2000 Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond

The decisive moment came on pit road, not on the track. On the final round of stops, the No. 8 crew at Dale Earnhardt, Inc. put four fresh tires on Earnhardt Jr.'s Chevrolet while the front of the field had other ideas, and that call carried a rookie to his second career Winston Cup victory. He had led only 31 laps all night. Rusty Wallace, who had led 227 of them from the pole in the Penske-Kranefuss Ford, came home fifth. That is the short version of the 2000 Pontiac Excitement 400, and it is a tidy lesson in how a Saturday night at Richmond gets decided.

Richmond in 2000 was a 0.75-mile D-shaped oval, big enough for two grooves and small enough that track position mattered more than raw speed. Four hundred laps over 300 miles is a long evening on a short track: the field runs through several full fuel cycles, and every green-flag stop or caution-flag stop reshuffles the order. A crew chief who takes two tires gains spots on pit road and risks giving them back on the track; a crew chief who takes four loses spots and bets on catching up. Earnhardt Jr.'s crew took the second bet, and over the closing laps it paid. The car had enough grip to work through the two-tire cars ahead of it and stay in front once it got there.

The winner's purse was listed at $118,850. The average speed of the race was 99.374 miles per hour, which sounds slow next to a superspeedway number but is what 400 laps on a three-quarter-mile track with green-flag racing and pit cycles produces. The win was Earnhardt Jr.'s second and, as things turned out, final points win of the 2000 season.

The top ten tells the story of a race that scrambled its running order late. Terry Labonte started 30th and finished second. Jeff Burton started 29th and finished seventh. Dale Earnhardt started 31st and worked up to tenth in the Richard Childress Chevrolet, leading 19 laps along the way. Wallace and Tony Stewart, who together led 296 of the 400 laps, finished fifth and eighth. Positions and laps led below are taken from the race's Wikipedia results table.

Both Robert Yates Racing Fords, Jarrett in the No. 88 and Rudd in the No. 28, finished in the top four without leading a lap, which is the kind of result that comes from staying on the lead lap and being in position when the last cycle of stops shakes out. The article does not record a margin of victory, a caution count, or the number of lead changes, so this archive does not state them.

The Racin.net pages Wikipedia cites for this event were the second and third practice sheets, and the Wikipedia article carries the fastest lap from each session. Four practices ran across Friday and Saturday. Steve Park was quickest in the first, at 21.753 seconds. Ricky Rudd topped the second at 21.751. Kyle Petty led the third on Saturday morning at 22.193, and Todd Bodine was fastest in the final session, the one the garage calls Happy Hour, at 22.224. The slower Saturday numbers are normal: teams spend that day in race trim, running longer stints on used tires, rather than chasing one fast lap.

Qualifying belonged to Rusty Wallace. His lap of 21.645 seconds, 124.740 miles per hour, put the No. 2 Ford on the pole. Four drivers went home without a starting spot: Rick Mast, Darrell Waltrip, Dave Marcis, and Ed Berrier. ESPN carried the race with Bob Jenkins, Benny Parsons, and Ned Jarrett in the booth.

Rusty Wallace led 227 laps from the pole. The trophy went to a rookie who led 31 and took four tires when it counted.

If you are new to the sport, a practice sheet is a ranked list of every car's best lap in a session, with time and speed. It is not a prediction. The fastest car on Friday afternoon can be nowhere on Saturday night, and this race is a fair example: of the four drivers who topped a practice session, only Ricky Rudd finished in the top ten, and the winner was not on that list at all.