This Sunday’s Brickyard 400 marks the 20-year anniversary of stock cars arriving at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Naturally, it is a time to look back on some of the race’s biggest moments, such as when Jeff Gordon became the first to win that inaugural race in 1994, or when Dale Jarrett started the tradition of kissing the bricks in 1996, or when Gordon won in 2004 for the fourth time, tying the wins record on the oval with A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser.
One running of the 400 that may sometimes go overlooked, however, was the 2002 edition.
2002 Brickyard 400
A Year of Change
In a year that seemingly no one wanted to win the championship, Tony Stewart managed to break free of the turmoil of the title hunt and his own team to break out with his first Winston Cup. But going into the Brickyard 400 in August, the cup was far from Tony’s mind. All he was thinking of was winning in his homestate at the world’s most spectacular temple of speed.
Coming into the race, “Smoke” was sitting seventh in the point standings, 256 behind leader Sterling Marlin. Not exactly championship favorite. But a fast run in qualifying put Tony on pole for the 400, with a fast Pontiac that looked like a favorite to win.
Bill Elliott, driving the red No. 9 Dodge, was on a resurgent upswing in his career. Having broken a long (I mean, very long) 226-race winless streak that dated from September 1994 to November 2001, Awesome Bill from Dawsonville (Georgia) had qualified on the outside pole, and coming off a win at Pocono the week before, Elliott was also looking like a favorite for the win.
Elliott’s car owner, Ray Evernham, was in his second year as an owner, a trait he shared with car manufacturer Dodge, which had returned to NASCAR after a 20-year hiatus in 2001. Evernham already had won twice at the Brickyard, in 1994 and 1998 as a crew chief for Jeff Gordon at Hendrick Motorsports.
In another garage stall sat the Penske Racing Ford of Rusty Wallace, a driver who for all the racing success he had experienced in his career — including the 1989 Winston Cup title — had almost never tasted a “major” victory. Wallace had always seemed to come up short in the sport’s biggest races, namely the Daytona 500, the Southern 500, the Winston 500 at Talladega and the Brickyard 400.
Wallace finished second at Indianapolis in 1995 and 2000, leading 110 laps in the latter, and in 2002, he was stuck with a poor starting position in 35th. It would take a miracle to win on a track that is so hard to pass on.
One of the new, exciting prospects that had emerged that year was Roush Racing’s Kurt Busch, a 23-year-old brash sophomore driver from Las Vegas that broke out in March for his first career win at the half-mile bullring known as Bristol Motor Speedway. Busch roughed up veteran racer Jimmy Spencer to win that day, passing “Mr. Excitement” with under 50 laps to go with an aggressive bump-and-run move, and Spencer left with a bitter taste in his mouth.
Safety Standards Introduced and Tested
The 2002 Brickyard 400 was also different in the aspect of safety. For the first time ever, the Steel And Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barriers would be used in a major stock car race. Indianapolis had installed the new outside retaining walls in May of 2002, just in time for the 86th Indianapolis 500.
The SAFER walls featured a new innovation for an age-old system. Foam blocks were placed between the original concrete retaining walls and a second shield of concrete walls, which would significantly lessen the impact forces that a driver sustained in a crash.
Green Flag
It didn’t take long for the new safer walls to be tested. Lap 12 saw Mike Wallace suffer a tire problem and shoot up into the turn two wall, impacting it hard enough to richochet Wallace’s car back into traffic and collide with Brett Bodine.
New and Old Collide
Lap 37 saw the second time that the new walls were tested, but the attention this time wasn’t on the walls. It was on the young man stepping out of his wrecked race car and into the oncoming path of Jimmy Spencer.
Busch had just passed Spencer for 17th place going down the back straightaway, but as soon as the pair entered turn three, Spencer aimed for Busch’s back bumper and sent him spinning towards the wall. Busch exited his totaled No. 97 machine, and sent an angry wave of his arms towards Spencer as he drove by under the caution. A lap later, Busch still wasn’t finished, as he motioned to Spencer with a pat of his bottom, signaling to Jimmy that he ought to be penalized to the back of the field.
Later, in an interview with NBC, Busch referred to Spencer as a “decrepit old has-been”, further igniting the ongoing fued between the two.
Heartbreak For Two Legends
Stewart ran up front early, leading 33 of the opening 37 laps, and managed to stay up in the top-five for most of the race. However, a strategy to take two tires on a late caution backfired for the No. 20 Pontiac and it proved to be the downfall of Smoke’s race. Stewart lost a number of positions in the final three laps, falling from third to 12th at the end of the race.
Wallace, on the other hand, was biding his time. He knew he could do that, because the Blue Deuce was strong that day, and Wallace ended up leading 12 laps.
Under the same late caution, his crew gambled with the same strategy that Stewart’s crew used, putting him in the lead by electing to take two new tires instead of four. For a while, it looked like Wallace would finally capture another major, to go along with his 1990 Coca-Cola 600 win.
With 12 laps to go, that dream came to an end. Awesome Bill stalked Wallace for the lead for a number of laps, then found his chance to pass Rusty in turn two, sidedrafting down the back straightaway, and finally taking the lead for good going into turn three.
Elliott, who led 93 laps that day, drove off to add a victory at Indianapolis to his triumphs at Daytona, Talladega and Darlington. Dodge was in victory lane as well, and it remains the only win at the Brickyard for the manufacturer to date.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @Kleckinator. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport and @LWOSworld – and “liking” our Facebook page.
For the latest in sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
Main image:
