|| *Comments on the 1998 DieHard 500:* View the most recent comment <#55> | Post a comment <#post> Tweet 1. Jake posted: 07.28.2004 - 8:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) After Dale Earnhardt was injured, Kyle Petty and Joe Nemechek ran some laps in the no. 3 car. 2. Brett posted: 02.26.2005 - 1:54 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Earnhardt was milidly burned during the big one, which erupted on the tri-oval on lap 140. Ward Burton made slight contact with Earnhardt's quarter-panel, which sent Earnhardt's car into Bill Elliott's machine, sending Elliott into the wall. Elliott and Earnhardt were nearly locked together, as fire from Elliott's car caused Earngardt's burns. Elliott suffers a bruised sternum Twenty cars in all piled up. The race comes down to five cars. Jeff Gordon tries to wrest the lead from teammate Terry Labonte on lap 180. No one elects to help Gordon, however and he loses the draft of the lead four cars. Terry's younger brother Bobby fares better. Bobby passes Terry with a lap and a half to go, bringing Jimmy Spencer and Dale Jarrett with him. 3. Darrell posted: 10.08.2005 - 4:27 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Geoff Bodine failed to qualify for this race, as well as Matt Kenseth. 4. MOST posted: 05.06.2006 - 5:11 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Nasty Bill Elliot flip onto his side, good race. 5. HomeDepot20TS posted: 06.03.2006 - 1:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) ElliotT. ElliotT! Two Ts dammit! 6. MOST posted: 06.05.2006 - 2:01 am Rate this comment: (1) (0) elliottttttttttttttttttttttttttt 7. mcmurrayfan posted: 06.17.2006 - 3:23 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) First Cup race for Dennis Setzer. 8. Steve posted: 07.28.2006 - 6:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Noteables: Jeff Gordon's 100th Top 10 finish Randy LaJoie's last Top 10 finish Jack Roush's cars are the only finishers out of the Top 40 (Benson, Musgrave, and Burton) Dennis Setzer's aforementioned debut and best Winston Cup finish (19th) Kenny Schrader's 400th career start 9. Thomas posted: 09.25.2006 - 7:35 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Dennis Setzer and Bill Elliott were teammates in this race, as Elliott owned Setzer's dark green #89 McDonald's McRib Ford. 10. Matthew Sullivan posted: 12.11.2006 - 2:01 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Bobby's move on brother Terry was somewhat unexpected but it was an excellent pass on the outside coming off of turn two with two laps left. I don't believe he would have won had he not made the pass at that point. 11. Steve.M. posted: 05.24.2007 - 9:35 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) also another note i may be mistaken but wasnt this also the last time in Rusty Wallaces career he left a race with the points lead? he got real close in 2005 during the chase when he was in 2nd after dover but this was his last lead i believe 12. Steve.M. posted: 08.22.2007 - 4:34 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) also kinda a repeat of the fall race from the year before when it came down to the Labonte brothers along with Schrader and Andretti however in that race Terry held off Bobby 13. Anonymous posted: 09.16.2007 - 6:56 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Geoffrey Bodine failed to qualify. Also, whose team was Matt Kenseth driving for? 14. adamal82 posted: 10.16.2007 - 7:54 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Dennis Setzer among others were driving T-Birds and not the Taurus 15. RaceFanX posted: 11.28.2007 - 3:35 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Kenseth was in a 6th Jack Roush car, numbered as #60. The car was painted black and sponsored by Kenworth Trucks if I'm not mistaken... Setzer's car has to be a trivia question answer. The car was an outdated Ford T-Bird and only ran for one race but Hot Wheels still mass produced a diecast of it (as a T-Bird) and sold it around the country. 16. Dave posted: 11.30.2007 - 1:16 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Bill Elliot had three cars in this race. #13 #89 #94 17. Brock posted: 12.16.2007 - 6:59 am Rate this comment: (1) (0) Kenny Wallace had a very up-and-down day in this race. Starting way back in 35th, Kenny raced his way up as high as 4th in the first long green flag run. Kenny then fell back to 25th during the second caution when he left the pits without the lugnuts tightened on his right-front tire. Kenny managed to back up into his stall and get the lugnuts tightened without too much damage to the car and managed to avoid getting involved in the Big One on lap 140. After that red flag, Kenny was back in 4th position again and, though he slid back to 7th when Terry Labonte got around him in the closing stages, he still held his own in the drafting group running behind the leaders. 18. Brock posted: 12.16.2007 - 7:03 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Also, to clarify on the cautions, the first came out when Billy Standridge's Thunderbird (with Philips sponsorship after Geoff Bodine's DNQ) blew a right-front tire on the backstretch and dropped a piece of metal debris. As the pace car caught the field, Ted Musgrave's car caught fire after an engine failure. Musgrave was uninjured as the fire was extinguished quickly. The second caution came out when Johnny Benson dropped oil from his blown engine. Like the Standridge caution, another car got into trouble at the same time. When the cars were still racing to the caution (back in the good ol' days!) Kenny Irwin, Jr. also blew an engine on the backstretch. 