Maybe Not For Fans, But Last Michigan Race Was A Lot More Fun For Park
23 August 1999
Maybe Not For Fans, But Last Michigan Race Was A Lot More Fun For Park Someone once said the only constant in life is change and that was never more evident than Sunday's 400-mile race at Michigan Speedway. Last June, 43 NASCAR Winston Cup cars ran 400 caution-free miles with little passing and little excitement as Dale Jarrett dominated the race amid the yawns of thousands of race fans at the track and millions of television viewers. But all that was just fine for #1 Pennzoil Monte Carlo driver Steve Park who started 10th and finished a career-best sixth. "I thought last race here was about perfect, but I could understand if the fans didn't think it was one of our more entertaining races," Park said before Sunday's return trip to the D-shaped oval. "We were pretty good here and heck a caution-free race is what a driver likes to see." It didn't take long for the Winston Cup fraternity to figure out that this weekend's visit to the Irish Hills track was going to be dramatically different. Warmer temperatures combined with a new tire compound from Goodyear would make the racing a little bit more exciting if not a little scary for the drivers. "A lot of people are saying their car is loose, meaning the back end is sliding through the corner. That's a little bit faster, but it is also a little bit unnerving for the drivers," said Park. "They didn't have any cautions here last time, but I think there will be some today as well as some pretty good racing." Park was right and there weren't any yawns anywhere on Sunday. In what turned out to be one of the more exciting non-superspeedway races of the season, the Winston Cup cars battled side-by-side and nose-to-tail for most of the afternoon and although there wasn't an epidemic of yellow flags a few accidents bunched the field to make for a much more entertaining show. Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart even traded the lead in the closing laps with eventual winner Bobby Labonte while cars sometimes raced through the banked corners three and four abreast. The race was slowed four times for accidents, but none were serious. As for Steve Park, his race seemed to change with each pit stop. After starting 12th Park dropped to about 15th but climbed into the top 10 on the first pit stop when his Dale Earnhardt Inc. crew serviced the Pennzoil car with 4 tires and fuel in 16 seconds. But that is when the trouble started. With the new tires, Park's car just couldn't seem to grip the surface and he started sliding back through the field. "It feels like the tires are rock hard," he reported to crew chief Paul Andrews. "It's almost like there is something wrong with the car." This wasn't the team's lucky day either. A caution flag at just the wrong time near the race's midway point kept him from remaining on the lead lap and an erroneous stop-and-go penalty for a loose lugnut put him at the tail end of the lead lap with little chance of making up a lap. A pit stop for four new tires and fuel with less than 50 laps left in the race returned Park to his previous speed and allowed him to climb through the field until the checkered flag ended the race with Park in 20th place. "Except for that time after the second pit stop we were actually pretty good today," said Park who celebrates his 32nd birthday on Monday. "But we are still disappointed. This is the car we led 84 laps with at Charlotte in May so we figured we could do a whole lot better here at Michigan today." Park is tied for 23rd in the 1999 point standings. Park and his teammates won't have long to contemplate Michigan, on Friday they travel to Bristol for Saturday night's 500-lap race on the half-mile high-banked track in Tennessee. ###