Yates’ Team Lands a One-Two Punch

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. —  Fords dominated qualifying for the Daytona 500 Saturday with Yates Racing teammates Dale Jarrett and Ricky Rudd taking front-row positions for next Sunday’s Great American Race at Daytona International Raceway.

Jarrett, coming off his first Winston Cup championship season, took his Ford Taurus around the high banked, 2.5-mile tri-oval at 191.091 mph, a speed slowed because of a capricious breeze and new rules regulating shocks and springs. Last year’s pole-sitter, Jeff Gordon, ran 195.067.

Bill Elliott’s pre-restrictor plate record (from 1987) is 210.364.

Rudd, making his first start for Robert Yates after disbanding his independent team last year, came in at 190.384, only a fraction ahead of Elliott, who surprised even himself with a 190.319 mph lap.

“It’s awesome,” Yates said. “You only have two spots that are given out today and we got to capture both of them. There’s nothing like this. Now we can focus and concentrate on our cars and our chassis for the 500.”

Mike Skinner took advantage of being the 55th and final qualifier when winds had subsided to become the fastest Chevrolet driver at 189.781. Ward Burton (189.633) was the fastest Pontiac.

Two crowd favorites, Dale Earnhardt and Gordon, showed up in strange looking Chevrolets and posted disappointing times. Earnhardt, with a bright red paint job, is 17th at 188.588, while Gordon, no longer a Rainbow Warrior in a battleship gray No. 24, slid to 23rd at 188.166.

“That lap was not Dale Jarrett, it was Todd Parrott’s aero work and Robert and Doug Yates’ engine,” said Jarrett, still drawing curious stares after having shaved off his trademark mustache.

“Anybody who doesn’t mind going close to 200 miles an hour can get in that car. You have to know the exact spots to hit on the race track, but I can go out there and show you. I’d like to take some credit, but I can’t. This is all the crew that did this.”

Jarrett also won the pole for the 1995 Daytona 500, but he said, “I hope things turn out better this time because in ’95 I didn’t lead a single lap.”

Only Jarrett and Rudd are assured of their positions in the 500, no matter how they fare in Thursday’s Gatorade 125-mile qualifying races.

The other 41 starting berths depend one way or another on the outcome of Thursday’s two races. Positions 3 through 30 will be based on Thursday finishes, with 31 through 36 determined by final qualifying times. The last five spots will be filled as provisionals from the 1999 Winston Cup owner points standings.

Ford drivers and NASCAR officials anticipated cries of foul from Chevrolet teams after the qualifying results.

“You’ve got to understand that you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Jarrett said. “They could make a rule change while we are here, and it could equal things up. But when we get into race conditions, I don’t think you’ll see the disparity in the speeds then.

“From what I’ve seen in Bud Shootout practice, the Chevrolets are every bit as good, if not a little better, through the corners. I think when we get to race day, you will hear a lot of that calm down.”

Mike Helton, NASCAR senior vice president, indicated a concern, but warned against a hasty change.

“We are not prepared to react at this point,” Helton said. “We don’t think the qualifying for the Daytona 500 is by itself enough hard data to be convincing enough for us to react to, but we will continue to monitor the information as it plays out.”

In his mind might be the fact that Chevrolets have won six of the last seven Daytona 500s.

Scott Pruett, driving Cal Wells’ PPI Motorsports Ford, was the fastest rookie with a 189.470 mph lap, ninth overall.

“It’s big,” Pruett said of the new team’s accomplishment. “Tide moved over to [Wells] program in September, so the team really started putting things together. Everything is new. New cars, new equipment, everything you see is new and they’ve been burning the midnight oil every day seven days a week to get here to Daytona. And to run as well as we did, my hat’s off to those guys.”

He did, however, have a Robert Yates-built engine in his Taurus.

Curiously, in Pruett’s final race with CART last November, he was the top qualifier for the Marlboro 500 at California Speedway with a lap of 235.5 mph in a Toyota-Reynard.

“It’s significantly different,” Pruett said of the two series. “The Reynard is about 2000 pounds less than the Ford. One good thing about this team is that it blends good experienced Winston Cup personnel with technology-based Indy car personnel.”

Dave Blaney, making the transition to Winston Cup after winning the World of Outlaws sprint car championship in 1995, was the second-fastest rookie in 10th position in a Pontiac.

“We reached our objective, which was to get as far up as we could in case we got in trouble Thursday,” said Blaney, who would feel more at home if Daytona was a dirt oval.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most heralded of the seven rookie-of-the-year candidates, qualified 22nd, a notch ahead of Gordon, at 188.202.

“I wish we could have run a little faster, but that was about a 10th-and-a-half faster than we practiced,” said Earnhardt Jr., who drives a Chevrolet owned by his father, the seven-time Winston Cup champion. “I worked real hard trying to put my two cents in, so it ain’t that we didn’t try.”

Robby Gordon, like Pruett making a switch from open-wheel CART cars to stockers, is 31st and in danger of missing the 500 if his Ford doesn’t run well on Thursday.

“Obviously, we’re not toward the sharp end of the grid, but we’re comfortable and we can run our way into the Daytona 500 from here and, hopefully, have a decent week.”

Gordon, who owns his team with John Menard and Mike Held, is still unsponsored.

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The Facts

* What: Speed Weeks 2000.

* Where: Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Fla.

* When: Through Feb. 20.

* Schedule: Today, Bud Shootout, ARCA 200. Thursday, Gatorade 125 qualifying races. Friday, Craftsman Truck 250, IROC. Saturday, NAPA Auto Parts 300 Busch Grand National. Feb. 20, Daytona 500.

* Prize money: $9,291,741 for Daytona 500, $1,403,215 for Busch Grand National.

* Defending 500 winner: Jeff Gordon.

* TV: Today, Bud Shootout, 9 a.m., Channel 2; ARCA 200, 10:30 a.m., ESPN. Friday, Craftsman Truck 250, 8 a.m., ESPN. Saturday, Busch Grand National, 9 a.m., Channel 2. Feb. 20, Daytona 500, 9 a.m., Channel 2.