Brickyard 400 Automobile Race

Only an incurable optimist could find something positive in a million-dollar mistake. Meet Dale Jarrett. Jarrett had the field covered in the Brickyard 400 last year when his Ford Taurus ran out of fuel. A miscalculation by the crew prevented the 42-year-old second-generation Winston Cup driver from not only winning the prestigious race, but from collecting a $1-million bonus. So what is Jarrett's approach to this year's sixth Brickyard 400 Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway?

Tony Stewart maintained his points lead with a third-place finish Sunday in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. "I take that we ran third at the Brickyard 400," Stewart said. "There's no shame in that. Forty-three cars and we ran third today. To come here with a new package, a new crew chief, to run third our first time here together, I think that's a lot to be proud of." Stewart leads Jimmie Johnson in the season standings by 192 points. Johnson has won this race three of the last four years.

A decade ago this summer, Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George was a man in a quandary over this NASCAR business. He wasn't sure whether to accept a proposal for the grandest wedding in modern-day motor sports--of America's most popular form of racing to America's most-hallowed track. George feared this would be a Hollywood marriage, glitzy but brief. "Those NASCAR fans," he said, "are accustomed to being able to see all the way around their race tracks."

Juan Pablo Montoya was too fast for anyone on the track to catch. He zoomed, four and five seconds ahead of the second-place driver. He said he cruised. Others said he dominated. It felt, to Montoya, just like the last time he won at the Brickyard, nine years ago in the Indianapolis 500. Then, on Lap 125, eight timing sensors clicked beneath pit road. They calculated Montoya's speed as he drove over them.

The Brickyard 400, one of NASCAR's biggest races, will be run on a Sunday next year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The race, scheduled for Aug. 5, had been the only Saturday afternoon fixture on the Winston Cup schedule. The change was announced Tuesday when NASCAR released a 36-race schedule for 2001. It includes dates for new sites in Joliet, Ill., and Kansas City, Kan.

If you were a little confused by ABC's coverage of the Brickyard 400 stock car race Saturday, understand: Jeff Gordon didn't win the Brickyard 400, Dale Earnhardt did. And no, Earnhardt wasn't driving a tan Dodge. He was in his black Chevrolet. ABC's designs of showing the race at 1 p.m., on a three-hour tape delay, were thwarted by rain that pushed back the start of the Brickyard 400 to 2:27. With time to fill, ABC showed Gordon winning in 1994.

Richard Petty retired before he could race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but his familiar No. 43 red-and-blue Pontiac will be on the front row for the second annual Brickyard 400 on Saturday. Bobby Hamilton, who became car owner Petty's driver at the start of this season, surprised early qualifiers Thursday with a lap of 172.222 m.p.h. around the low-banked 2 1/2-mile rectangular oval where stock cars weren't allowed before last year.

The Good Ol' Boys of NASCAR brought their stock car show to the home of the Indianapolis 500 for the first time Saturday, only to have a slip of a youth from Indiana steal the show. Jeff Gordon, who turned 23 Thursday and grew up dreaming of racing in the 500, fought off Rusty Wallace and Ernie Irvan in one of the most exciting finishes in Indianapolis Motor Speedway's storied history to win the Brickyard 400.

The excitement that was missing last May has returned to Indianapolis in August. The crowds have been large and enthusiastic for practice at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the traffic on 16th Street is bumper-to-bumper, the campgrounds are jammed with revelers, hotels are filled and restaurants have hourlong waiting lists. The Brickyard 400, in its fourth year as stock car racing's richest event, seems to have replaced the Indianapolis 500 in the racing fans' favor.

Tony Stewart maintained his points lead with a third-place finish Sunday in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. "I take that we ran third at the Brickyard 400," Stewart said. "There's no shame in that. Forty-three cars and we ran third today. To come here with a new package, a new crew chief, to run third our first time here together, I think that's a lot to be proud of." Stewart leads Jimmie Johnson in the season standings by 192 points. Johnson has won this race three of the last four years.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Hendrick Motorsports drivers staked an early claim Friday for this year's NASCAR race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Hendrick's Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. posted three of the five fastest laps in opening practice for Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, widely considered the second biggest race in the Sprint Cup Series behind the Daytona 500.

The venerable Indianapolis Motor Speedway has gone commercial. The Brickyard 400, the stock car race that annually attracts the largest audience in NASCAR's Nextel Cup season, has been renamed the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. The insurance company announced Thursday that it had signed a multiyear sponsorship deal with IMS, and that it had signed another multiyear deal to be NASCAR's official insurance sponsor.

Jeff Gordon couldn't wait to kiss the bricks Sunday after matching his heroes with a fourth victory at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The driver, who spent his teen years living within 25 miles of the track, made history with his fourth victory in the Brickyard 400, joining open-wheel stars A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears as four-time winners at the storied speedway. "It feels amazing," Gordon said. "I can't compare four [wins] in a stock car to what my heroes like Rick Mears and A.J.

The old Intimidator would have been proud of the way his successor ran Sunday. So would a lot of old-time stock car folks who haven't looked favorably on a bunch of open-wheel kids coming in and dominating NASCAR Winston Cup racing the last few years.

It isn't the Indianapolis 500, but it is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so for drivers who grew up in Indiana dreaming of taking the checkered flag while crossing the historic yard of bricks at the finish line, winning the Brickyard 400 is about as good as it can get. Jeff Gordon, whose family moved to Pittsboro, Ind., after he spent his early childhood in Vallejo, Calif.

Casey Mears was never here to see his Uncle Rick win the Indianapolis 500 four times, nor did he see his father Roger race in the 500 twice in the early 1980s. Nor has the 25-year-old second generation driver from Bakersfield ever raced on the hallowed Indianapolis Motor Speedway track, but he hopes to add his name to the family heritage here this weekend. Mears, a NASCAR Winston Cup rookie, will be in one of Chip Ganassi's Dodges, the red-and-white Target No.

The Brickyard 400, bidding to replace the Daytona 500 as stock car racing's premier event, and the Indianapolis 500 as motor racing's most popular event, will be run for the fifth time today before about 350,000 spectators at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Brickyard has more than doubled Daytona's attendance of 170,000, and last year had a larger purse, $4.9 million to $4.3 million. "It's risen in stature in quite a short period of time," Dale Jarrett said of the relatively new race.

After waiting more than four hours for the rain to stop and the track to dry, NASCAR's drivers gave their patient fans a treat Saturday with one of the cleanest and fastest Winston Cup races ever in the second Brickyard 400. Seven-time series champion Dale Earnhardt averaged 155.218 m.p.h. in his Chevrolet Monte Carlo and led the final 28 of 160 laps at historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway to win $565,600, second-richest purse in NASCAR history. The margin of victory was 0.37 seconds.

Bill Elliott closed his eyes and put his hands over them, to keep the tears back ... and heaved out one hard sob. Twenty-seven seasons of NASCAR racing--and this was as close as he'd ever come to weeping at a racetrack. Forty-three Winston Cup victories, including two Daytona 500s, yet he made Sunday's Brickyard 400, quite clearly, the most emotional win of his roller-coaster life. "It feels," he said with difficulty, "like it's taken me a lifetime to get here."

A decade ago this summer, Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George was a man in a quandary over this NASCAR business. He wasn't sure whether to accept a proposal for the grandest wedding in modern-day motor sports--of America's most popular form of racing to America's most-hallowed track. George feared this would be a Hollywood marriage, glitzy but brief. "Those NASCAR fans," he said, "are accustomed to being able to see all the way around their race tracks."