2000 Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 at Rockingham

North Carolina Speedway, the 1.017-mile oval everyone calls Rockingham, hosted the 36th running of its fall race on October 22, 2000, scheduled for 393 laps and 399.681 miles. The day averaged 110.418 mph. Mayfield had put the No. 12 Penske-Kranefuss Ford on the pole on Friday at 23.269 seconds, 157.342 mph, and he was the class of the field for most of the afternoon with 169 laps led, far more than anyone else. Jeff Burton led 115 in the No. 99. Dale Jarrett and Rusty Wallace led 43 apiece, Ricky Rudd 13, Jeff Gordon 4 and Steve Park 2. In the last 43 laps Jarrett made a pass for the lead and held off the field, with Gordon second and Rudd third. Burton, Wallace, Park, Tony Stewart, Ward Burton, Bobby Hamilton and Joe Nemechek filled out a top ten that finished together on the lead lap. Mayfield, meanwhile, was classified 29th, running at the end but six laps down with 387 completed; the Wikipedia article gives no reason, and this page will not guess at one. Kenny Wallace's No. 55 lasted 14 laps before the engine failed, the earliest exit of the day. Jarrett's win was his 24th in the series, worth $125,850 and 180 points, and the article describes it as his second and final win of the 2000 season. For the reader new to the sport, a race like this is a reminder that leading laps and winning are separate skills, and that a box score can tell you what happened without telling you why.

The order below is from the Wikipedia race article, which also records laps led. Positions eleven through twenty went to Johnny Benson Jr., Robert Pressley, Rick Mast, Mike Skinner, Ricky Craven, Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Ken Schrader, Elliott Sadler and Bobby Labonte, the last of them one lap down.

Mayfield led 169 laps and was scored 29th. Jarrett led 43 and was scored first.

Mayfield's pole lap of 23.269 seconds was followed on the grid by Bobby Labonte at 23.283, Jeff Gordon and Bill Elliott level at 23.364, Mark Martin at 23.399, Jeff Burton at 23.412, Joe Nemechek at 23.423, Mike Skinner at 23.434, Ward Burton at 23.441 and Kenny Wallace at 23.449. Five drivers failed to make the field: Ted Musgrave, Rich Bickle, Steve Grissom, Hut Stricklin and Stacy Compton. Wikipedia's article also keeps the practice results, which is what lets this page describe the three sessions the old Racin.net published sheets for.

• Practice 1, Friday October 20, 10:30 a.m., one hour 45 minutes: Jeremy Mayfield at 23.223 seconds, 157.654 mph, quicker than his pole lap later the same day
• Practice 2, Saturday October 21, 8:00 a.m., one hour 30 minutes: Tony Stewart at 24.284 seconds, 150.766 mph
• Final practice, Saturday October 21, one hour: Kurt Busch at 24.275 seconds, 150.822 mph

Those three sessions map onto the three archived pages Wikipedia cites, /nascar/cup/races/00/rockingham/2/prac1.shtml through prac3.shtml, the '2' marking the second Rockingham race of the year. The full second between Friday and Saturday speeds is normal. Friday practice is qualifying trim, Saturday is race trim, and a car set up to run 393 laps is not set up to run one. This rebuild keeps the addresses so the citations resolve and does not reprint the original tables.

Rockingham was round 31 of 34, a week after Dale Earnhardt's win at Talladega on October 15 and two weeks before Phoenix, where Jeff Burton won on November 5. Tony Stewart then won at Homestead and Jerry Nadeau at Atlanta to close the year. Bobby Labonte, who would take the championship, finished 20th here and a lap down, and Earnhardt was 17th, so the race did nothing to reorder the title fight, which Labonte settled over the last three weekends. TNN televised it with Eli Gold, Buddy Baker and Dick Berggren. Matt Kenseth was the season's rookie of the year. The old Racin.net covered the weekend the way it covered every Cup weekend that autumn, with a speed sheet after each practice session, and it is those three sheets, not a race report, that Wikipedia still points to when it cites the site for this event.