NASCAR WCUP: If You Think Park Was Good At Charlotte In May, Wait Until Sunday
6 October 1999
If You Think Park Was Good At Charlotte in May, Wait Until Sunday Park, DEI Return to Charlotte -- Site of Their Best Run; Team Ninth in Second -Half Points #1 Pennzoil Monte Carlo driver Steve Park and his Dale Earnhardt Inc. teammates were struggling when they raced at Charlotte in May. Crew chief Paul Andrews was in the first week of his new job, Engineer Dave Charpentier had even less time than Andrews, and Park was making only his 25th Winston Cup start and occupied about 30th place in the points. Despite all that the second-year driver led 84 laps before a crash with a lap car ended his race. Five months later, the team returns to Charlotte as one of the hottest on the Winston Cup Circuit. Since the Pepsi 400 at Daytona on July 3, Park has scored the ninth most points and gained 13 spots (moved from 31st to 18th) in the point standings - the most of any driver. Points Since Pepsi 400 At Daytona On July 3, 1999 (Race 17) 1. Tony Stewart 1637 2. Dale Jarrett 1602 3. Jeff Gordon 1571 4. Mark Martin 1560 5. Dale Earnhardt 1550 6. Bobby Labonte 1526 7. Jeff Burton 1450 8. Rusty Wallace 1342 9. Steve Park 1329 10. J. Spencer 1252 Have You Thought About The May Race In Charlotte: "Yes. About every ten minutes ever since that night. Seriously, it became a little easier to take once we started finishing better. You have to look at that as a learning experience. Once you accept that you did some good and learned some lessons that night, that it wasn't a total failure, then you can feel good about what happened. You dream of leading a race like we did at Charlotte. It was like time stood still. I'd look in the rear view mirror and that second place car seemed to be getting further and further away and I was thinking that this is really cool. :Everyone asks why we did so well there. I don't know. I like Charlotte, and our Pennzoil car was a great car. I really can't explain it any better than that. I knew it was a 600-mile race and wasn't trying to push the car too hard. But a lap car came up on me and I just got into Jeremy (Mayfield) and lost it. I told someone after the race that the mental pain of that was worse than breaking my leg last year. Looking back on it, I don't think I'd go that far, but it sure hurt to lose that race Sunday night. I woke up the next day and felt a little better about the whole thing. We are taking baby steps. We've learned to lead now it's time to learn to win. We'll get there." Describe the Second Half of Your Season: "I told someone the other day we are going to change our name from the Pennzoil team to the Jeffersons from the old television show. Because just like the Jeffersons we are moving on up to the big time! "If you look at the point standings since Daytona you can see that we have done quite well. When we showed Earnhardt that he said "that doesn't matter they count everything since February." He's right, but we were 34th in the points after Daytona in July and we really had a choice to make. We could throw in the towel and sulk and tell everyone how good we were going to be in 2000 or we could go out and try to make things better. That's what we've done. When you are struggling in this sport its very easy to get frustrated and blame others but we held together pretty good and now we have turned things around. Look at the guys we have outscored in the second half of the season. I hope we can keep this up and then go to Daytona and be as good for a whole season as we have been in the second half of this season."