Ford 400 - Bobby Labonte Notes

ALL SMILES: LABONTE RECALLS CHAMPIONSHIP CLINCHER AT HOMESTEAD

Bobby Labonte is one of the few people who know exactly what newly crowned Winston Cup champ Matt Kenseth is experiencing this week.

Kenseth clinched his first Winston Cup championship in the Pop Secret 400 at North Carolina Speedway. On November 12, 2000, Labonte claimed his first title at the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of Sunday's Ford 400.

Labonte fondly recalls that November weekend in south Florida.

"We qualified good and ran good," Labonte said of his fourth place finish in the race. "We won the championship down there. I about fumbled the trophy, which was a bad thing. I gathered it back and didn't drop anything.

"I'll never forget. We did a lot of TV stuff and I stayed in my fire suit for hours. It was drenched with champagne. We ended up finally leaving the racetrack around 10 p.m. It wasn't just getting the trophy and leaving. My wife and I and the kids stopped at Wendy's on the way home. We went through the drive-through and got our burgers and got on the airplane and went home."

Labonte added that he didn't realize how much pressure he had been under until the big trophy was his to keep.

"The next day I was at home," Labonte said. "You (the media) should have been there because Monday after the championship, I didn't realize how much I had actually lied throughout the year. Everybody always asked me about the pressure and I always said I didn't have any pressure at all. Now the pressure is lifted off my shoulders on Monday. What do I do now? On Monday I'm at home and I didn't have anything to do.

"I was playing pool in the basement by myself. My wife called and asked what I was doing. I told her I was playing pool. She asked me with who I was playing with. I said, 'Me.' Nobody called me. My brother-in-law and I went out and bought about 10 bottles of champagne and we were going to have a party. But my wife got home and said we had to do this and we had to do that and so we never had a party until about the third week in December. The champagne was plenty chilled.

"But it was interesting how it went. All this stuff was built up and then on Monday, I had to find things to do. It was kind of a relief because the pressure was off. But it was a neat deal. Winning the championship in 2000 was something I'll never forget. I'll never forget the highs and the lows and the post-championship throughout the year and being the reigning champion in 2001 and being able to do things for Winston after that. It was exciting. It's definitely a dream come true to win the championship, and these guys (R.J. Reynolds) made it all worthwhile. I just want to that them for that."

Labonte and the Interstate Batteries Racing Team have plenty to race for this weekend. He sits eighth in Winston Cup points, 46 ahead of ninth place Bill Elliott. In four previous starts at Homestead, Labonte has posted three top-10 finishes, including a second place finish in 1999 where he also led the most laps.

Labonte says that his season has been good and feels like the team has a good base to build upon for 2004 and beyond.

"There have been two halves to our season," Labonte said. "Our first half was a whole lot better than our second half has been. But at the same time, I'm not going to complain about it because we've had some circumstances that were out of our control. We'd like to change the ones that weren't and we can't change the ones that were. But we feel we've got a great base from this first season with all the changes we've had in our race team. I feel real encouraged with everything we've done to this point. We can be greedy and always want to win more races and have more top fives and be higher up in points. We're going to be. But we can't do anything about that now. But we're excited. We've got great personnel and great cars. Everything is going good. We are just in the middle of things and we need to tweak it up just a little bit. The competition is so close that if you move a tenth of a second for this race and the next race, all of a sudden you're a lot better. We just need to turn it up a notch and we'd be a lot more competitive. But I give my guys an A-plus. We came back from a disappointing season last year and finished outside of the top 10 in points for the first time in a long time. This year, we're back in eighth place right now. We feel like we can be competitive."

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