SYRACUSE— Veteran Frank Cozze of Wind Gap, Pa., captured the biggest race of his career Sunday by winning the Advance Auto Parts modified series Rite Aid 200 at the New York State Fairgrounds.
Cozze has won lots of races in a long career that has spanned three decades, but the Rite Aid 200 was one that always had eluded him..
Cozze played the fuel game as he went 129 miles on a tank full of gas to seal the victory. A number of late contenders ran out of fuel late in the race.
Cozze, who started 33rd in the 46-car starting field, took the lead on lap 124 from Vince Vitale of Phoenix.
Pole sitter Tim Fuller of Watertown never led in finishing fifth to collect $6,000. Matt Sheppard of Waterloo had the lead for the first 49 laps.
Watertown drivers Billy Dunn and Frankie Caprara finished eighth and 21st, respectively.
Finishing third was Duane Howard of Oley, Pa., and Stewart Friesen of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, was fourth.
CORR TAKES TITLE
Sean Corr of Goshen led all the way to win the 25-lap pro stock race Sunday during Super DIRT Week at the Fairgrounds.
Corr beat Eric Mann of Carmel by nearly three seconds across the finish line in the 25-lap feature. Louie Jackson of Akwesasne finished third. Pete Stefanski of North Tonawanda was fourth and Don Carlson of Ridgefield, Conn., was fifth.
BURTON BACK IN TITLE HUNT
Jeff Burton failed to win a championship when he was anointed NASCAR's next big star, the guy everyone thought would challenge for multiple titles.
He couldn't win one years later, when, after years of mediocrity, he suddenly found himself back in the mix.
A win Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway rocketed Burton onto Jimmie Johnson's bumper with five races to go to decide the championship, and Burton is convinced he's as capable of winning a title now as he was when he was a young hotshot.
"No one's ever proven to me why you can't do at 41 what you could do at 23," Burton said. "We're lucky to be in a sport that you can be successful in your 40s. You can convince yourself you're too old to do it. Trust me, a lot of people will try to convince you you're too old to do it.
"But with age comes a lot of advantages, too. And we'll try to take those advantages every chance we get."
Burton's peak started 11 years ago, when he started a string of five consecutive multiple-win seasons. In that period, he notched 17 victories and 102 top 10 finishes while slowly moving up in the standings.
He finished fifth in the standings twice, including his six-win season in 1999. He'd moved up to third in the final points the next season, and went into 2001 as the prohibitive favorite to win his first Cup title.
But Dale Earnhardt died on the final lap of the season-opening Daytona 500 that year, and many people believed it adversely affected the safety-conscious Burton. He became a proponent of industrywide improvements, and for the next several years became more known for his stances on safety than his on-track performance.
The wins dried up — he didn't reach Victory Lane from 2002 through 2005 — and left longtime car owner Jack Roush for a fresh start with slumping Richard Childress Racing.
Like Burton, RCR had fallen off following Earnhardt's death, and Childress needed new blood to help revitalize the program. Many told the car owner he was crazy to hire an aging driver who had failed to meet his potential and presumably lost his edge.
Childress didn't balk.
"Someone asked me a while ago about age, why I pick drivers — not in their golden years, but in their good years, as I call 'em," Childress said. "But Dale Earnhardt in 2000, we finished second (in the standings). I think he was 49. We were going to win the championship the following year.
"So age, like Jeff said, is only in your mind. If you take care of your body like Jeff does physically, your mind will be good."
Burton has proven that the past three seasons, steadily becoming relevant again.
DRAMA IN JAPAN GP
Fernando Alonso won Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix for a victory that was almost a sideshow to a breathless race that provided another twist in the title fight.
While the rejuvenated Spaniard made it back-to-back wins in his Renault, the race's history of season-defining incidents between title rivals gained a new chapter when Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa tangled in a memorable second-lap collision.
Both leading drivers received pit drive-through penalties before Hamilton finished out of the points for McLaren and Massa came in seventh following a post-race stewards' decision that elevated him from eighth.
That meant Hamilton's championship lead was cut from seven points to five with two races remaining. BMW's Robert Kubica, who finished second, continued to sneak up on the pair and is 12 points off the lead.
