Steve Park's favorite color should be yellow. But it isn't right now.

The second-year driver's uniform is yellow, his car is yellow and since he is the driver of the #1 Pennzoil Monte Carlo, most of the clothes he wears around the track have a little bit of the Houston oil company's corporate yellow in them.

But after some untimely yellow caution flags at NASCAR Winston Cup races in Rockingham last week and in Las Vegas on Sunday, the color yellow only makes the 31-year-old driver see red.

Before the final yellow flag flew in the second annual Las Vegas 400, Park and his Dale Earnhardt Inc. teammates were looking at a chance for good finish. Instead they saw yellow once again take away a chance for a whole lot of green.

With about sixty laps left in the race on the flat 1.5-mile oval, Park seemed poised to post his first top-five finish in his brief Winston Cup career. Although he was a lap down running in 18th place, the Pennzoil team's fuel strategy was ready to earn itself a big payday.

Only Mark Martin, who was in the top five at the time, could finish the race, like Park, without a pit stop. If the others pitted, its doubtful any could come in and out of the pits quick enough to stay in front or catch Park. (note: Mike Skinner could also go all the way, and Mark Martin lost a cylinder before the checkerd flag!)

Not only was a good finish at stake. A top-five finish meant Park would qualify as one of the five cars eligible for a million dollars if he were to win Charlotte in May. This was big money roll of the dice in the gambling capitol of the world.

The laps wound down and the frontrunners desperately needing a caution to maintain their positions screamed over the radio asking for NASCAR to throw the yellow caution flag and give them an opportunity to pit.

Drivers reported debris in the third turn, on the backstretch and others amazingly noticed debris in turn one. The Pennzoil team prayed for a nice, caution-free ending to an otherwise entertaining race.

NASCAR ignored appeals for a caution radioing back to the drivers that any debris on the track was out of the racing groove. The race continued under green. The odds of the Pennzoil team pulling off an amazing work of strategy appeared to be growing with each passing lap.

Then it all went away.

NASCAR said oil from Geoffrey Bodine's car lay in the groove around the first turn. The yellow flag flew. The leaders were allowed to pit. The chance for a top five went out the window and that million dollars, well it will just have to wait for another time.

But Sunday's wasn't a sad story. In fact it was a good day.

After losing a lap to the leaders on lap 80, Park managed to drive with the frontrunners for the rest of the race; often passing cars that ended up in the top five. The Pennzoil car rolled through the corners as well as eventual winner Jeff Burton and seemed to be about the third or fourth quickest car on the track for most of the race.

Park nearly regained his lap on several occasions but fell just a second or two short each time. For a team that struggled to qualify only 40th on Friday, Sunday's performance was one to build upon.

Park walked out of Las Vegas with a 16th-place finish and moved up to 26th in the 1999 Winston Cup point standings - eleven places higher than where he was before the race. But, more importantly, Park and his Dale Earnhardt Inc. teammates left Las Vegas with the knowledge that their car and driver are just as fast as the leaders.

That belief, and a little luck, might lead Park and crew to forget, yellow, red, or whatever color flag sits in the bin of the NASCAR flag man on the front stretch at Atlanta Motor Speedway where they race next weekend.

The only flag that's going to matter to the Pennzoil crew at the Georgia track is checkered.