From Saturday’s Houston Chronicle: “Sources say Labonte is tired of playing second fiddle to Jeff Gordon on the Hendrick team. Labonte won the Winston Cup championship for Hendrick in the Kellogg’s Chevrolet in 1996 but thinks his standing in the organization hasn’t been the same since Rick Hendrick became ill and his brother took over the team last season. Hendrick has been battling leukemia. Irwin took over the Texaco Taurus last season as a rookie, replacing Ernie Irvan in a car that had its best days when the late Davey Allison was at the wheel. Irwin has been disappointing in his second season, so Yates might want a veteran such as Labonte to take over. If Labonte leaves Hendrick Motorsports, the Kellogg’s Monte Carlo will have plenty of applicants for the driving job. One of them could be Steve Park, who might want to leave the Pennzoil Chevy owned by Dale Earnhardt because Earnhardt likely will be spending a lot of time helping Dale Jr. in his rookie season next year.”(Houston Chronicle) JAYSKI NOTE: This rumor has been floating around for a year now about the Labonte/Irwin deal. Published reports and sources say Labonte is happy at Hendrick, wants to stay there, wants to retire there and has a contract with Hendrick and Kelloggs thru 2000. Also as for Steve Park, sources tell me there are no moves afoot to replace or relieve Park and he as well as Pennzoil have a contract thru 2000 with DEI. Past news on Labonte/Irwin can be seen on their respective Team Past News/Rumors/Links page I have here, see the links below to the left…
