NASCAR Winston Cup Notes (Week of August 18)
19 August 1997
NASCAR Winston Cup Series Notes of Interest Week of August 18, 1997 DAYTONA BEACH, FL - - Bill Elliott has five consecutive top-10 finishes. The last time he posted that many in a row came in 1993/94 when he finished the '93 season with four in a row and ninth in the 1994 Daytona 500. The last time he posted five straight top-10s in the same season, came during July and August in 1991 when he put together finishes of first (Pepsi 400), ninth, second, seventh and fifth. - Geoff Bodine has missed qualifying for two of the last six races. But his average finish for the four races he has made during that period is 10.0. - Ward Burton now has gone 12 races without a top-10 finish. - Sterling Marlin has just two top-10 finishes in the last 15 races. - Ken Schrader has finished either 11th or 14th in the last five races (11th twice and 14th three times). - Ernie Irvan has five top-10 finishes (including a win) in the last eight races. But his other three finishes were 37th, 40th, and 21st. TOP 10 - TENTH: Despite finishing just two laps down, Jeremy Mayfield finished 33rd Sunday. He has just one finish this season lower than that, a 37th at Atlanta, 18 races ago. - NINTH: Bill Elliott posted his fifth consecutive top-10 finish Sunday, the first time since finishing the 1993 season with runs of 10th, third, fifth, and fourth and finished ninth in the 1994 Daytona 500. - EIGHTH: Ted Musgrave's third-place finish Sunday was his eighth top-12 finish in the last 10 races. - SEVENTH: Bobby Labonte's sixth-place finish Sunday was his eighth of 11th or better in the last 12 races. The other four finishes? 40th, 31st, 27th and 37th. - SIXTH: Dale Earnhardt's ninth-place finish Sunday was his first top-10 since finishing second at Loudon, N.H., five races ago and just his 10th this season. - FIFTH: Jeff Burton now has nine top-10s in the last 13 races. - FOURTH: Terry Labonte has six top-10 finishes in the last nine races. But the other three races resulted in finishes of 39th 35th and 40th. - THIRD: Dale Jarrett has seven top-10s and five top-fives in the last nine races. - SECOND: Mark Martin now has 16 top-10 and 12 top-five finishes. - FIRST: Jeff Gordon has five finishes outside the top-five in 21 races this season. All five, however, are 21st or worse. TURNING TO BRISTOL AND THE GOODY'S HEADACHE POWDERS 500 - Jeff Gordon has won three of the last five races at Bristol Motor speedway, but none of them have been in the August night race. - Gordon's only top-five finish in the August event was last year when he finished second to Rusty Wallace. - Mark Martin has five top-five finishes in the last six races at Bristol Motor Speedway. Martin has four consecutive top-fives in the August event. - Martin also has six top-five finishes in the last seven runnings of the Goody's Headache Powders 500. - The last driver to win both NASCAR Winston Cup races at Bristol in a single season was Dale Earnhardt in 1987. - The last driver to win back-to-back races at Bristol was Alan Kulwicki who won the August race in 1991 and the spring event in 1992. - Dale Earnhardt has four top-five finishes in the last five August races at Bristol Motor Speedway. - Mark Martin has won four of the last five Busch Pole Awards at Bristol and six in his career, tops among active drivers. - Martin holds the Bristol Motor Speedway track qualifying record with a lap of 125.093 mph, a lap of 15.339 seconds around the 0.533-mile oval. - Eighteen of 73 NASCAR Winston Cup races at Bristol have been won from the pole. But that has not happened since Martin did so in this race in 1993. STAT OF THE WEEK Ricky Rudd's slip from the top-10 in the standings after Sunday's ITW DeVilbiss 400 at Michigan Speedway (he now is 11th, nine points behind Jeremy Mayfield) marks the first time he has found himself outside the top 10 since October of 1995, 55 races ago. By NASCAR Public Relations
