2000 Kmart 400 at Michigan

You can, if you are leading the right ones. Tony Stewart led 13 laps of the 2000 Kmart 400 at Michigan. Jeremy Mayfield led 85. Bobby Labonte, Stewart's teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, led 39 from the pole. But the race did not go 200 laps. Rain arrived in the closing stretch, and when NASCAR stopped it the No. 20 Pontiac was out front. Wikipedia's infobox scores the race at 194 laps and 388 miles of a scheduled 400; the text of the article says Stewart held off the field until lap 193, when the race was halted. The two numbers are a lap apart, and this archive notes the difference rather than choosing between them. What is not in doubt is the result. Stewart, who had started 28th, was credited with his fifth career Winston Cup win and his second of the season, one week after leading 242 laps at Dover.

A race called for rain once it has passed halfway is official, and Michigan on that Sunday was six laps from the end. There is no restart, no green-white-checkered, and no second chance for the cars behind. The drivers who had positioned themselves for a late charge, and there were several, went home with whatever position they held when the field was frozen. The average speed for the shortened distance was 143.926 miles per hour.

Dale Earnhardt finished second for Richard Childress Racing, his best result in the four races this archive covers between May and July 2000, all of which he finished inside the top ten. Bobby Labonte was third, which kept both Gibbs cars in the top three for the second week running. The surprise of the day was Robert Pressley, who brought the Jasper Motorsports Ford from 31st on the grid to fifth and led five laps doing it. Sterling Marlin started 39th and finished tenth.

Jeremy Mayfield, who led 85 laps, more than anyone, is not in the top ten. The Wikipedia article gives his lap count in the infobox but does not narrate what happened to him, and this archive will not guess. Nor does the article give a margin of victory or a caution count, which is common for a rain-shortened race where the finish came under a red flag.

The moment of the weekend that people remembered came before the race. About 38 minutes into the fourth practice session, Elliott Sadler blew a right-rear tire on the Wood Brothers Ford. The car got sideways, lifted, and went over. The Wikipedia article describes it as a blowover crash and says the car flipped around a dozen times. Michigan is a two-mile D-shaped oval where the cars run near 190 miles per hour on the straights, and a tire failure at that speed at the wrong angle will put air under a stock car. Sadler came out of it bruised, the team rolled out the backup, and he started the race on Sunday.

A right-rear tire let go in practice and Elliott Sadler's Ford went over about a dozen times. He raced the backup car the next day.

Qualifying went to Bobby Labonte, whose lap of 37.918 seconds worked out to 189.883 miles per hour, a pole for the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Pontiac. Three drivers failed to make the field: Darrell Waltrip, Ricky Craven, and Dave Marcis. The original Racin.net posted the first, second, and third practice sheets from this weekend, ranked lists of each car's best lap and speed. No practice speed from those sheets is repeated here, because the sheets themselves are gone and the Wikipedia article does not carry them for Michigan.

One more detail from the day. The race began on CBS, but the rain delay pushed it past the network's window and coverage switched to TNN. Mike Joy called the laps with Ned Jarrett and Buddy Baker alongside him, the same booth that would work the Pepsi 400 at Daytona three weeks later.