Jarrett Busy Fending Off Naysayers

Richmond International Raceway was very good to Dale Jarrett this season.

The Winston Cup points leader first moved to the top of the standings at Richmond in June. After a two-race slide that cut a 314-point lead to 168, Jarrett’s third-place finish last Saturday night rebuilt his advantage to 270 over runner-up Mark Martin, who finished 35th because of engine failure.

Even before the Exide 400, though, Jarrett was defending himself against garage chatter that he was feeling the pressure as he pursues his first championship.

Jarrett finished 38th at Bristol after causing an early wreck, then ran 16th at Darlington after a terrible qualifying effort placed him 36th at the start.

“They’re looking to try to make something of nothing,” he said of his competitors. “It’s that time of the year, and that’s what they are supposed to do right now. If they weren’t, I’d be disappointed in them.”

Jarrett routinely answers “everything” when asked what the championship would mean to him. The title would allow Jarrett and his father, Ned, to join Lee and Richard Petty as the only father and son champions in Winston Cup history.

“I guess if I allowed myself to think about anything about this, it is that aspect of it, of how special it would be for my dad and myself,” he said.

“But we are still a long way from it.”

Ned Jarrett now works as an announcer on NASCAR broadcasts and follows the series week to week, but the two rarely compare notes, Dale Jarrett said.

“I think things were different somewhat” when Ned won in 1961 and 1965, Jarrett said. “We’re certainly both well aware of what people are going to be saying and things they’re going to try to accomplish with their talking.

“But he also knows that I’ve been in something competitive most of my life and I’ve been through a lot of this. I think he realizes I can handle these things.”

NEW JOB: Now that he’s decided to give up his role as an owner-driver and go drive for Robert Yates Racing next year, Ricky Rudd has two unresolved questions for his own team.

The first involves the future of Rudd’s 45 full-time employees, although he anticipates they won’t have any problem getting jobs with other teams.

For starters, Rudd’s shop is in a suburban Charlotte, N.C., business park that has a heavy concentration of racing shops and a reputation for workers moving around between those shops.

But if any of Rudd’s employees has trouble landing a job, he has vowed to do whatever it takes to get that person a job elsewhere.

“I’ll even go on every job interview with them if I have to,” Rudd said.

Then there’s the matter of Rudd’s fleet of race-ready Ford Tauruses and all the equipment in his shop.

He is willing to listen to any and all offers.

“I’m open to suggestions, even down to an auction situation,” he said.

Part of Rudd’s contract to go to work for Yates calls for Rudd to sell Yates his land and 30,000-square-foot race shop.

THE SOFTER SIDE OF TONY: Tony Stewart earned the outside front row starting spot in the Exide 400 in Richmond, Va., but was unable to do many post-run interviews because he was helping spot for Busch Grand National driver Jason Leffler during the Autolite 250.

“I came up just to kind of watch him and be there in case he had any questions or anything like that,” said Stewart, a part-owner of Leffler’s team.

“It was like clocking out that night. I got to do what I wanted to do and act the way I wanted to act and have a good time.”

Leffler started the race 28th and finished 22nd.

PIT STOPS: Beginning with Sunday’s Dura-Lube/Kmart 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway, Rudd has nine races left to extend to 17 his streak of consecutive seasons with a Winston Cup victory. Rudd’s string of 16 straight winning years is the third-longest in NASCAR history, and made all the more remarkable by the fact that he’s won just 20 races in his career. ...

Stewart became the 152nd different winner in the history of Winston Cup racing with his victory in the Exide 400, and the first new addition to the list since Jeremy Mayfield won last year at Pocono. ...

Bobby Labonte and Jeff Gordon have each led 21 of the first 25 races.