How the Races Were Won from 1994 to 1996

by Sean Wrona

I've decided I'm going to do several years at a time with each remaining column in this series. A single column for each year seemed superfluous, not to mention that they take longer to do that way. This particular time period was noteworthy because there were a lot more judgment calls than there were from 1990-1993. Two of Jacques Villeneuve's CART wins in particular stand out here. At Road America in 1994, Al Unser, Jr. attempted an outside pass of Paul Tracy on a late-race restart while Villeneuve moved on the inside of Tracy. However, Unser made contact with Tracy as they battled three-wide, which broke both of their momentum and allowed Villeneuve to complete the three-wide pass. That was a very hard judgment call but I ultimately decided to count it as incidental because I don't think Team Green that year had enough horsepower to beat Penske on a long straightaway like that had that contact not happened, and although this is probably not what most fans would mean by 'inheriting the lead when the leaders made contact' I think it technically counts. The same goes with Villeneuve's classic win at Cleveland in 1995. Coming to the white flag he passed Michael Andretti and Bryan Herta simultaneously (one on either side) when both of them slowed on the track at almost the exact same time, and I honestly don't think he would have completed either pass if they had remained on the same pace, so I think I have to count that as incidental as well. Unfortunately, counting both of those races as incidental means that Villeneuve only ended up with one natural win in CART - the 1995 Road America race which he led flag-to-flag except for pit stops, and none of his on-track passes for the lead ended up counting, when both of those were very close judgment calls. I understand if you disagree with me on them, but as I said before, the ideas are more important than whether you agree on my analysis of a particular race. While usually when the leaders make contact, I will always count it as incidental, there are certain situations where I'll occasionally differ if my viewing of the video indicates that the driver in 2nd did nothing wrong and would have made the pass regardless. For instance, at Sonoma in 1994, Dale Earnhardt went slightly off track and went back onto the track slightly making contact with 2nd place Mark Martin who ended up making the ultimately winning pass on the next same strategy, but I think Martin did nothing wrong there and was going to make that pass regardless of whether he made contact with Earnhardt or not. In that case, I decided to count it, but I think that will be a rare exception. You have to make judgment calls when doing this.

Additionally, I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that there probably have been a lot more strategic assists than I've counted. I don't nearly have enough time to watch every single race broadcast (even if all the races were online, which they're not) so I am looking exclusively for the lead changes. However, what that means is I may be ignoring several races where a driver made an on-track pass of somebody who stayed out of the pits or beat everyone out, but I really don't think it happened as much in these years as it did in later years. If a driver resumes the lead after previously taking the lead on track after other drivers gambled on pit strategy, I'm going to count it as natural. Hence, Eddie Cheever attempted to steal the 1995 CART race at Nazareth on fuel mileage before running out with two laps left. However, Emerson Fittipaldi led before and after with Fittipaldi passing his nephew Christian on track, so that is the pass of relevance, NOT Cheever running out of fuel. Similarly, Kenny Bräck won the 1999 Indy 500 after Robby Gordon attempted to gamble on fuel mileage and ran out of fuel with just over one lap remaining. However, since Bräck led before and after I'm going to count that one as natural too (and count the pass of relevance as the pass of Cheever, not the pass of Gordon). If, however, a different driver leads before and after a cycle of pit stops, regardless of the reason, I am going to count it as an off-track lead change. This led to a couple ugly judgment calls that you might also not agree with. At Long Beach in 1995, Michael Andretti dominated the early laps until Teo Fabi took the lead on a pit strategy gamble. Al Unser, Jr. later passed Andretti not for the lead while they were still behind Fabi and then inherited the lead after Fabi pitted and the win. One might say Unser deserves a natural win there since he did take effective control of the race with his pass of Andretti even if it wasn't for the lead. Unfortunately, given my definitions for these terms, I don't believe I can count it. Perhaps a more realistic nuanced version would count these passes as well. One major problem with this sort of thing is that racing broadcasters almost always focus on whoever's in the lead rather than whoever's actually relevant (which is not necessarily the best way to follow a race). In the fall Charlotte NASCAR race in 1996, Ricky Craven (pretty surprising actually since it was in the Larry Hedrick car, and that team was consistently below average) led the race entering the final round of pit stops, but by the time the pit cycle ended Terry Labonte was in the lead. While the broadcast did show Craven being passed by eventual 2nd place finisher Mark Martin and eventual 3rd place finisher Dale Jarrett (while they were not yet the leaders since Earnhardt and Jeff Burton waited quite a few laps to pit) it did not show whether Craven was passed by Labonte on track or in the pits because it followed Earnhardt even though he wasn't all that relevant late in that race. Craven did have a then stellar 17-second pit stop and the broadcasters were complimenting his pit crew's speed all race, which may make it hard to believe that Labonte passed Craven in the pits, although since he was the superior driver, it's possible he beat him on pit in/pit out laps. We simply don't know and lap chart data from that long ago simply isn't available (lap chart data from RECENT seasons isn't available, no less), so I have to make my best guess there, and that will actually make a big difference. If Labonte passed Craven on track, I would still have to count it as off-track since he did not pass Craven for the lead on track, but it would still be somewhat impressive (although not that much as Hendrick cars certainly had much more horsepower than Hedrick cars in 1996, or any other season for that matter). However, if he didn't, that makes the 1996 championship look even more farcical. While Gordon won eight of his ten races that year naturally (contrary to the popular opinion of late '90s Gordon that he only kept winning because the Rainbow Warriors beat everyone else out of the pits), Labonte won ZERO naturally (or one, if you believe pit cycle races or races where the ultimate pass for the lead is actually technically not for the lead should count). I'm sorry but this was not a championship-caliber season. I thought Labonte winning the title over Gordon when Gordon had eight more wins and wasn't even any less consistent since they had the same number of top fives and top tens was farcical already, but now knowing that Labonte more or less backed into both of his wins makes it look even less impressive.

