*Rockingham, NC*
In a tear filled moment Steve Park drove his #1 Pennzoil/DEI Monte Carlo the wrong way around the track in a "Polish Victory Lap" to celebrate his win at the Rock. With his arm extended in a salute, clutched in his hand was the #3 Dale Earnhardt cap worn by every NASCAR member this weekend. The Dura-Lube 400 turned into a 24 hour race that began on Sunday at noon and ran past noon on Monday due to a rainout. Jeff Gordon took the pole on the first try of the one round qualifying and Steve Park was able to grab the outside front row. As the cars got up to speed after taking the green flag Robbie Gordon in mid-pack made a quick dive down low heading to turn three and caused everyone behind to get bound up. Ron Hornaday was the slowest at slowing up and bumped Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in the rear sending him sliding high and collecting Mike and Kenny Wallace while Jimmy Spencer slid into it and got a little damage. In only 3/4 of a lap Junior was done for the day and the Wallace brothers were about finished, riding for a few point laps.

The yellow was out on lap 1 and as clean-up started so did the rain. The cars continued on the track to keep it dry with a return to green flag racing at lap 31. The restart had the top 5 running Gordon, Park, Tony Stewart, Ricky Rudd and Johnny Benson but only 15 laps later the rains returned and eventually rained the race out at lap 51 when the red flag flew.

Racing resumed Monday morning with Stacy Compton out front due to staying on the track when everyone else pitted. His ten minutes of fame lasted about 3 seconds as he quickly back pedaled through the field until disappearing in a cloud of dust. Taking over point was Gordon once more followed by Park, Stewart, Rudd and Bobby Labonte. From here on out it was your basic "no yellow" boring Rock race. The majority of the lead changes happened during green flag pit stops at between laps 120-135 and 190-210. The long green flag runs showed us that Jeff and Steve were definitely the fastest cars all day with Bobby Labonte and Johnny Benson getting strong as the tires wore.

Behind all the swapping for the lead between Park Gordon And Labonte, Ricky Craven was making as strong a run as I've seen for a while. He managed to get his Cal Wells #3 all the way from his prerace start of 41st to being comfortably planted in the top 10. A 3rd green flag run got us to lap 242 when the third caution of the race and the first of the day flew for Mike Skinner. Skinner, fighting a loose car all morning finally got high enough in the marbles to lose it and spin across the track. After a slight scrape by Jeff Burton down on the apron, both cars continued but the rest of the field was finally able to get a yellow flag pit stop to do some much needed changes.

Green flag racing at lap 249 saw Gordon still out front followed by Park, Labonte, Stewart and Rudd. This time, although Gordon had led the majority of the laps, it looked like Park was ready to show his cards. He wasted little time getting by Gordon and leading the field to lap 300 when the fourth caution flew for Stacy Compton smoke screen. The oil left behind by his blown engine called for track clean-up and pits for all.

This time it was Park getting his service fastest but as was true the first 3/4 of the race Gordon had the strength early. He slipped past Park and pulled away but Steve just had to wait for his tires to come in as he did all day. At lap 338 Park once more went by Gordon and this time set sail. Before long he had a couple second lead followed by Gordon, Labonte, Benson and Stewart. Labonte was also strong all day in longer runs and as the laps counted down and the green stayed out Park just cruised around waiting to celebrate and praying nothing was going to go wrong. With three laps left Labonte began to pressure Park from behind but try as he would he just couldn't get a run to get by.

And in a story book finish Steve Park won the race for Dale Earnhardt Inc., slowed at the start finish line and he and teammate Mike Waltrip took a victory lap holding their DE hats to the sky. I cried.

Kudos to Bobby Labonte (2nd) who probably could have pulled this one off with a few more laps, Jeff Gordon (3rd) who faded on the long runs and just couldn't hold the lead he had most of the race, Tony Stewart (4th) who had a 4th place car all day, Ricky Craven (5th) who gets my "Racer of the Day" award giving The Wells #32 it's first ever top 5, Johnny Benson (6th) who's knocking and if not before gets his first win at Dover (site of his first BGN win), Rusty Wallace (7th) who played the waiting game and surfaced late to get a top 10, Sterling Marlin (8th) and Dave Blaney (9th) who worked hard to get to the top 10 and even harder to get back after every lousy pit stop, and Dale Jarrett (10th) keeping them top 10's rolling in. But the day belonged to the memory of Dale Earnhardt as the Big Yahoo goes to Steve Park and all of DEI who had to have suffered through a very hard week. That's two in a row Dale. Sure wish you could have been there for the congratulatory neck squeeze!

Next week we're off to Las Vegas so stay off the interstate between NC and NV. Them team trucks are going to be honking! Sorry for the delay in anymore stories after my DE tribute but I just couldn't write the rest of the week. Last week just took too much out of me. Hopefully, now that this rain delayed race report is done I can do some catching up. Race pics tomorrow, sorry too late to download, resize, upload and html all night. Lot's of other goodies all week too so keep checking back.

Keep The Shiny Side Up!

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