The Charlotte Observer from Charlotte, North Carolina • 45

THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER Sunday March 18 1990 11C Rain Makes Practice A Pain For Hard-To-Handle Atlanta Motorsports By TOM HIGGINS Staff Wrifar HAMPTON Ga Dale Earnhardt Rusty Wallace and their NASCAR Winston Cup Series rivals will go into Motor-craft 500 almost cold uh wet turkey at Atlanta International Raceway Heavy rains which brought flooding to areas of Georgia on Friday night and Saturday morning forced cancellation of qualifying for the fourth race and limited practice at the 1522-mile speedway to approximately two hours Fastest unofficially in the second of two practice sessions was Earnhardt timed at 1729 mph in a Chevrolet Ken Schrader also in a Chevy was the only driver in the 172 range Ford drivers Mark Martin Bill Elliott and Alan Kul-wicki clocked laps at 171 mph along with Kyle Petty The lack of track time could be a critical factor when the 328-lap event starts at 1 pm (ABC WSOC-TV channel 9 in Charlotte) as the layout 30 miles south of Atlanta features steep sweeping turns that place special importance on chassis setups With so little practice to shake down the cars hardly any of the 40 starters are likely to have the handling exactly as like and major adjustments as the race progresses probably will be necessary for many practice we did get helped everyone set their engines for the Derrike Cope and Martin start 1 3th and 1 7th respectively Buddy Baker beginning a comeback bid after sitting out since August 1988 because of an injury lines up 22nd on the basis of team owner Junie points Baker warmed up with an unofficial lap of 170003 mph All-time victory leader Richard Petty a 200-race winner starts 32nd Among those left out of the lineup by the cancellation of qualifying were four-time Indianapolis 500 champion AJ Foyt and Greg Sacks hoping to make the first start for a new team owned by actor Paul Newman and Charlotte businessman Rick Hendrick know where run said Sacks got spun out by the rain but what happened is in the rule Darrell Waltrip is the defending champion taking over last March after dominant car was sidelined by a burned piston Earnhardt has won two of the last four and generally rates favorite on the basis of leading 294 of the 328 laps here in the Journal 500 en route to a whopping victory margin of 2757 seconds team is back with the same car and essentially the same setup said Earnhardt a three-time Winston Cup champion who leads Wallace by eight points Lineup in Update Page 14C cooler said Richard Childress pwner of the Earnhardt-driven Chevrolet beats going completely in the Not by much according to driver Sterling Marlin all we found out is that the wheels are said Marlin First round time trials originally were scheduled Friday However steady showers led to postponement until Saturday When the foul weather intensified overnight 55 inches of rain was recorded at nearby Hartsfield Airport it washed out the possibility of qualifying The asphalt racing surface was so wet that it took track crews most of Saturday morning to dry it out in time for the ARCA 500K preliminary race in the afternoon Elimination of time trials led NASCAR to set the starting lineup on the basis of current car-owner point standings This process put points leader Earnhardt on the pole with current Winston Cup champion Wallace alongside in his Pontiac Starting three through 10th will be Morgan Shepherd Ford Ricky Rudd Chevy Kyle Petty Pontiac Jimmy Spencer Pontiac Elliott Ford Darrell Waltrip Chevy Marlin Olds and Geoff Bodine Ford Petty is one of the three winners this season The others POLYCRYSTALINE PAINT JOB 95 you'll win $65000! 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