NASCAR WCUP: How I Won The Talladega 500-Bobby Hamilton

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

April 24, 2001

The Story of Bobby Hamilton’s Victory in His Own Words

Before the race, I thought we had a very good chance to win. We were good in practice. The motor we qualified with (in 14th position) wasn’t as good as our race motor and we knew we were going to be a couple of tenths better in the race. I think I was so in tune, that if this was Rockingham and I had the same feeling, I’d have told the guys we were going to win. But I didn’t want to get them all upbeat about it. I just kept it to myself.

In the beginning, I was just trying to get the hell out of everybody’s way to see how safe it was going to be. But everybody was real safe and I’m real proud of them. Anyway, we got shuffled back. And that was the plan—just to ride back there for awhile. I saw DJ doing that. I just didn’t want to go back as far as he did because I knew my car was pretty spunky off the corner.

About halfway through the race we thought, "Let’s go up front." And we were able to go up there and lead. I learned some stuff in the fall race last year by watching Dale Earnhardt. I won’t say what it was, but I used it couple of times and thought, "This is the cat’s meow.’ Nobody else was doing it. So I put it in my glove compartment and waited until 15 laps to go.

We were really good on the outside. I don’t know if there was any aero advantage or not, but we were good on the outside and there were others on the outside who couldn’t hold on. So I knew what I was going to do. I just didn’t want to do it too early. With 15 to go, I went out there. I was by myself (on the outside), but I could hold on. When you’ve got a restrictor plate car that will get on the inside or outside and hold its own, you’ve got a pretty stout race car. So basically all I did was wait for some help.

I couldn’t have won it without my teammate, Joe Nemechek. All of a sudden I saw his white hood with that big apron on it. And they said, "Here comes some help.’’ There were a couple of times when I pushed up and he could have got in between us. But he did a real good job of sticking with us. And that’s what won the race. We’re working close together—what a two-car team is all about--and I think today showed that.

After I got past Tony Stewart, I was three or four car lengths out there when one line started coming to me. So I pulled down and blocked that line. Then I just swapped up. What you do in a situation like that when you break away, you just pull both lines. After I took the checkered flag, I got pretty emotional in the race car. But I was so damned tired I couldn’t even make tears come up.

And I said, "If I start crying, I ain’t going to be able to talk and I ain’t going to be able to stand up." I got out of the car and couldn’t stand up anyhow, so I might as well have gone ahead and cried. But this is an emotional victory. It was pretty special to win Richard Petty’s first race as a car owner, so I thought it would be cool to win Andy Petree’s first race as a car owner, too.

Text Provided By Chris Hunt

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