I actually found it harder to find good data on the ultimate passes in NASCAR for these seasons than I did in 1990-1993. I own Greg Fielden's complete recap of every NASCAR race from 1949-1993, but he stopped providing such recaps in book form after that and there was very little information on NASCAR on the Internet before 1996 (when nascar.com, jayski.com, and thatsracin.com all launched). Hence unfortunately there are a few races in 1994 and 1995 that are not on YouTube for which I have to fill in the blanks. The spring Richmond race is a real puzzle as this contemporary article from the Orlando Sentinel reports that Ernie Irvan took the lead from Rusty Wallace in the pits after a lap 312 caution for debris, while both racing-reference.info and my site have Irvan taking the lead from Wallace at that point, not vice versa, with Irvan taking the ultimate lead several laps later (seemingly under green). I don't know what to make of that one, and racing-reference and I don't even agree on what lap Irvan took the lead (but I'm going to guess he is right since he has been a lot more thorough an archivist). Unfortunately, since all the sources seem to disagree on that one, all we can say is Irvan passed Wallace but without video footage I cannot determine how it was done (somebody upload this race onto YouTube pronto!) Although I'm almost certain Wallace passed Jeff Gordon on track in the fall Martinsville race, there seemed to be an awful lot of lead changes (and strange lead changes no less) in the first half of that race which causes me to be much less confident than I otherwise would be, but besides, without video footage, there's no way to be certain that Gordon didn't cut a tire or was the victim of a bump-and-run or something (I will not be counting Gordon's bump and run wins over Wallace, so if Wallace did the same to Gordon, I won't count that either). One of the things that surprised me when doing this for NASCAR is how few bump-and-run passes there were that ultimately decided the race. While there were a number of passes I reviewed on video where I couldn't tell whether it was a bump-and-run or not (usually in most of these cases I believe the runner-up took the air off the leader's spoiler), surprisingly few bump-and-runs were truly overt. The only overt one in my mind was Earnhardt's bump and run of Irvan at the 1993 Coca-Cola 600, which according to Matt McLaughlin in his classic column Dale Earnhardt's Greatest Hits was described by one writer as an "on-track mugging". Having actually now seen that pass, that statement seems to be overkill. It was a bump-and-run indeed but compared to Earnhardt's more famous punts, it was actually (for him) relatively subtle. I'm still not going to give him credit for it, but it was very surprising to me that from 1990-1996, that was the only ultimate pass in NASCAR based on a bump-and-run. The reputation NASCAR built for itself of endless rubbing and racing has been greatly exaggerated, and if a pass like that was considered an "on-track mugging" in 1993, that greatly indicates that the aggression of NASCAR in that period is nowhere near what people think it was. CART even beat NASCAR in this regard in this period for better or worse with Danny Sullivan punting Unser out of the lead at Long Beach in 1992 and Tracy spinning Unser into a tire barrier at Belle Isle in 1994.

