Labonte Finishes Fifth, Nears Championship

If you had asked Bobby Labonte before the Dura-Lube 500 if he would have been happy with a fifth-place, you probably would have gotten a mixed response. On one hand, Labonte knew what he needed to do to help secure his position atop the NASCAR Winston Cup Series point standings. On the other hand though, Labonte is a fierce competitor and looked at it like there were three races left and three opportunities to win, so anything less than that was a disappointment. When the checkered flag finally did fall in the Valley of the Sun, Labonte secured his 17th top-five finish of the season and increased his point lead by 17 points over Dale Earnhardt to 218 points with two races remaining on the schedule.

"It was pretty good," said Labonte. "Our Interstate Batteries Pontiac was decent all day long. We probably didn't have the best car all day, that's for sure. But at times we could have gotten a little bit better and it seemed like we just kept adjusting on it. It would get a little bit worse one way or the other way, tight or loose. It stayed about consistent with those guys on long runs - just a little bit off of them. But overall, that last caution that we had we got two tires and were able to finish fifth. That was better than we were before that. We were seventh."

For the second year in a row at the odd-shaped one-mile oval Labonte recorded a top-five finish. Prior to 1999, Labonte had recorded just two top-ten finishes in seven previous starts. The sudden success can quickly be attributed to teammate Tony Stewart and his crew chief Greg Zipadelli. Having run many races in open wheel cars at Phoenix, Stewart had a knack for being able to get around in a quick fashion.

"It was never a secret that we had not been real successful here until Tony came on board," commented Labonte. "We were fortunate that we unloaded pretty good and were able to adjust on the car all weekend. I'm not sure what happened to Tony, I really thought he would be up in the top-five, but apparently he had an off day."

While there were battles all over the track for position, one of the most watched was between Labonte, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Burton as they maneuvered and jockeyed for every position in the race for the championship. At any given time, they were on each other's bumpers and at other times, there were numerous positions between the competitors.

"It was pretty obvious," remarked Labonte. "You could see where they were at - one of them in front of you, one of them behind you, both of them in front of you and stuff like that. I saw where Jeff was all day. He was in front of me. Dale was behind me most of the day and in front of me a little bit. Then we got by him (Earnhardt) there on a pit stop and then he faded back there a little bit at the end. But we were pretty much aware of where everybody was. We were just still running our own race, trying to get that Interstate Batteries Pontiac a top-five finish and we succeeded in doing that. If we could have had a couple more laps we maybe could have finished a little bit better, but still we're happy with fifth."

If last year was any indication, look for Labonte to be a threat for the win this weekend under the South Florida skies. Be sure to watch Bobby and the Interstate Batteries Racing Team at the Pennzoil 400 at Miami-Homestead Speedway on Sunday, November 12th on NBC at 11:30 AM (CST).