John Andretti remembers a moment of anxiety during his rookie season of
1994, when he figured there was no way he would make the field for a race in
Talladega, Ala.
Dale Earnhardt came to the rescue.
"My team just didn't have a lot of money," Andretti said. "We had one
good restrictor plate engine and we broke it in practice. There was no way we
were even going to make the race."
Richard Childress, who owned Earnhardt's car, asked Andretti how things were
going. He related the engine problem but never asked Childress for help because
Andretti's team didn't have the money to buy one of the engines developed for
Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona, where Earnhardt was killed Sunday in the
Daytona 500.
"I found out later he told Earnhardt about it and Earnhardt had an idea,"
Andretti said. "He and Richard gave one of their qualifying engines to Dave
Marcis, and had Marcis move his qualifying engine to our car.
"The engine we got was phenomenal. We made the race because of Dale
Earnhardt and Richard Childress."
Andretti said they never asked for anything in return and never took credit
for their generosity.
"There are a lot of stories like that about Earnhardt," Andretti said.
"He helped a lot of people, and no one ever knew."
Texas track to be silent during service
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Texas Motor Speedway will shut down all track
activity for an hour Thursday during the memorial service for Dale Earnhardt in
Charlotte, N.C.
Several CART teams have been testing at the speedway in preparation for
their season-opening race next month.
Earnhardt, a seven-time Winston Cup champion, was killed Sunday in a crash
on the last lap of the Daytona 500. Thursday's memorial service is scheduled
for noon ET.
Texas Motor Speedway's 2001 Winston Cup race is April 1.
Test driver
Spain's Pedro de la Rosa has joined Formula One's Jaguar
Racing as a test driver.
De la Rosa, released by Arrows after last season, is expected to race for
Jaguar eventually.
Northern Ireland's Eddie Irvine and Italian rookie Luciano Burti will race
for the team this year,
The F-1 seasons opens next week in Australia.
Ongais honored
Danny Ongais, one of the most versatile drivers in auto
racing history, was recently inducted into the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame.
Ongais was a top drag racing star in the 1960s and early 70s, won six CART
races, helped win the 1979 24 Hours of Daytona and also competed on the Formula
One circuit.
He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame last year.
Dakar Rally frays nerves in Western Sahara
A flap over last month's
Paris-Dakar rally has frayed nerves in Western Sahara and
blocked progress in settling a decades-old dispute over who the
territory belongs to, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
reported on Wednesday.
The rally competitors, driving cars, motorcycles and
trucks, crossed the territory in early January as part of the
23rd annual Paris-Dakar trek of 6,200 miles (10,000 km) across
southern Europe and North Africa to the Senegal capital Dakar
in West Africa.
The Polisario Front, which seeks independence for Western
Sahara with Algeria's backing, had threatened to end a
U.N.-brokered cease-fire in effect since 1991 and resume
military activities if the rally entered the territory.
The front complained it had not been asked about the rally
crossing while Morocco, which controls most of the territory,
had been consulted in advance.
While the front later withdrew its threat against rally
participants, relations between the Polisario and Morocco have
since deteriorated, bringing diplomacy to a stand-still, Annan
said in a report to the 15-nation U.N. Security Council.
"A climate of increased mistrust and bitterness has set in
between the parties and this is undermining the agreed
cease-fire regime. Regrettably I cannot report any progress
towards overcoming the obstacles to the implementation of the
settlement plan," Annan said.
The Polisario Front fought a bloody guerrilla war with
Morocco over control of the territory after Spain shed it in
1975.
The United Nations for many years has been trying to hold a
referendum to decide whether the sparsely populated territory
should be incorporated into Morocco, as desired by Morocco, or
become independent, which the Polisario favors.
But arguments over who is eligible to vote have dragged on
and on, with the front accusing Morocco of trying to pad the
voter registration lists.
Annan said his special envoy for Western Sahara, former
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, had recommended that the
council extend for another two months, until April 30, the U.N.
mission there, in order to see whether Morocco was willing
during that time to offer the territory a measure of autonomy.
Baker "says that he is ready to reengage with the parties
in trying to find an early, durable and agreed resolution to
the dispute over Western Sahara," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard
said.
The 277-strong U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western
Sahara, known as MINURSO, includes military observers, troops
and civilian police.