Mark and Dale Jarrett gave it their respective
best shots, but in the end their bests weren't quite good enough to knock
off Rusty Wallace, who dominated the Food City 500 enroute to victory
at the high-banked 0.533 mile Bristol Motor Speedway. Still, Wallace's
rival Ford drivers made him earn the victory. Jarrett was the first
to apply pressure. Starting from an uncharacteristically poor 16th
qualifying spot, the Robert Yates Racing Ford moved up to 13th by
lap 25. 11th by lap 50 and ninth by lap 75. He picked up another two
spots by lap 200, to move to seventh, where he would remain for
much of the middle of the race.
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But the second half of the race was a
different - and mostly better - story for Mark and Jarrett. After the
caution came out on lap 341 when Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and five other
cars piled up in turn two, Jarrett emerged from the following round
of pit stops in third place. From there on, he was a force to be reckoned with.
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At lap 400, Wallace led Martin and Jarrett by
about three seconds. On lap 412, Jarrett tried Mark for second, getting by
him the following lap when Mark's Rousch Racing Ford drifted high out of turn
four and Jarrett ducked low to move to second. Then the real fun started.
By lap 445, Jarrett had cut Wallace's lead down to just 1.3 seconds. Twenty laps
later, Jarrett hd whittled the distance down to nothing and he closed
in on lap 468, making a bid for the lead in turn two. He couldn't make the
pass, however, and backed off just a bit to take another run at the Penske
Racing South Ford. At that point he seemed to be the fastest car on
the track.
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Unfortunately for Jarrett, another run never materialized.
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A late caution when steve Park was spun in turn one
by Ken Schrader brought out the afternoon's final yellow flag on lap 475,
and all the leaders came into the pits for fresh tires. When they
emerged after a four-tire stop, the order was Wallace, Mark and Jarrett, followed by
John Andretti and Jeff Burton. This time, Mark got to try and run down
Wallace, and he gave it a whale of an effort, even getting into the back
of Wallace's Ford on the backstretch on lap 496. But that's as close as Mark
would come, although he would hold on for second place and his fourth
top-five finish in seven races this year. More importantly, perhaps,
he moved from sixth to fourth in Winston Cup points.
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Of course, with Wallace leading 425 of
500 laps at Bristol, neither Mark nor Jarrett was thrilled with their
runnerup status afterward.
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"We weren't good enough to win, but we
almost won anyway," Mark said. "The Valvoline/Cummins car was strong
after that last pit stop. We were just a tick off." When asked if
he had anything left for Wallace, Mark acknowledged that it would
have been tough to beat him. "Maybe a few more laps, we might have
had a chance. We had a run going on him that last lap, but heck,
as hard as I was driving, we was fixin' to wreck both of us,"
Mark said. "He wanted to win and I didn't want to wreck and he had the
track position.
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Mark's crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, said his team is still trying
to find the right combination to win consistently. "We struggled all
day. We were happy to get second... The pit crew did an excellent
job, so we are really proud of his pit crew, and, Mark, he drove a clean
race at the end a real clean race. Everybody's racing their guts out at the
end. We're pretty proud of it, for as bad as we were."
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