Not Slickest of Strategies for Wallace, Mayfield

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. —  Rusty Wallace and Jeremy Mayfield, teammates who had talked about helping one another win the Daytona 500, were running in tandem at the front of the pack Sunday just like they had planned when an accident brought out the final yellow caution flag of the day.

There were 26 laps remaining.

All of the contending cars behind Wallace and Mayfield ducked into the pits, most taking on four tires, the others two tires.

Crew chiefs Robin Pemberton for Wallace and Paul Andrews for Mayfield, along with car owner Roger Penske, chose to stay on the track with Goodyears that had been speeding around Daytona International Raceway for 36 laps.

After the restart, it took Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt only eight laps on their fresh rubber to catch and pass Mayfield and get Wallace in their sights. Wallace was passed for the lead by Gordon four laps later.

By the time the race ended, Wallace had slid all the way down to eighth, while Mayfield, who had a cut tire force an unscheduled stop six laps from the finish, wound up a disappointing 20th.

“Track position is everything in these restrictor plate races,” said Mayfield in explaining the decision. “The tires hadn’t shown any wear or problems, ours or Rusty’s or anybody else’s we knew about.”

Asked if he would do it again under similar circumstances, Mayfield insisted, “I’d trust whatever Paul Andrews decided, without question.”

Wallace was not so sure.

“Looking back on it right now, maybe if I would have had a little more grip in the tires I might have been able to hold that bottom line a little better. But the car handled good, I wasn’t having a problem.”

Gordon said he didn’t think the tires made the difference.

“I was glad that Ray [crew chief Evernham] made the call to come in for four tires,” Gordon said. “A lot of the other guys came in too, so that helped with the decision, but when I went by Rusty I don’t think new tires would have made any difference. He was running plenty strong at that point. Now I don’t know what happened to him later.

“I know it was important to us, though, because I couldn’t have made a pass like I did with older tires.”

Penske said the plan was “for those two guys to line up and try to run and stay out of trouble, but Jeremy had the tire go down and we lost our opportunity to push one another.”

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Mark Martin, who doesn’t like restrictor-plate racing, blamed the rules for the multi-car accident that knocked him out of the race.

“I expected that with restrictor plate racing, that’s what you’re always going to have as long as you do this,” said the driver of Jack Roush’s Valvoline Ford. “We were lucky we didn’t have more of them. You wonder why you have those things when you see them run three-wide on and on and on.

“It was bound to happen. There was going to be a wreck and I was going to be in it. Next week we’ll go real racing.”

Restrictor plates are used only at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway. Designed to reduce speeds, they also cause close racing with tightly bunched cars running in a pack.

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Ken Schrader, who spent most of the race back around 12th to 15th, came on strong toward the end and finished sixth. He was in the lead pack for the final restart, but was not too pleased with what he saw.

“When they gave the last restart, everybody started knocking the hell out of everybody trying to get ‘em down the back straightaway. Some of the guys who wanted you to draft with them would have been like playing catch with a hand grenade.”

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Happy as a winner with his 16th-place finish, Dave Marcis said he would be back next year for his 33rd consecutive start in the Daytona 500 “if I’m living.”

“We’re proud of our record at Daytona,” he added. “We do this with a small crew. We have an 11-man team, people at the shop and at the track. Stop and think what we’ve accomplished. We only used two or three sets of tires [Sunday].”