BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) - Terry Labonte
was talking about retribution, NASCAR
was talking about reviewing its
rough-driving penalties and Dale
Earnhardt was talking about reverting back
to his renegade ways.

Once again, Bristol Motor Speedway
lived up to its reputation for putting on
some of the best shows in Winston Cup
racing.

The 500-lap races on the .533-mile oval
have become famous for producing plenty
of crumpled fenders and bruised egos, and
Saturday night's running of the Goody's
500 was no exception.

Earnhardt won the race by knocking
Labonte out of the lead with a bump from
behind less than a lap from the checkered
flag.

While Labonte and the sanctioning body
were left to debate the relative merits of
racing to win, Intimidator style, Earnhardt
called it just another Saturday night
short-track show.

''What can I say about Bristol?'' he said
with a shrug. ''It's still a cantankerous,
exciting, aggressive,
anything-you-want-to-call-it race track.''

Because of its narrow, concrete layout and
its 36-degree banked turns, Bristol
produces plenty of speed and banging. It's
a style that fit Earnhardt well earlier in his
career, but lately, he hasn't been fast
enough on a consistent basis to be able to
aggressively challenge for the lead on
short tracks.

That wasn't the case Saturday night, and
the 48-year-old driver showed he still has
the moves that helped him win seven
Winston Cup titles.

When the race was over, Labonte warned
that Earnhardt ''better tighten his belts up,''
and NASCAR officials were left to ponder
the issue of how to make judgment calls on
the issue of aggressive driving.

Regarding Earnhardt's pass, which sent
Labonte spinning into a concrete wall and
left him with an eighth-place finish,
NASCAR said replays appeared to
suggest it was contact typical of Bristol.

''Only one person knows the full extent of
that situation,'' said NASCAR operations
director Kevin Triplett. ''Beyond that, it
was contact in a night of contact. But we
may have to step back and look at the
whole picture.''

Earnhardt, long held as an icon by legions
of racing fans, was showered with boos by
many in the record crowd of about
140,000 as he took the checkered flag. The
noise grew even louder as he drove into
Victory Lane, and it persisted for several
minutes while he and his team celebrated
his 73rd career triumph.

Later, Earnhardt said he was happy merely
to be back in the limelight, regardless of
the reason.

''If they're not cheering, they better be
booing,'' he said.

Earnhardt suggested the fans might try to
put themselves in his position. Labonte
overtook Earnhardt for the lead as the two
took the white flag, and the decisive
contact took place as they went through the
second turn.

''Was I not supposed to try to pass him
back?'' Earnhardt asked. ''If it comes down
to the last lap and you're going for it and
you get into somebody, you get into them.
You don't mean to, but you mean to race
him.''

Reaction from their peers was mixed.

''It was just racing,'' Sterling Marlin said,
adding, however, that any similar incidents
in the future would warrant action against
Earnhardt.

''If they come together again,'' Marlin said,
''I'd say Earnhardt's got him a
neck-stretching coming.''

Bobby Hamilton wasn't nearly as
forgiving, saying Earnhardt would not
have won the race ''if he hadn't run over
the man. It's that simple.''

The big winner in the whole affair was the
speedway, which recently was cited in a
survey by a popular trade magazine as
fans' favorite place to attend a Winston
Cup race. Now the track has yet another
chapter in its rich history of
edge-of-the-seat races.

Bristol is adding two more grandstands
that will boost capacity by nearly 14,000
for the next race in the spring of 2000. The
new seats go on sale next month, and
speedway officials were smiling after
Saturday night's race as they said they
expect a quick sellout.

''Typical Bristol,'' Marlin said. ''That's
what keeps them packed in here.''

Earnhardt feels heat after win

BRISTOL, Tenn.- Dale Earnhardt and
controversy are no strangers to one
another. In fact, they used to be pretty good
friends.

Both were reunited on Saturday night at the
Bristol Motor Speedway when Earnhardt
spun leader Terry Labonte coming off the
second turn on the last lap to win the
Goody's 500. But after the roar of the
engines had died down following the race,
Earnhardt was met with a loud chorus of
boos from race fans who felt like he had
taken a cheap shot on Labonte, one of the
most popular drivers on the Winston Cup
tour.

