Late Charge Lifts Labonte to Fourth-Place Finish at Martinsville

MARTINSVILLE, Va., Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005 – The official distance of Sunday’s NEXTEL Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway was 500 laps. But for Bobby Labonte and Joe Gibbs Racing, it may have seemed like at least twice that many.

The driver of the No. 18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet was penalized twice for speeding while exiting pit road and forced to restart the race from deep in the field on each occasion. But true to his reputation as one of NASCAR’s smoothest, steadiest competitors, Labonte worked traffic masterfully down the stretch and came away from his day’s work with a fourth-place finish in the Subway 500.

JGR teammates Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin also landed top-10 finishes. Stewart, who led a race-high 283 laps, placed second in the No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet and Hamlin was eighth in the No. 11 FedEx Freight Monte Carlo.

Jeff Gordon won the race, taking the lead from Stewart 157 laps from the finish and leading all but six of the remaining laps.

After starting 10th in the 43-car field, Labonte chipped away at the cars in front of him and was hunting a spot in the top five when he received his first speeding penalty. While exiting pit road during the fifth caution of the day, NASCAR ruled that Labonte was going too fast. He was forced back to 24th on that restart, at lap 182.

It took Labonte less than 60 laps to rally back to 11th place and he had climbed all the way to ninth as the race neared the 300-lap mark when misfortune struck again. Slight contact with a lapped car dented the nose of Labonte’s No. 18 Chevrolet and engine temperatures soon began to fluctuate. Still, Labonte and crew chief Steve Addington chose to stay out and retain the track position they had worked so hard to reclaim. The engine temperatures stabilized and when the 13th caution flag of the day waved on lap 343, Labonte visited pit road for service and repairs.

As Labonte exited the pits, NASCAR once again determined that he was speeding and – once again – Labonte was forced to restart from deep in the pack. With the number of remaining laps starting to dwindle, Labonte clawed his way back toward the front … to 16th place on lap 371 and back into the top 10 less than 100 laps from the finish.

From there, he worked his way through traffic, got in and out of the pits without incident and found his rhythm to roll home in fourth place. In fact, Labonte was so consistent during his late-race charge into the top five that he posted identical lap times on three consecutive circuits around Martinsville’s half-mile oval.

“We went from the back to the front at least twice and that made it seem like a longer day than it needed to be,” Labonte said. “Then, we bumped the nose a little bit and had to come in to pull some tape off because we were starting to run hot.

“This finish is a big lift for our team. It was going to be hard to beat those guys (Gordon and Stewart). But if we could have been a little closer to them at the end, maybe I would have been better off. My mistakes on pit road hurt us, but we fought back and overcame a lot to finish where we did.”

Behind Gordon and Stewart came Jimmie Johnson, who finished third; Labonte, fourth; and Jeff Burton, fifth. Stewart leads Johnson by 15 points in the “Chase for The Championship” with four races remaining.

Labonte gained two positions with Sunday’s strong finish and is 23rd entering next weekend’s Bass Pro Shops/MBNA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.