Benny Parsons

Rusty Wallace overcame a 2-lap deficit Sunday to win the Oakwood Homes 500 NASCAR stock car race in a bumper-to-bumper duel with Darrell Waltrip. Waltrip's Chevrolet was practically nudging the back of Wallace's Pontiac as the two crossed the finish line after 334 laps around the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway oval at Concord, N.C. "I was on 7 1/2 cylinders the whole time and that's why Darrell was outrunning me," Wallace said. "But this Pontiac was really handling.

Emerson Fittipaldi was coasting toward a second straight victory when he got snarled in rush-hour traffic. Fittipaldi, slowed by two cars that were out of the running, survived a collision with charging Danny Sullivan Sunday to win the Molson Indy-car race at Toronto. "I think it was the fault of the traffic," Fittipaldi said after beating Sullivan by 8.35 seconds.

Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw could end up working as game commentators in the same booth at one of the BCS bowl games in January. Such a possibility is under consideration, according to a source familiar with the discussions. And that's just a hint at what will be a different college football season. ABC and its sister ESPN networks will televise almost 300 regular-season and postseason games. But then Fox will step in to televise three of the four BCS bowl games to be played Jan.

Of the two marquee events held Sunday, the NBA All-Star game and the Daytona 500, which is bigger? That question was posed to Kenny Smith and Benny Parsons the other day. Said Smith, a TNT commentator and former NBA player: "The NBA All-Star game is an entertainment event. It's a lifetime memory." Said Parsons, an NBC and TNT commentator and former NASCAR driver: "The Daytona 500 has 43 of the top drivers in the country, trained to drive at speeds in excess of 180 mph. Now that's intense!"

Benny Parsons, who broke the 200 m.p.h. barrier in stock car racing in 1982, expects today's Winston 500 to be the first all-200 field in NASCAR history. "I'm not so sure that it won't take 203 just to make the race," said Parsons. Sizzling speed is no stranger to the 2.66-mile high banks of Alabama International Motor Speedway. Parsons, a former Winston Cup champion, turned in his historic lap of 201.176 at the track when he won the pole for the Winston 500 four years ago.

From Les Richter's California Speedway headquarters in the Empire Towers, he can look out his eighth-story window and see remnants of the late Ontario Motor Speedway--a few yards of dirt berm along what was the old front straightaway. Richter is the project manager for Roger Penske, who is planning to build a $70-million motor racing facility less than three miles from the Ontario track. The irony is not lost on Walt Czarnecki, president of Penske Speedway Inc.

New faces, the fastest American stock cars ever built and good ol' Bill Elliott will share attention today when NASCAR opens its 29th season with its premier event, the Daytona 500. Davey Allison, 25, starting his first Daytona 500, and Ken Schrader, a newcomer to the front echelon of stock car racing, are the new faces. Allison, son of former Winston Cup and Daytona 500 champion Bobby Allison, will start on the front row as the second fastest qualifier. Schrader, a former U.S.

After the cars came to rest at Talladega Superspeedway following their spectacular crash -- including one car that flipped on its roof -- one of the television announcers said, "The fans loved it [and] the TV audience, but 43 drivers are not too happy. " Sunday's NASCAR race? No, that Talladega wreck happened seven years ago. The car on its roof was driven by Scott Riggs, the announcer was the late Benny Parsons and the story basically was the same then as it is now. Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and other drivers weren't too happy, either, Sunday after more than 20 cars were collected in the last-lap bedlam at Talladega.

After 437 races without a victory over 15 Winston Cup seasons, you might not expect the driver involved to be oozing confidence. But you don't know Michael Waltrip. Race No. 438 is the NAPA Auto Parts 500 Sunday at California Speedway and this is how Waltrip sees it: "If I can come out of 500 miles with a problem-free day, it could be the race that I win for the first time. Our car, a new Chevy Monte Carlo, has been running really good all year long."