Daytona: A shot in the arm for several drivers

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - If the names in the top four of the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway looked a little funny, perhaps they should be.

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And you thought you heard the last of the veterans. They may have had to do it a different way, but what's that line about old age and treachery?

OK, none of those guys are "old" -- Burton is 36, Rudd and Labonte are both 46 -- but they certainly drove like wily, old veterans Saturday night.

They each played the fuel-mileage game and won, almost.

Greg Biffle  His win at Daytona was easily his best career finish -- his previous best came at Bristol this spring, when he ran fifth.

"You out those helmets on, and everybody's about the same age, the same size," Rudd said. "I don't get caught up in the age thing too much.

"But it was kind of interesting the way the whole thing turned out."

You can't always outrun everyone, so sometimes you have to try another avenue. Their fuel strategy started earlier in the race, under caution for The Little One on laps 74-78.

Everyone had pitted under caution on lap 64, so a bunch of cars decided to stay on the track under the next yellow.

Jeff Burton  Jeff Burton finished second for his best run since Nov. 2001, when he won at Phoenix. Burton's previous best finish of the year came at Martinsville, when he finished fourth.

Labonte and Burton changed four tires and added fuel on lap 74, and then Labonte and Rudd topped off the tanks on lap 78.

"We came in and put on four tires under the caution just before it, and then that caution came out," Burton said. "It looked like with enough caution laps, that would get us to the end.

"Unfortunately, we didn't get quite enough caution laps to be able to run hard, so when we came out of the pits, (crew chief) Paul (Andrews) immediately said, 'Hey listen, we're short. We can't go the whole way. If we don't get enough cautions, you've got to save fuel.'"

So Burton saved fuel for the final 82 laps of the race. He made a green-flag stop for right-side tires and gas with 43 laps to go, and then went back to conservation mode. That's a long way to go on one tank of fuel, but you gotta go what you gotta do.

Ricky Rudd  Ricky Rudd's third-place run at Daytona was his best finish for the Wood Brothers in 2003. It was the Wood Brothers' best finish since March 2002, when Elliott Sadler was runner-up at Darlington.

"At the end of it, I was running half-throttle a tremendous amount of the time," Burton said. "I would have liked to have been there giving Greg (Biffle) a run at it, but we played the cards we had to play, and we did what we needed to do."

And it got Burton his best finish since winning at Phoenix in 2001.

"Our team is a good team, and we just haven't been putting finishes together," said Burton, whose best previous finish this season was fourth at Martinsville. "This is good for us. We ran well tonight. We not only finished well, but we ran well.

"I thought we had a top-10 car all night. We ended up probably getting a little more than we deserved, but there have been a whole lot of races where we didn't get as much as we thought we deserved."

Still, Burton admitted his team has "got some improving to do."

Terry Labonte  Terry Labonte's fourth-place run was his best in over a year -- he was third at Sonoma in 2002. Labonte has finished in the top 25 for 11 straight races.

"I mean, we can't say, 'Hey, we finished second and everything is great,'" Burton said. "We still have to find some speed and make these things go better if we're gonna get up there and compete for wins like the DEI cars and the way it looks like Childress has."

Rudd knows his team has got to get better, too. His season has been a disappointment, to say the least.

"If we get to the end of the race, we're gonna be an eighth- to 12th-place car," Rudd said. "We're not a winning car or a top-five car yet, but we feel like we're an eighth- to 12th- to 15th-place car every week.

"We haven't had the finishing results to show for that, and therefore, we're way back in the points. These guys needed a shot in the arm, and this is the kind of finish that will give it to them."

	Ricky Rudd Credit: Autostock

Rudd's strategy was a little different than Burton's and Labonte's. He stayed on the track under the final caution to get track position. But the Wood Brothers decided to give that up for some gas on lap 78, just before the green flag.

"We finally got a little track position, and then we elected to give it up just so we could know we could stretch the distance," Rudd said. "It was hard at the time. The driver, he's saying, 'Man, we just finally got some track position and you're gonna give it away.' As it turns out, it was a real smart call."

Rudd's last stop came with 41 laps to go, and as most everyone else pitted again down the stretch, Rudd persevered to third. Rudd's best previous finish this season was fourth at Bristol.

	Terry Labonte moved to 13th in the standings Credit: Autostock

"Hopefully, it turns around," Rudd said. "We've got a long way to go. This season is pretty tough and pretty grueling. We're in a much bigger hole than we wanted to be, but we've still got a long ways to go. If we can go out and win a race anytime between now and the next 10-15 races, it will be a great season for us.

"We haven't given up. We're out here trying as hard as we can. We're not here just to tag along with the field. We want to be able to come up front and try to compete. We haven't been able to do that this year, but I don't think we'll be satisfied until we do. We've got a long way to go yet."

Labonte's team doesn't seem to have as far to go. He's had four top-10 finishes in 2003 before Daytona, compared to four all last year.

"We've had some really good runs," Labonte said. "We've got a really strong team. These guys on this Kellogg's team are doing a great job. They're bringing good cars to the race track every week, and that's what it takes."

	Jeff Burton snapped a five-race streak where he had finished no better than 14th. Credit: Autostock

At Daytona, it took a decision to pit twice under the last caution for Labonte to survive to a top-five. He had pitted for four tires and fuel on lap 74 but crew chief Jim Long brought him back in - like Rudd - four laps later.

Then came a two-tire stop with 41 laps to go.

"Our car really wasn't all that fast," Labonte said. "It was hard to get track position, so we tried to do it on pit strategy a little bit, just getting two tires, stuff like that.

"We were getting good enough mileage that we tried and played the mileage game and topped off there on that one caution flag so we could stretch it and just make one stop, and some of the guys had to make two."

So Labonte ended up beating the guys who had to pit a second time, and he topped his best previous finish of fifth at Talladega. He'll take it, but like Burton and Rudd, he wants more.

"We really weren't happy with this car," Labonte said. "We need one a little bit faster."

Faster is better, but at least for one race, the veterans showed there's more than one way to beat Daytona.