Nadeau's misfortune becomes
a break for Ricky Rudd
By DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
AP
SONOMA, Calif. - Fickle fortune smiled on Ricky Rudd - finally - and spat on Jerry Nadeau - again - Sunday in the Dodge/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.
Rudd won NASCAR's first road course race of the 2002 season when Nadeau, driving on a one-race deal with Petty Enterprises and leading by about five seconds, lost the rear-end gear in the No. 44 Dodge with just more than two laps to go.
How unlikely would it have been for Nadeau, fired earlier this year from his ride at Hendrick Motorsports, to have won this race? Well, the man who eventually did win wasn't even sure who he was chasing.
"I'm not sure who was in the 44; was that Grissom?" Rudd said after winning at the track formerly known as Sears Point Raceway for the first time since the inaugural Winston Cup event here in 1989.
No, Nadeau was hired to pinch-hit for Steve Grissom this weekend and was about to knock a home run. But just like the next-to-last race of the 2001 season, when he ran out of fuel on the final lap on his way to an apparent victory at Atlanta, Nadeau would be denied.
"It always seems to happen to me," said Nadeau, who sat forlornly in his crippled car in a paved area between either side of Turn 11 on the road course as Rudd completed the final two laps. "This is the way my year - my life - has been."
Rudd certainly knew the feeling. He was leading at Richmond when a car he was trying to lap blew a tire and wrecked him. A loose wheel on his final pit stop killed his chance to win at Dover. And Rudd was leading when he had a flat tire with a handful of laps left at Pocono, handing the win to teammate Dale Jarrett.
"I really felt for him," Rudd said of Nadeau. "I hated to win it this way with bad luck for somebody else, but we'll take it. We may have been owed something, but not at Jerry Nadeau's expense, or the Pettys'."
It was a strange finish to a strange race, which in typical road course fashion placed a premium on pit strategy that, in this case, was dictated by circumstance.
It was, ironically, Nadeau's spin off the course that brought out a full-course caution on Lap 67 that helped set up the final scenario. Most everyone pitted under that yellow, but several of the potential contenders would have been unable to go the remainder of the 110-lap race without stopping again.
When Boris Said spun on Lap 84 to bring out the final full-course caution, those who needed to pit and those who merely wanted to came in. Nine cars, however, stayed on the track with the belief they could go the distance and turn track position to their advantage.
The plan didn't work for Bill Elliott, who had the lead on the restart but couldn't negotiate the uphill run on the first part of the first lap after the green and slid wide, allowing Nadeau and others to get by him. Once out front, Nadeau took off and built a huge lead while Rudd, who had pitted for tires on the final yellow and restarted 11th, fought through traffic to get to second.
Rudd passed Terry Labonte on Lap 103, but had no real chance to catch Nadeau.
"We were running Jerry down, but we didn't have time to catch him," Rudd said. "We sort of were resigned to the fact we were going to run second today and, all of a sudden, he pulled over."
Nadeau felt his car start vibrating with four laps left and thought he might be about to run out of fuel. A check of the fuel pressure gauge showed that wasn't the problem though.
"It started getting worse and worse," he said. "It finally broke. It was just a freak thing. I'm usually pretty easy on equipment unless I wreck. I was being real easy. I would have had to mess up really bad for him to catch me, but anything can happen in Winston Cup racing."
Sunday's race certainly offered ample proof of that. Points leader Sterling Marlin had a rock get up into his engine and knock a belt of the water pump. The same belt drives the power steering and Marlin muscled the car around for a few laps thinking that was the problem. In the process, he cooked his motor and wound up finishing last in the 43-car field.
That opened the door for teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, both 110 points back of Marlin when the day began, to make up big ground in the points race. Both cars, however, suffered the same rear end problem that eventually bit Nadeau. Gordon lost seven laps early in the race and Johnson went out six laps from the end.
Johnson finished 35th and Gordon 37th. Both were passed in the standings by Mark Martin, who finished seventh and now trails Marlin by 62 points in a significantly tightened championship race that now has seven drivers within 148 points of the lead.
Tony Stewart, who started from the pole, got back as far as 26th when he stopped under yellow early in the race and worked his way back up to second. Labonte held on for third with Kurt Busch fourth and Jeff Green fifth.
