Top Row Seat - Atlanta
Dateline: 11/09/98What a fitting end to the disappointing 50th Anniversary "showcase" NASCAR Winston Cup season. The season that caused many of NASCAR's new fans to lose interest in the sport ended with a whimper instead of a bang late Sunday night. The official race statistics from NASCAR Online list the total time of the race at just under three hours, but the real time of the race comes in closer to 10 1/2 hours.
Shortly after 11pm NASCAR had sympathy on the racers, crews, officials, media and fans and called a premature, but not unwelcome, end to the marathon after just 340 miles of the scheduled 500 mile distance.
High Point Of The Race
Mother Nature simply would not cooperate to let this season end quietly. Instead, the constant cold rain had to be miserable for the die-hard fans who saw the race through to its' abbreviated end.
My vote for MVP of the 1998 NASCAR Winston Cup season goes to any race fan who saw both the National Anthem and the Checkered flag at this Sunday's race. I have spent my share of time sitting in the rain watching tow trucks drive in slow boring circles and it is just no fun. Congratulations to the "real" race fans who spent nearly 8 hours sitting in the cold watching the rain, you make this sport great.
More Of The Same
Jeff Gordon runs in the top ten all day, Gordon makes a late race pit-stop, Gordon dominates last 20 laps to win pulling away. Yawn, been there, seen that. There is a rumor going around that the Hendrick Motorsports team has found a little something extra in the new Chevy SB2 engine that is giving them a little extra horsepower.
Now if this is true, you don't suppose that Ray Evernham and Jeff Gordon would sandbag a little by not racing as hard as they could until the end, do you? It's a good strategy to protect any slim advantage that you can squeak out in this highly competitive world so that NASCAR doesn't change it's rules against you. But, it also makes for a pretty boring NASCAR Winston Cup season when one guy can easily win over one-third of the races.
There's always 1999....
