Gamble gives Compton top-five, but not victory

DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Stacy Compton knew that coming into Monday's race 25th in the NASCAR Busch Series standings, he had no choice but to take an extreme measure in trying to win.

	Stacy Compton Credit: Autostock

On the last round of pit stops with less than 25 laps to go, Compton's ST Motorsports team opted not to stop in order to gain track position. Compton took the lead for the first time on lap 124 of 147 in the darlingtonraeway.com 200.

In the end, three cars with better tires passed him in the last three laps, including race winner Todd Bodine, who took the lead with a spectacular three-wide pass in Turn 2 on lap 145.

"We figured out what he was doing," Bodine said. "You never knew if you'd have enough time to catch him, but on that old of a tire you lose a lot of time. I wasn't worried about Stacy (because) I figured we'd catch him."

But a fourth-place finish in his No. 59 Chevrolet was fine for Compton as it earned him his first top-10 of the season -- and his first top-five in six races.

"We knew it was a big gamble (and) we knew they were going to run us down," Compton said. "We thought we had a big enough lead to stay up front but we were a little short.

"To come away from Darlington with a top-five, we needed that in points. It certainly helps."

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Compton is starting only his second full season in the Busch Series and ST Motorsports had high hopes of improvinf on its 2002 season, when they were ninth in points.

So far this season he had finished 38th at Daytona, 22nd at Rockingham and 15th at Las Vegas, his first lead lap finish of the season.

"We've had a good race car a lot this year -- we've just been snake-bit," Compton said after his gamble resulted in a gain of eight spots in the standings, up to 17th. "It looks like hopefully our luck has started to change. We needed this.

"You're a sitting duck out there with old tires. Steve (Plattenberger, crew chief) kept telling me where they were. For a while, I thought we were going to be ok.

"I was hoping they were going to get into traffic and battle pretty hard and give us a little breathing room. I knew they were coming and it was a matter of time and we just ran out of laps."