Monday, March 2, 1998 | 5:46 a.m.
NASCAR's so-called "Five-and-Five" rule supposedly is about aerodynamic clearance on the front and rear decks of Winston Cup stock cars. But the Jack Roush racing brigade Sunday added new definition to the term during the inaugural running of the Las Vegas 400.
Five cars in the race, five outstanding finishes.
Roush's five-car stable of Mark Martin, Jeff Burton, Johnny Benson, Ted Musgrave and Chad Little finished first, second, fourth, sixth and 10th, respectively, in Ford Tauruses. The team's remarkable effort should silence critics who charged that in adding two cars over the winter Roush was spreading his ranks too thin.
"That's a great day for Roush Racing, that's for sure," said Burton, whose No. 99 Exide Batteries Ford crossed the finish line second. "It's hard to finish in the top 20 with five cars, much less the top 10."
All five Roush cars finished on the lead lap with Little being the last of the 10 drivers who completed all 267 circuits of the 1.5-mile superspeedway.
Burton, who led twice for 37 laps, might have made have made it tougher on Martin at the end were it not for midrace miscue. He was nailed for speeding in the pits on lap 93 after Kenny Irwin spun and brought out the first yellow flag of the day.
The South Boston, Va., resident was assessed a stop-and-go penalty and had to go to the back of the pack -- Burton was running with the leaders at the time of the violation -- for the restart.
"I got us in trouble on pit road," said Burton, who picked up $202,850 for finishing second. "We had a good stop and I wanted to show those guys (his crew) they had a good stop (by quickly rejoining the action). I went a little fast down pit road. That got us behind."
Burton, to whom teammate Martin often refers as "the best driver in Winston Cup racing today," is expected to challenge for the title this year. But he had gotten off to a slow start in the first two races at Daytona and Rockingham and stood 31st in points prior to Sunday.
The 30-year-old driver made the biggest gain of any driver, leaping 13 spots to 18th in points.
"That's all we ask, is that we improve every week," said Burton, after coming up a little shy in his bid to win another inaugural event. He captured the Winston Cup lid-lifter at Texas Motor Speedway last year.
"That's the way we expect to race. We're a good race team and we expect to have good races."
Roush now operates the Martin and Burton teams under the same roof but it was a great day for his "junior varsity" team as well. Benson led once in the Cheerios/Pop Secret Ford, for nine laps, while Musgrave and Little quietly soldiered on to their top-10 finishes.
Like Burton, Musgrave was more than happy just to come away from Las Vegas with a positive reuslt after spinning his wheels in the season's first two races. He vaulted from 30th to 21st in the standings with his solid sixth.
"Our day is coming one of these days," the Primestar Ford said. "It was good pit stops all day. The car never faltered a lot, it was just a little tight off the corners all day with the setup we had. All in all, the car was probably about 80-percent right."
But it was a 100-percent ideal day for his car owner and the team's lead driver.
Martin admitted he had concerns when Burton became his direct teammate and Roush added the other cars. But for one glorious afternoon, all the worries were put to rest.
"There was no pre-disposition to do five cars. But I had the same anxiety and concern that Mark did," Roush said. "He made the decision to move himself and his race team into the Charlotte area because he and Jeff work so well together. And that certainly is a relief to him, to be able to win this race and not have to answer any more questions about that."
Burton couldn't question the logic of the team pooling its resources, either.
"This is why we joined up," he said. "To run one-two."
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