Strange Year; Tony Stewart won the Cup in a most unusual season.(News)

Byline: AL PEARCE

Years from now, fortified by a six-pack and buoyed by 20/20 hindsight, we might look back and agree that 2002 was among the most unusual Winston Cup seasons in NASCAR's 53-year history. Not necessarily its best, its most competitive or its most memorable. Almost certainly, though, among its most unusual.

Let us count the ways:

Major changes began weeks before the first race and didn't end until after Thanksgiving. Of the 60-some teams that entered the Daytona 500 on Feb. 17, more than half underwent significant changes throughout the 36-race season. By mid-November, 10 other teams had undergone at least one major change. Drivers and crew chiefs left teams or were fired. Sponsors bailed when the cost became prohibitive. Longtime brand loyalists like Roger Penske, Morgan-McClure, Joe Gibbs and Cal Wells announced changes for '03. Owners like Junie Donlavey, Andy Petree and Jim Smith faced an uncertain 2003.

Noted team owner Jack Roush was killed-but refused to die. On April 19, his 60th birthday and two days before the spring race at Talladega, the cat in the hat crashed an experimental airplane into an Alabama lake. He survived only because former Marine Corps search and rescue expert Larry Hicks was on a nearby shore. Hicks saw the crash and told his wife to call 911 even as he rushed to the site. He went underwater several times, finally unhooking Roush, bringing him up and stabilizing him until help arrived. Roush was hospitalized several days in Alabama and Michigan, then returned at Charlotte about five weeks later. Roush said the experience changed him, but it certainly didn't douse his competitive fire.

Despite that personal crisis, Roush Racing clearly reestablished itself as one of the sport's most successful organizations. In 2001, its stable of Mark Martin, Jeff Burton, Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth won only twice in 143 combined starts and had only one top-10 finisher in points. This year, that quartet won two poles and 10 races, and finished second, third, eighth and 12th in points. As a bonus, Cup-bound driver Greg Biffle gave Roush the Busch Series championship. Tony Stewart and owner Joe Gibbs may have won the Cup, but Roush Racing was the team of the year.

Rules that affected races one weekend weren't necessarily in effect the next. The Daytona 500, for example, was stopped briefly in the final laps to ensure a green-flag finish for NBC-TV. A week later, on the Fox cable network, the Subway 400 at Rockingham finished under caution following a late-race accident. Even though six of the 36 races ended under caution, NASCAR seems disinclined to create ``a green-finish'' scenario. They have one in the Craftsman Truck Series, but it's never been tried in Cup.