At one point in the race after a botched pit stop on lap 311, it seemed Hamilton's luck had come to an end when he dropped from 1st to 8th. Then he proved luck had nothing to do with it as he cut through heavy traffic and re-took the lead after only 25 laps.
Then after a caution at lap 389 he decided to go against his crew chief and decided to take on four tires instead of only two as the rest of the lead lap competitors where doing causing him to drop back again this time to 11th place. "Let's take on four. This car's handling too good to take a chance on it," he told his crew. Sure enough he proved right by once again powering past one car after another and gaining the lead again on lap 438. From that point on he stayed in the lead.
When he took the checkered flag with a 6.376 second lead, he claimed his third career victory in 208 starts. He also claimed the Unical 76 Racing Challenge bonus by winning from the pole boosting his winnings to an amazing $227,025.
If Bobby Hamilton was lucky, then several drivers were very unlucky as the race endured 14 caution flags for 96 laps. The most unlucky being #7 Geoff Bodine who was involved in three of the incidents. Other unlucky drivers included #99 Jeff Burton, #97 Chad Little, #1 Darrell Waltrip, and #23 Jimmy Spencer who each suffered damage in at least two different crashes. The most notable casualties of the race where #5 Terry Labonte and #6 Mark Martin. Labonte was tapped from behind and spun into the wall. Mark Martin during the 7th caution mistakenly thought pit road was open, then realizing too late that the pits were still closed tried to swerve back onto the track and clipped the pit retaining wall causing severe damage to the left front.
...Top 10
- #4 Bobby Hamilton
- #16 Ted Musgrave
- #88 Dale Jarrett
- #3 Dale Earnhardt
