The biggest pleasure Rusty Wallace took from Sunday's victory in the Miller Genuine Draft 400 was giving team owner Roger Penske something he had never gotten before - a victory at his own Michigan International Speedway.
"That makes me so happy, I can't even tell you," said Wallace, who was even more bubbly than usual after overcoming a near-disastrous late pit stop to win his third straight race and continue to close the gap on Winston Cup points leader Ernie Irvan.Wallace, who earned $66,980, gave Penske his eighth straight victory - three in Winston Cup and five on the Indy-car circuit.
"It takes a while to win sometimes, and Rusty's had some excellent runs here," said Penske, who bought the Michigan track in 1973. "He won a lot here before we put our team together (in 1991), but the competition today is so tough, and on this track anybody can get up front. But, today, everybody saw him run from about 13th or 14th, and that showed he was the class of the field."
Irvan again was strongly competitive, leading twice for nine laps, but fell victim for the second straight race to an engine problem. He finished 18th, driving the last part of the event on seven cylinders.
That finish left him with a 78-point lead over Dale Earnhardt, who came into the race trailing by 139 and finished second to Wallace for the second straight week. Wallace remained third, but cut the margin from 295 to 224.
"We keep winning races and finishing races and the points will come," Wallace said. "We've still got 17 races to go."
The 1989 NASCAR Winston Cup champion was leading defending series winner Earnhardt when the leaders made their final pit stop on lap 176 during the seventh caution period of the race.
The yellow flag came out just as Wallace was slowing to make his final stop. He went one more lap and, as he drove slowly onto pit road, his engine quit, out of gas. As the Penske South Racing crew changed tires and filled the gas tank, crew chief Buddy Parrott sprayed ether into the engine compartment as Wallace tried to get the engine restarted.
By the time the crew pushed him about 10 yards, with Parrott taking a tumble on pit road, the engine fired and Wallace moved back onto the two-mile, high-banked oval 11th among the 12 cars on the lead lap. Only Jeff Gordon, who made a second stop because of an oil leak, was behind Wallace when the green flag came out 19 laps from the end of the 200-lap race.
Wallace, who won at Dover and Pocono the previous two weeks and has five victories for the season and 36 for his career, sliced through the thick traffic. He was sixth by lap 186, third the next time around, moved to second on lap 192 and passed Earnhardt for the lead with three laps remaining.
He pulled away after that, leaving Earnhardt to fend off Mark Martin for second place. Wallace crossed the finish line 0.72 seconds, about three car-lengths, ahead.
"That was the hardest last 15-20 laps I've ever run in my life," Wallace said. "I can't believe I was like 12th or 13th and passed 'em all.
"The car was double-tough," added Wallace, who led three times for 83 laps. "We worked real hard on our shocks and engine comination today and (engine-builder) David Evans, you guys are bad to the bone. Your engine's a killer."
Earnhardt said, "It was a good battle at the end. I was racing Mark. I wanted to be racing Rusty, though.
"We gained some points on Ernie today, and that's the second straight week we've done that," the six-time champion added. "It looks like it's going to be a battle to the wire, and Rusty keeps chipping away."
The winner's average speed of 125.033 mph was held down considerably by 56 laps of caution, most caused by a treacherous patch of repaved track in turn three.