19. Brock posted: 12.16.2007 - 7:08 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Just minutes before his horrific crash, Bill Elliott climbed his way into the lead to the wild cheers of the Talladega crowd. Elliott had not taken on any new tires under the second caution, but still managed to take the lead soon after the restart and remained in the top 10. Elliott was running about 7th when the Big One gobbled him up. 20. Clayton posted: 03.09.2008 - 11:11 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) I thought Bill was dead, when I saw this! He hit hard!!! watch it on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ir7DAhOG4E 21. Josh posted: 04.05.2008 - 11:02 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) What a scaryyyy wreck for Elliott. The Labonte Brothers really had this race for themselves with leading laps. 22. adamal82 posted: 04.09.2008 - 1:17 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Kenseth was sponsored by peterbilt not kenworth 23. RaceFanX posted: 11.07.2008 - 12:12 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Last Cup series top-10 for Randy LaJoie 24. jp posted: 02.18.2009 - 1:09 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) i thought jimmy spencer was in this wreck. 25. The Real Thomas posted: 05.18.2009 - 5:29 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Here is a picture of Matt Kenseth's #60 Peterbilt Ford Taurus: http://www.jayski.com/schemes/98/60dega.jpg Chad Little ran a T-Bird as well. 26. Anonymous posted: 02.02.2011 - 9:11 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Time of race: 3 hours, 3 minutes, 35 seconds Average Speed: 163.439 mph 27. Webmaster posted: 02.03.2011 - 7:55 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) #26: According to NASCAR's race report the time & avg. speed shown here are correct. 28. RaceFanX posted: 03.23.2011 - 11:41 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Missing the race, Geoff Bodine's number was his normal #7 not #71 which was being used by Dave Marcis. 29. BlackChevy14 posted: 03.05.2013 - 5:36 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Missed this one while I was at a Braves game (they lost to Colorado, blah), when I got home I asked who won. They said Bobby Labonte, which was okay I guess. Then my mom starts going on and on about this awful wreck Bill was in. The description I got did little justice for the video. Ouch. Good thing I was at the game or I would have freaked. What a miserable day for Jack Roush, following Kenseth's DNQ. Blows three engines in his team cars to finish 1-2-3 (with a 4 in front of them), then the 6 and 97 get torn up in the big wreck, along with the 21 which I think by that time was using Jack's motors. I may be wrong. 30. sk posted: 07.02.2013 - 2:57 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Robbie Reiser was set to serve as Kenseth's crew chief for the race, his only attempt in a Roush Ford until the summer of '99. 31. Evan posted: 01.02.2014 - 1:30 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Ugly wreck between Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott and unlike the dude that went to the Braves game, I watched the race and I did freak out, I thought Bill and Dale were dead and their cars were locked together as if in some kind of deadly dance and flames bursting out each of them. Elliott broke his sternum and Earnhardt who suffered a wreck here in 1996, nearly had his mustache singed off. 32. 23andJoe posted: 03.02.2014 - 6:46 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) #60 crew chief: Robbie Reiser 33. Gabriel Nunes posted: 03.15.2014 - 9:12 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) This was Matt Kenseth's First and Only DNQ when Qualifying for the Cup Series. He did get to fill-in for Bill Elliot though. 34. RaceFanX posted: 12.31.2015 - 2:29 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) David Green's 17th-place run was his best of 1998, he was just three races away from losing his ride in Buz McCall's Caterpillar Chevy. 35. Josh posted: 07.26.2016 - 2:39 pm Rate this comment: (0) (1) Earnhardt complained in his interview after the wreck that it wasn't good racing, as he typically did when he didn't win or crashed out / didn't have the day he wanted. 36. Maverick posted: 10.12.2016 - 11:41 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) "i may be mistaken but wasnt this also the last time in Rusty Wallaces career he left a race with the points lead?" Almost. Rusty led the points standings after the 2001 Spring Rockingham race. 37. Maverick posted: 10.16.2016 - 11:29 am Rate this comment: (1) (0) Best finish for Travis Carter's team. 38. JSPorts posted: 10.16.2016 - 12:38 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) It's kind of surprising to me that Carter's team never won. With 17 top 5s, you would think they would've won at least 3 or 4 races. 39. SK posted: 03.08.2017 - 7:28 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Relief drivers: #3 - Kyle Petty AND #3 - Joe Nemechek! 40. Duece posted: 08.26.2017 - 9:22 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) This was the first NASCAR race I remember watching and it got my dad mad at Jeff Gordon for a couple months. He was running 2nd to Terry with like 5 laps to go and tried to pass him instead of staying on his bumper. Problem was that nobody with him and he lost the draft. Terry ended up getting jumped by his brother Bobby & Jimmy Spencer. 41. CJ posted: 04.18.2018 - 10:39 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Second and final win of 98 for Bobby Labonte. Season best finish for Jimmy Spencer. Ernie Irvan and Brett Bodine equal their season best finish. Final Cup Series Top 10 for Randy LaJoie. Season best finish for David Green. Season best finish for Billy Standridge. Season and career best finish for Dennis Setzer. 