Rudd

The scene was the same the past two races. Ricky Rudd put his No. 28 Ford in decent position on the starting grid, but a few hours later he brought it back to the garage toward the back.

Rudd is not one for angry words or tantrums. He simply walked back to his hauler and shook his head. His championship hopes dimmed -- he knows he's a long shot, but is far from making a concession speech -- Rudd could do nothing but take a shower, go to his motor coach and wonder what could have gone so wrong?

Surely, several factors have kept Rudd hovering between seventh and ninth in the standings as the number of points separating him and leader Sterling Marlin kept growing. But chief among them, perhaps, had nothing to do with this season. It had everything to do with the next.

"I'd be lying if I said it didn't effect us a little bit," Rudd said of the very public contract negotiations between Rudd, current team owner Robert Yates and soon-to-be-owners the Wood Brothers. "It's hard to concentrate on the season when you're worried about the future. And it really hurts morale."

After finishing outside the top 30 in the past two races, Rudd is eighth in the standings with a 360-point margin between he and Marlin. But he has learned a valuable lesson about what looking too far down the road can do.

The championship will not be decided for another 11 weeks. For now, he just wants to win this weekend's race. And the fact that it's at Richmond International Raceway bodes well for the Virginia native.

Although he's collected just one checkered flag, Rudd has had a winning car at Richmond the past two races.

"I wouldn't say we finally figured out Richmond, but we did win this race a year ago and we actually had a dominant car in the first race there this year," Rudd said. "We led the most laps and had a very good car, but we were lapping a car that had a flat tire and we got taken out of the race. Being the dominant car, there was no guarantee we would have won it, but the fashion we were running that day, it looked like it was probably our race to win. We got within about 60 laps from the end and got wrecked out. So we've had two really good runs in a row at Richmond."

The first of those runs was a thrilling battle he and 2001 rookie of the year Kevin Harvick staged late last season. Rudd's car had been fast on the long runs all day and Harvick's No. 29 Chevy had been fast on the short ones.

	Rudd's race-win hopes were wrecked at Richmond earlier this year.

There was a caution toward the end of the event and everyone pitted for tires. Harvick would have to hold Rudd off for one last lengthy run. Of course, he got off to a fast start but didn't have enough for him at the end. Harvick got passed by Rudd. Harvick used his front bumper to move Rudd out of the way to retake the lead, but he did so more aggressively than he said he meant to -- it was much harder than the bump Jeff Gordon gave Rusty Wallace to win two weekends ago at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Rudd's car went flailing, but he somehow managed to regain control without losing much time and made a run back for Harvick. He made it back to Harvick's back bumper, gave the 29 a nudge and went on to win the race.

"I felt he used his bumper more than he should have late in the race," Rudd said. "He didn't move us, he basically wrecked us. We really shouldn't have been able to make another run at him, but we were able to catch him because we were better on the longer run. Time was running out, so I had to basically repay his favor. The difference was that mine was much more kinder to him than he was to me, so I moved him out of the way and went on."

The second of those two good Richmond runs was considerably less satisfying. It involved another nudge, but this time Rudd couldn't save his car from hitting the wall. Rudd said he saw Wallace cut a tire in Turn 3 and wondered why Wallace did not pull his car off the track. The two were racing side-by-side on the next lap in Turn 1 when Wallace's tire finally could go no further and sent him screaming straight into Rudd's car.

That race did more to Rudd than cost him the race. It angered him so that the week afterward, he contemplated retirement. Although he said he was taken out of context, he did voice opinions about how easy the young guns of today have it and sounded flat out upset.

It turned out there was more to his anger than being wrecked at Richmond. He and Yates were at odds in reaching a contract extension and these were not good times for him.

"It's a long season, though, so you have to know that these are going to come along," Rudd said. "I guess you just have to hang in there, take advantage of the length of the season and try to climb back."

That's what he's doing, now. He doesn't expect it to yield a championship this year, but he wants to end the season on a high note and come back with some oomph in '03.

"I'm excited about it," Rudd said. "I tell you what, I'm just happy to have the whole deal finished with. I know what I'm doing and I'm happy."

Rupen Fofaria is a beat writer for the Raleigh News & Observer.