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3rd NASCAR Busch Win!
The Milwaukee Mile - July 5, 1998
Dale Jr. and the ACDelco Team win the DieHard 250!
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West Allis, WI - Dale Earnhardt Jr. dominated Sunday's NASCAR Busch series DieHard 250 at the Milwaukee Mile, leading 209 laps and winning by 5.483 seconds over Elton Sawyer.
Earnhardt, competing in his first race at the Milwaukee Mile, recorded his third win in the 26th race of his short career. Driving a Chevrolet, he became the eighth different winner in as many Busch series races here.
"This old race car, we just worked on it a little bit," said Earnhardt. "It makes it easy when you got a race car like this."
Sawyer, who won the pole but was dropped to the last spot in the 41-car field after failing a post-qualifying inspection, had an impressive race. His record qualifying time of 120.00 mph was disallowed when NASCAR officials found a test problem with his Ford's fuel specifications.
"It was a great effort by everybody in the pits," said Sawyer. "Yesterday we kind of embarrassed our team. Today we had to reedem ourselves."
Jeff Purvis, who qualified second but was awarded the pole after Sawyer was bumped, drove his Chevrolet to a third-place finish as the pole-sitter again failed to win here for the eighth time in as many races. Purvis led for 11 laps.
Earnhardt led from laps 5 to 53 and for 166 of the first 200 laps. He managed to build a 28-second lead and almost lapped the entire field before a yellow flag caution was brought out on lap 208 when Casey Atwood hit the wall high. Earnhardt made his last pit stop on lap 176 for 19.7 seconds, changing all four tires and adding fuel that would last him the rest of the way.
Sawyer steadily moved up in the field and reached the third spot on lap 222. Three laps later, he grabbed second, overtaking Purvis for his best finish of the year.
David Green was fourth in a Pontiac and points leader Matt Kenseth finished fifth in a Chevrolet. Kenseth has two wins this season and 2,354 points. He maintained a 20-point lead over Mike McLaughlin, who finished sixth. Earnhardt trails by just 27 points.
"It was an exciting race," Kenseth said. "We weren't good enough to win the race today, maybe good for second. We move on to Myrtle Beach."
Buckshot Jones, Tim Fedewa, Joe Bessey and defending series champion Randy LaJoie rounded out the top 10. LaJoie, who won this race last year, is fourth in the standings, 330 points behind Kenseth.
The race was slowed by six cautions and took more than 2½ hours to complete. It was the 17th of 31 scheduled in the Busch Grand National series. The Myrtle Beach 250 is next at the Myrtle Beach Speedway in South Carolina on Saturday.
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