waltrip, rookie Stacy Compton, Steve Park and John Andretti as drivers starting in the top 10 still looking for their first wins this year. Pruett, Park and Compton have never won.

In fact, 20 of the top 25 qualifiers in Sunday's 43-car field are in winless this season.

"I think it's been a real good deal happening this year," said Spencer, whose only two Winston Cup victories came in 1994. "I would love to be the 10th different winner.

"Our car is so good, it could happen. But every race is a different set of circumstances. That's why people come to see them. You really don't know what's going to happen."

Among the drivers starting up front who have never won, Skinner has come the closest, finishing a career-best second two weeks ago in Talladega, Ala., after blowing an engine last month in Hampton. Ga., while leading and dominating with 20 laps to go.

As far as he's concerned, the proliferation of winners is no coincidence.

"I think if you watched the race at Talladega it would be hard to say there's anybody in this series that's not good," Skinner said. "To see 42 or 43 guys lined up three or four wide and running 190 miles mph side-by-side that many laps, I thought the worst guy out here is pretty good."