Earnhardt, upon climbing from his car in
victory lane, got the kind of boos that are
normally reserved for defending Winston
Cup champion Jeff Gordon.

"I don't think I spun Terry intentionally,
you'll have to go to NASCAR about all
that," Earnhardt said. "That's not my
position. If (the fans) aren't cheering they'd
better be booing. I've got broad shoulders
and I can take the blame or whatever. It
was not an intentional bump - but it
happened."

Even his fellow competitors voiced their
opinions that Earnhardt's tactics were out
of line towards Labonte, who was leading
the Goody's 500 until he was spun by a
lapped car while racing back to take the
yellow flag on lap 489. Despite that fact,
Labonte was fifth on the restart before he
ripped through the field and grabbed the
lead from Earnhardt with a lap to go.

"Earnhardt just took Terry right out - that's
all I saw," said Gordon, Labonte's
Hendrick Motorsports teammate, who
weaved his way through the backstretch
mayhem on the final lap to finish fourth.
"Terry had the car to beat and he should
have won the race. It's a shame for those
guys because they needed (a win) more
than anybody."

Gordon was not alone in the criticism of
Earnhardt, who with the victory, picked up
his first win since March 1996 on a track
other than Daytona and Talladega where
restrictor plates are required.

"Dale Earnhardt is probably the most
fiercest competitor to ever get behind the
wheel of a race car," said second-place
finisher Jimmy Spencer. "But he crossed
the line."

Ricky Rudd, who finished an important
third as he is still actively searching for a
sponsor for his own race team for next
season, was quite clear in his thoughts
towards Earnhardt.

"There are certain guys who you can race
with, and they'll race you hard and clean,"
Rudd explained. "The guy that spun Terry
out is not one of those guys."

Earnhardt took responsibility for his
actions.

"Terry caught me coming back to the white
flag in (turns) three and four and we
bumped a little," Earnhardt explained late
Saturday night in the press box at Bristol.
"When we got back to turn one, I went
back in there to get with him and get under
him. Whether he checked up or I got in
deeper or what, I bumped him too hard and
turned him loose. It spun him.

"I didn't mean to do it intentionally. I
meant to get in there and race with him, but
that happened and I know he's not going to
see it that way. I know he's upset."

Indeed, the normally mild-mannered
Labonte was as ticked-off as most people
have ever seen him.

"Have you ever heard (Earnhardt) say he
means to spin somebody out?" said
Labonte, who took the white flag with the
lead and ended up finishing eighth. "... He
never has any intentions of taking anybody
out - it just happens that way."

Earnhardt responded to Labonte's
comment.

"When you go into the corner after
someone on the last lap and he checks up
and you get in harder or whatever, you've
got no control of the speed of the race car
when you get together," Earnhardt said,
while mentioning that he and Labonte have
always remained friends, even hunting
partners on several occasions. "I definitely
didn't mean to go down there and turn him
around."

On a Saturday night at Bristol when Jerry
Nadeau was penalized for two laps for
rough driving when he nailed and spun
Winston Cup points leader Dale Jarrett on
lap 98, NASCAR officials were asked
why Nadeau was penalized and Earnhardt
was not.

"Every angle we looked at from (the
Earnhardt-Jarrett) accident, there was
nothing to protest that it was more of an
intentional thing than it was a racing
incident," said NASCAR spokesman Tim
Sullivan. "In the Nadeau incident, we felt
as if he had enough time to back off and get
around the 88 (car of Jarrett). The 88 was
clearly coming down the race track to get
out of the way.

"But when they were racing for the win,
we didn't feel like Dale went up more than
Terry came down. We felt there was
nothing to indicate to us that we needed to
overturn the race. ... This was not a
situation were we felt it was a sought-out
spin - those guys were racing for the win.
And I think if the (situation) was reversed,
Terry would have done the same thing."

With the Winston Cup tour returning to
action next Sunday in the Southern 500
from the Darlington Raceway, at least one
driver says Earnhardt had better watch his
back.

"If they get together again, I'd say
Earnhardt's got him a neck-stretching
coming," said Sterling Marlin, who
finished seventh, one position ahead of
Labonte whose car ended up parked
against the inside retaining wall on
Bristol's backstretch.