---

NASCAR WCUP: Irvan; Brickyard Pole Winner Could Break 180-mph Barrier

22 July 1999

INDIANAPOLIS - The magic speed is 180 mph for NASCAR Winston Cup Series stock cars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Two-time Brickyard 400 pole sitter Ernie Irvan thinks it can be reached by the pole winner for this year's race Aug. 7.

"I think so," Irvan said during a break in General Motors testing Tuesday at the Speedway, less then three weeks before the race. But, of course, there is a but.

"It depends on the weather a lot," said Irvan, driver of the M & M's Pontiac. "Last year I was the first one to qualify after it started to rain, and the racetrack was really grippy. And I ended up on the pole by about two-tenths."

Irvan put his Skittles Pontiac in the coveted front row, inside starting spot with a record speed of 179.394.

"I think they're going to run faster than that," he said. "It depends on the weather. If it's blazing hot, they probably won't even break that track record. But if we get a day that's got a lot of cloud cover, I venture to say they're going to get in the 180's."

Drivers such as past Brickyard winners Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt faced hot, sticky conditions in their two days of testing this week. They failed to reach Irvan's record speed, the top lap being 178.402 mph by Buckshot Jones. The Fords practiced the week before under less humid conditions, and Winston Cup points leader Dale Jarrett record the best speed of 179.154.

Virginian Rick Mast was the surprise winner of the first Brickyard pole in 1994 at a speed of 172.414. It was a career first, and he's only won three poles on the circuit since.

Gordon, winner of the inaugural Brickyard, captured the pole the next two years with speeds of 172.536 and 176.419, respectively. Irvan has been the man in qualifying in Brickyards IV and V, pushing the speeds upward to 177.736 and, last year, to the current mark a tick of the speedometer under 180.

When the first Indianapolis 500 occurred in 1911, the magic speed to attain was 100 mph. Since the first race had no pre-event top speeds listed, the 100-mph mark was officially recorded in the sixth race thereafter, in 1919, at 104.78 by Frenchman Rene Thomas.

The 180 barrier by Indy cars became a reality in 1972 with a lap of 185.757 by Billy Vukovich Jr.

"It seems like it makes your whole weekend," Irvan said about getting a high qualifying position.

"If you can qualify in the top 10, that just makes it where when they throw the green flag you're not automatically a half-a-lap behind. And it just seems to carry on. Again, we qualified on the pole last year and ended up sixth in the race.

"If we hadn't qualified on the pole, we probably wouldn't have ended up sixth in the race. We weren't very capable of passing a lot of cars. I feel like our qualifying effort really paid off."

Irvan has finished 17th, 2nd, 10th and 6th in four Brickyards. He missed the 1995 Brickyard as he continued to recover from near-fatal injuries suffered in a practice crash at Michigan Speedway a couple weeks after the first Speedway stock-car event in 1994.

Gordon won the inaugural Brickyard, but for some tire woes that sent him to the pits with the checkered flag 15 miles away Irvan today would be celebrated as the Ray Harroun of NASCAR. He took the lead from Gordon on Lap 150, but then began to fade on Lap 155 and had to spend an excruciating 12 seconds in the pits while the hometown boy charged on to victory.

"Well, I can always say I had it won," Irvan said, "and had a good shot at winning it anyway. And again, when I got hurt at Michigan, I can always say I was going to win the championship (he was in the lead). "I pretty much don't try to say that, because there's just a lot of things that could happen. I know that Jeff's a tough competitor. We can't take anything away from him. Again, that year I think I had the upper hand, but again there were five or six more laps to go."

In 1996, he finished second behind Jarrett by .936 thousandths of a second, but he never got a chance that year to make a final charge because Robert Pressley hit the wall on Lap 159, ending the race under caution. So Irvan, now 40, returns for his fifth try at Indy hoping good fortune will smile on him at last.

His seasons since recovering from his injuries haven't been the best. He finished 10th in the final 1996 standings, but slipped to 14th the next year and 19th in 1998. This year he is a lowly 25th after 18 races with only five finishes in the top 10. His winnings total $889,155.

"Obviously, everybody's coming here thinking they've got a shot at winning," said Irvan, the 1991 Daytona 500 winner.

"Any of the teams I've been with, the 28 car when the Brickyard originated and now the 36 car and M&M Mars, I've sat on the pole in the 28 car and also sat on the pole with the M&M's car. So obviously coming here and having a shot at winning the race, it's a pretty exciting feeling." It would be even more exciting if he could actually turn that "shot" into reality and be first at the end of 160 racing laps instead of two qualifying laps. It pays a whole lot more.

Editors Note: For hundreds of hot racing photos and racing art, be sure to visit The Racing ImageGalleries and the Visions of Speed Art Gallery.