42. Joshua posted: 09.20.2018 - 3:14 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) The crash in this race was a doozy. I remember it like it was yesterday. Ward Burton got onto the tri-oval apron, causing the car to then drift up and clip the left rear of Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt's left front then clipped Bill Elliott's right rear, causing both to swerve to the right and clobber the tri-oval wall near the start-finish line. Come to think of it, it happened almost exactly like the 1996 Die Hard 500 wreck with Irvan, Marlin, and Earnhardt. Bill Elliott's car almost turned over, but didn't because Earnhardt's left side tires ended up ON TOP of Elliott's upside-down left side tires. The field behind started crashing everywhere and Bill's and Dale's cars slid together down the frontstretch, with a brief fire erupting from Bill's car, causing Earnhardt's facial hair to be singed. The Jerry Nadeau #13 car eventually hit the 3, unlocking the 3 and 94, and the 94 then rolled over back onto its wheels. Very scary crash live, luckily the ESPN camera cut to Bill Elliott taking off his gloves inside his car shortly after the crash, although he was still in some pain. Kenny Wallace had a very fast car in this race. A pit road mishap where the right front tire came off shortly after he left the pits had him restart in the back of the pack, but Kenny worked his way back up through the field, missed the big wreck, then ended up 7th in the second pack of lead lap cars after the first 5 broke away. 43. @Statscrash posted: 11.26.2018 - 12:54 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) I have no idea what Ward Burton thought he was going to do there. But it tore up half the field. 44. Anthony posted: 11.26.2018 - 2:45 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Bill Elliott absolutely pounded the wall in that wreck 45. RaceFanX posted: 11.26.2018 - 9:52 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) All three of then-reigning NASCAR Busch series champion Randy LaJoie's top-10s came in 1998 during his nine-race stint filling in for the injured Ricky Craven in the Hendrick Motorsports #50 Budweiser Chevrolet. LaJoie's 10th place finish here was actually the team's best in a plate race all season. 46. JT posted: 03.09.2019 - 7:33 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) @Joshua: It was ABC, not ESPN. The fall race was the ESPN race. 47. Joshua posted: 04.24.2019 - 2:44 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) This race was the first spring race to be sponsored by Die Hard battery. Die Hard had been sponsoring the midsummer race at Talladega for years, but when the midsummer race got moved to the fall in 1997, in 1998 Die Hard began sponsoring the spring race and Winston sponsored the fall race through 2000. 48. Evan posted: 11.05.2019 - 4:12 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) First and only start for the McRib McDonalds car, and despite running only one race a replica of the car was made by Hot Wheels in their Pro Racing line, it was a Thunderbird and due to the T-Bird being phased out for the Taurus, I guess that Hot Wheels had some T-Bird molds laying around and they did this solo entry for 1998. 49. Altracing posted: 12.08.2019 - 2:10 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) This would be the only restricor plate cup race that a Pontiac would win 50. Anonymous posted: 12.08.2019 - 5:04 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Standraige was too in the big one in this race it should be a 21 car crash. 51. PucciMan posted: 03.17.2020 - 10:19 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Sr's mustache was burned a little bit in the big one. Because of that The Intimidator had to shave his mustache. Last time he did that was 84 for a promotional ad for Wrangler with Ricky Rudd. 52. HD11 posted: 03.19.2020 - 11:05 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) Besides teammate Terry Labonte, absolutely nobody would work with Jeff Gordon in this race. Even with little help, Gordon was among the final 5 in the lead draft late but just like all race, as soon as he pulled out to pass, he was left out and eventually lost the draft and still finishing fifth. This may have been Jack Roush's worst weekend as a car owner. Aside of Jeff Burton qualifying 18th, the rest of the fleet were 34th or worse. On race day, Burton lost a motor early and Benson soon joined him. Musgrave had just gotten his lap back by a few feet racing to a yellow but inexplicably the distributor caught fire after the pit stop. Then Martin and Little were involved in the big one. Great pass on the outside by Bobby Labonte with two to go. He was always underrated as a plate racer and I'm surprised he didn't more of these things. 53. Jimnsimforever posted: 03.30.2020 - 5:31 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Jeff Gordon was having a pretty bad couple of races here, following up the 6th worst finish of his championship run (an 8th at Martinsville) with a poor effort, a 5th here which was tied for his 8th worst finish of the year. Looking back and remembering how dominating this season was for him you always think of just the 13 wins, at least I do. But from worst to best, here are his 1998 finishes: his 2 DNFs 37th and 31st, 19th 17th and 16th, an 8th and a 7th, three 5th's and one 4th, three 3rd's, six 2nd's, and then the 13 victories. I've never really looked at it that close and this season was absolutely stunning. 54. danny posted: 08.04.2020 - 7:23 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Billy Standridge I also believe got in the big one too he was spinning as well. 55. Rich posted: 12.30.2020 - 3:53 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Bob Jenkins and Benny Parsons were the commentators. Dr. Jerry Punch, Bill Weber and Jack Arute were the pit road reporters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Post a comment:* Your comment may not appear immediately - all comments must be approved by the moderator. Name: Comment: