|
|
||||
|
» @ contact |
 |
|||
|
1985 - Prelude to a Championship
In 1985, the Childress team gave Dale a ride that was considerably more potent, enabling Dale to move to his rightful place at the front of the field with greater frequeny. But the engine powering of Chevrolet was not the most stable piece of machinery in the Winston Cup garage area.
After completing all but two races in 1984, Dale's day ended early on nine occasions in the follow-up campaign.
In
each race, engine trouble was the reason for the early trip behind the
wall. His season effectively ended during a sevemn-race stretch from
Darlington in mid-April to Pocono in early June. In all but two races,
Dale parked his race car before race's end. In consecutive races at
Riverside and Pocono, Dale Earnhardt managed to complete a combined 22
laps before engine failures hit, resulting in 40th and 39th place
finishes, the wort back-to-back showings of his career.
But Dale ran up front more often in 1985, including early-season wins at Richmond and Bristol. He led 1,237 laps that season, an increase of almost 800 from 1984. And though his competitive hopes for the season were gone before summer, Dale and Richard delivered a foreshadowing of the seasons to come during the campaign's final 10 races. Only once over that stretch did Dale fail to finish, while he and his team earned checkerd flags at Bristol and Martinsville. Seven Top 10s in the final eight races were an encouraging building block for 1986, when pieces would finally come together again.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The
second season of the Dale Earnhardt-Richard Childress reunion could
adequately be described as one step forward, one step back. 
