Editor’s Note: NASCAR is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2023. SPEED SPORT was founded in 1934 and was already on its way to becoming America’s Motorsports Authority when NASCAR was formed. As a result, we will bring you Part 49 of a 75-part series on the history of NASCAR as told in the pages of National Speed Sport News and SPEED SPORT Magazine.
A lot of times in other sports, the team that wins the most games doesn’t win the Super Bowl or World Series, said Terry Labonte after his Oct. 6 victory at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Racing is no different.
Labonte’s late-season victory brought him to within one point of defending NASCAR Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon with three races remaining in the 1996 season. Labonte would take the top spot in the point race two weeks later en route to his second championship.
Dale Jarrett opened the season with his second Daytona 500 victory at Daytona Int’l Speedway. Jarrett led a parade of 17 cars, which finished on the lead lap, including runner-up Dale Earnhardt. Labonte was 24th.
Earnhardt won at North Carolina Motor Speedway with a bump and spin of Bobby Hamilton on lap 344. Labonte was 34th.
Jeff Gordon won for the 10th time in his career in the Pontiac at Richmond (Va.) Raceway, as his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Labonte, finished eighth.
Labonte led Gordon over the finish line at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but both trailed Earnhardt. Two weeks later, Gordon won at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway after a lead-swapping duel with Jarrett.
Gordon made it two in a row with the rain-shortened Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway trophy.
Labonte was second at Bristol — the first of four times the teammates would finish one-two this season — but won at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway over Gordon in his 513th consecutive start. Labonte was now tied with Richard Petty for the most consecutive starts in Winston Cup history.
Rusty Wallace maintained his spring tradition of winning at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. Wallace’s fourth consecutive victory in this race came after a change in Gordon’s air pressure slowed the dominant No. 24 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
A Harrowing Pileup At Talladega
As always, the event at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway boasted a harrowing pileup.
Some 131 laps into the race, Gordon tried to pass Mark Martin in turn one.
The two made contact as Martin drifted up the track and bounced into the wall and rebounded into Ward Burton. Ricky Craven then hit Martin with Craven’s car barrel rolling seven times before coming to rest. Fourteen cars were collected in the accident and Sterling Marlin won the race.
Ford driver Rusty Wallace won the sixth road course race of his career at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, tying him with Richard Petty and Bobby Allison for the most Cup Series road course victories. Wallace’s celebration was muted when his team was fined $25,000 after the race for a roofline which was one-half-inch too low.
Winless in 309 Winston Cup point events, Michael Waltrip won the non-point The Winston Select at Charlotte.
Then, Jarrett added the Coca-Cola 600 trophy to his collection and became eligible for the Winston Million.
Gordon won the first two races in June — at Dover Int’l Speedway and Pocono Raceway. Wallace won at Michigan Int’l Speedway in what became a fuel-economy run. Sterling Marlin led Wallace with 13 laps remaining in the race, but stopped for a splash-and-go. Wallace took the chance he could make it and won with a record average speed of 166.003 mph.
Marlin won the rain-shortened event at Daytona Int’l Speedway with Labonte grabbing his fifth runner-up finish of the season.
“If you’re competitive and consistent enough, you’re going to win some races,” Labonte said. “You’re going to have those second-place finishes if you’re going to win the title, but I wish all of those seconds had been wins,” he said in the July 10 National Speed Sport News.
Second Half Of The Season Begins
The second half of the season began on an upbeat note as Ernie lrvan won for the first time since his near-fatal crash in 1994. Irvan triumphed at New Hampshire Int’l Speedway amid thunderous cheers from the grandstands and pit row.
“I think there were a lot of people who doubted us, but I think 99 percent of the people in the grandstands still thought I could do it,” Irvan said in the July 17 NSSN. “There was no doubt in my mind from the time I started testing. I hadn’t really lost anything.”
Wallace won at Pocono and Gordon triumphed in an accident-filled Talladega event that was shortened by 59 laps due to a four-hour rain delay. Two massive accidents on laps 104 and 118 involved 26 cars.
In the second, Earnhardt’s No. 3 Monte Carlo hit the wall, bounced, flipped and landed on its left side and was hit by three cars while skidding down the track.
Earnhardt suffered a broken left collarbone and a fractured sternum.
Jarrett scored another big victory in the third Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Jarrett led his Robert Yates Racing teammate, Irvan, across the stripe for a $500,600 payday.
Geoff Bodine held Labonte to another second-place finish at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l. Earnhardt finished sixth after winning the pole only two weeks after his Talladega accident. Jarrett won for the fourth time this season at Michigan and Wallace earned his fifth victory at Bristol.
Gordon scored again in the Southern 500 at Darlington before Irvan won at Richmond after starting 16th and falling to 23rd after his ignition failed. Gordon grabbed a seven-point lead over Labonte with his third consecutive Dover triumph. Six races remained in the season.
Picking up his ninth victory of the season, Gordon led Labonte to the checkered flag at Martinsville and led the standings by 81 points.
“We have five races to go and you can lose a lot of points fast,” Labonte commented in the Sept. 25 issue of NSSN. “It’s easy to lose 80 or 100 points in a race if something goes wrong. What we have to do is go out there and try to outrun the 24 car.”
Labonte Closes In
No one outran Gordon at North Wilkesboro in what was the final race at the .625-mile track for more than 25 years. Labonte’s statement about losing 80 or 100 points in a race proved at Charlotte. Luckily for Labonte, he predicted Gordon’s finish in the race he won.
Gordon’s 31st-place finish due to a cracked cylinder head cost him 110 points as Labonte closed to within a single point of the lead.
Ricky Rudd won in Rockingham, N.C., to bring his streak of seasons with at least one victory to 14. In the same race, Labonte’s third-place finish pushed him into the point lead over 12th-place finisher Gordon.
After Bobby Hamilton gave Richard Petty his first victory as a car owner at Phoenix Raceway, Labonte led Gordon by 47 and needed at least an eighth-place finish in the season finale to secure his first title since 1984. Labonte, Bobby that is, won at Atlanta and Terry Labonte claimed the Cup Series title by 37 points over Gordon.
“This was the longest race I ever drove,” said Terry Labonte in the Nov. 13 NSSN. “It was a good car and I rode it out. I knew when I joined the Hendrick Motorsports operation that I could win another championship.
“Every year we say the competition gets tougher, but it’s always been tough,” Labonte added. “From a standpoint of competition for the championship, 1984 was just as tough as this year. Under our point system, consistency Is the name of the game.”
Other honorees included rookie-of-the-year Johnny Benson and Most Popular Driver Bill Elliott. Randy LaJoie won the Busch Grand National title while rookie Lance Hooper won the Winston West championship. Ron Hornaday Jr. dominated the Craftsman Truck Series. Mike Cope took the Slim Jim All Pro Series season honors and the Featherlite Modified Tour top spot belonged to Tony Hirschman for the second straight year.
Nineteen-year-old Lyndon Amick won the Goody’s Dash Series season title, while Dave Dion and Kelly Tanner became the titleholders in the BGN North and Rebco Northwest Tours, respectively.