Unless Rainbow Fades in Title Sprint, Color Gordon Gone

Only two races remain on NASCAR’s 31-race Winston Cup schedule and only one question remains: Can either Mark Martin or Dale Jarrett stop Jeff Gordon and the Rainbow Warriors from winning their second championship?

Gordon has a 125-point lead over Martin, with Jarrett 20 points behind Martin, as the teams head to Phoenix International Raceway

for Sunday’s Dura-Lube 500, a 312-mile race on a mile oval. The season will end Nov. 16 in Atlanta.

“Nobody on our team is kidding themselves,” Martin said. “What happens as far as the championship is concerned depends totally on Jeff Gordon and his team. No matter what we do, they are going to decide things. If they run pretty well and finish in the top 10 the last two races, it doesn’t matter what we do or what Dale Jarrett does.”

If Gordon finishes 13th or better in the two races, he will be the one collecting the $1.5-million bonus at the New York City awards banquet.

“But, hey, if something happens and they have some bad luck, then we’ll have a shot at it,” Martin added. “Things can happen. The way this season has gone, you never know. This time of the year, the restarts are a little wilder, the racing gets a little tighter. The tempers get a little shorter.”

Gordon, whose 10 victories include the Daytona 500, the inaugural race at California Speedway and the Winston Million at Darlington, is not spending his money yet.

“I don’t think we’ll clinch it at Phoenix,” he said. “We have a little bit of breathing room, but not much. We’d just like to be in a comfortable position when we go to Atlanta.”

Gordon’s record at Phoenix includes three top-five finishes in four starts. He finished 35th in the other one.

“A win there would be great, since that’s one place we’ve never won, but we’re going to focus on the big picture and that means finishing among the top five,” he said.

Even Martin, though, realizes that Gordon’s domination should be rewarded.

“It would be a shame, in a way, if Gordon didn’t win with the performance they have given this year,” Martin said. “But we would like to be the ones who spoil that.”

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The Winston Cup isn’t the only NASCAR championship that could be won this weekend at Phoenix.

Chevrolet driver Jack Sprague, who has won the last three Craftsman truck races in Phoenix, will be back on his favorite track Saturday in an attempt to clinch the series title in the Goodwrench-Delco Battery 300. The Michigan native has a 121-point lead over Rich Bickle and can become champion by finishing 14th or better in the season’s final two races, Saturday and Nov. 8 at Las Vegas--even if Bickle wins both.

Mike Bliss drove his Ford to a record-breaking lap of 127.741 mph on Thursday to win the pole, his third in a row. Bliss was a runaway winner in the tour’s most recent race, at California Speedway.

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Bryan Germone needs only to finish 26th or better in today’s final NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour event at Phoenix to win the series championship. Germone, from Windsor, Calif., has finished second twice in the standings, to Chris Raudman in 1996 and Steve Portenga in 1994. The RE/MAX 300K is 186 laps on the mile oval.

FORMULA ONE

Michael Schumacher, going into the final race with a one-point lead, had winning the championship all figured out: Knock the other contending driver out in a two-car collision and automatically become the champion.

It worked in 1994, when Damon Hill sought to overtake the German driver with an inside pass during the Australian Grand Prix, only to end up on the sideline with a broken suspension and Schumacher in the wall.

The scenario last Sunday going into the European Grand Prix in Spain was the same. Schumacher led Jacques Villeneuve by one point.

On Lap 48, Villeneuve moved to pass Schumacher and appeared to be more than halfway past when Schumacher turned his red Ferrari into the side of the Canadian’s Williams Renault. The Ferrari rebounded into a gravel pit, unable to continue.

Surprisingly, though, despite having taken a hard hit, Villeneuve’s car was not seriously damaged and he continued on, finishing third and winning the championship.

“I’m surprised I finished the race,” Villeneuve said. “The way he hit me was really, really hard. Either Michael had his eyes closed or his hands slid on the steering wheel or something. Actually, I wasn’t surprised. It was a little expected.”

Before the race, Eddie Irvine, Schumacher’s Ferrari teammate, had said he would deliberately block Villeneuve if it would help his team win. Race officials warned drivers that they would not tolerate such conduct.

However, when Irvine was not able to get close to Villeneuve, Schumacher apparently decided to take matters into his own hands.

“It’s part of the game,” Schumacher said of the incident.

The FIA, governing body of Formula One, apparently doesn’t agree. It has asked the two-time champion to appear at a special meeting in Paris on Nov. 11 to explain his actions.

In 1994, the last-race collision was overshadowed when Schumacher dedicated the championship to his idol, Ayrton Senna, whose death in midseason had left motor racing in a state of shock.

SPRINT CARS

When Richard Griffin won the Quaker State Classic two weeks ago in Phoenix, it gave the Silver City, N.M., driver the Sprint Car Racing Assn. points lead. With three races remaining, starting Saturday night at Perris Auto Speedway, Griffin has a 24-point lead, 1,921 to 1,897, over defending champion Ron Shuman. The other two races are Nov. 8 at the Imperial Raceway in El Centro and Nov. 22 at Perris.

LAST LAPS

Seven drivers remain in contention for the International Road Racing Assn. championship as the season winds up Saturday with a pair of 50-mile races at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond.

Keith Clark, in a Chevrolet, is the leader, but also with a shot at the title are Austin Cameron, Auggie Vidovich, Andy Coyle, Mark Austin and Al Sadler, all in Chevies, and Doc Fautina, in a Pontiac. The two races will be held back to back, with a 15-minute break in between.