On Saturday, Labonte was asked about his first series start at Darlington, S.C, and he recounted an interesting story on how he learned 'what not to do' at the track to be successful.
"The
good thing about it for me to run my first race there is being from Texas I
really wasn’t that familiar with Darlington. If I would have been,
I probably wouldn’t have picked that one as my first race. But we
went to Darlington and I never will forget doing down there. They
had a rookie meeting and they showed a video that they played of all the things
not to do. I was sitting there watching that thing and the guy
that starred in that video was the guy that drove the car I was driving the year
before. So everything he did wrong they pointed out in that
video," Labonte said.
"So I sat there and I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, the
car is identical. It’s the same paint scheme, same number,
everything.’ So I sat right there and thought, ‘The thing to do is
not make next year’s video. Don’t make all the highlights of the
things not to do.’ So they had a rookie test and we had to go run
around the track and you missed qualifying the first day. You had
to qualify the second day, so I qualified and the longest race I think I’d ever
run was a 200-lapper around a half-mile track, so I started that race and I just
ran and ran and thought, ‘My gosh these guys could wreck down here. Holy smoke.’ They tore up a bunch of cars and it was
typical Darlington. It was wild.
"The
race lasted forever. hat was the longest race I ever ran in my
life, so we ran the race and I finally looked up to see how many laps were
left. I was trying to figure out how many laps were left and
finally the thing ended and I never thought to look at the scoreboard and I
finished fourth. I’m going to the garage and Bobby Allison and
Donnie Allison came over and congratulated me and I thought that was the coolest
thing."