There are a few other minor quibbles. Many people will not agree with me about the inaugural Brickyard 400. Gordon and Irvan did have a fantastic battle for the win in that race, but I remain fully convinced that Irvan cut a tire seconds after Gordon's last pass because Gordon cut his tire, so I'm not going to give that to him. Although I am almost certain Ward Burton won his first race at Rockingham via beating Rusty Wallace on a green-flag pit cycle, there is surprisingly little written on this race and almost everything that is written about it is about the controversial caution flag that came out solely to give Earnhardt his lap back after NASCAR erroneously penalized him. All that makes me seriously really want to watch that race and makes me disappointed that it is not on YouTube anywhere. Finally, nobody is going to agree with me putting CART and IRL races in the same category. In the case of the strengths of the fields, they certainly weren't. CART had the stronger fields for sure from 1996-2001 and probably in 2002 (from 2003-2007 it was probably a wash or the IRL had a slight edge). However, now that IndyCar agrees to count all wins in both series equally, I see no reason not to myself. Are there drivers who certainly would not have won races if the series had not split leading to weaker fields in the last seasons of the split? For sure, but many of those will be easy to spot as they are the drivers who didn't win races naturally. Having said that, in the early years of the split, CART races were decided on strategy far more often than not (on all types of tracks) as it was following the Formula One model after the split (only with far more cautions which meant races were decided on speed much less often than they are in F1), while IRL races were decided on track a bit more (as it was following the NASCAR side-by-side pack racing model, although neither NASCAR nor IRL really had anywhere near as much pack racing as anyone thinks they did as most races in any kind of circuit race will inevitably be single-file), so in addition to the differences in CART and IRL's driver talent, the IRL drivers will also be inflated because the style of racing allowed for more natural passes. Obviously in many of the IRL races on the cookie cutters that were pack races (although there were fewer of these than anyone seems to acknowledge) as well as the CART Handford Device races at Michigan and Fontana in 1998-2002, as well as the recent Indy 500s which very much resemble the Handford Device races, passing was endless as frequently nobody wanted to hold the lead. Scarcity creates value, so the most valuable natural passes in my opinion would be those at the tracks where there is minimal passing. I suspect that is one of the main reasons Alex Zanardi's pass of Herta at Laguna Seca in 1996 (whether you think that should have been ruled as a legal pass or not...it was ruled as such so I counted it here as natural myself, but you're welcome to disagree with me) is considered so legendary. Laguna Seca (although it is a very pretty facility) had minimal passing at all in its last decade as a CART circuit (honestly that's the reason I unlike others am not clamoring to have it back as a must-have venue) so when somebody actually makes a natural pass there, it is something awe-inspiring (although you could argue it differently and actually say Herta had the better performance because Zanardi's car was WAY more dominant yet he still barely won), whereas in so many Cup restrictor plate races or IndyCar Michigan/Fontana/Chicagoland races the passing was endless so each individual pass means somewhat less. However, I still think winning a race via a natural pass in a race where passing is frequent is better than winning a race in the pits or winning incidentally, at least when it comes to evaluating drivers, but I have even more respect for on-track passes for position where they aren't supposed to happen. Andretti passing his teammate Christian Fittipaldi at Belle Isle, Detroit was also a big deal since that's another venue where there has historically been minimal passing, and he at least did in the same caliber of equipment rather than passing a car that was likely inferior (as in the case of Zanardi and Herta). Although I'll admit all these thoughts were rather scatterbrained as I spent more time on the analysis itself than the write-up, I still think they're all worth considering. In future columns until I finish this series, I'm going to have much more scant commentary and season lists almost exclusively, but I'm certainly going to do several seasons at a time from now on. I'm going to save most of my real analysis (especially the implications this has for specific drivers) until the series is over.

Formula One 1994

Formula One 1995

Formula One 1996

Cumulative wins by type:

CART 1994

CART 1995

CART 1996

IRL 1996

Cumulative wins by type:

NASCAR Winston Cup 1994

NASCAR Winston Cup 1995

NASCAR Winston Cup 1996

Cumulative wins by type:

Sean Wrona is the Managing Editor of racermetrics.com, the Webmaster of race-database.com, the winner of the 2010 Ultimate Typing Championship at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, and the ratings compiler and statistician for the Mensa Scrabble-by-Mail SIG. He earned a master's in applied statistics from Cornell University in 2008 and previously digitized several seasons of NBA box scores on basketball-reference.com. You may contact him at sean@racermetrics.com.

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