Gordon Has Enough To Last Through Caution-Filled 500 Miles

CONCORD, N.C. — It is a familiar but unfortunate storyline for NASCAR’s Chase for the Nextel Cup competitors.
The same Jeff Gordon in the same rainbow-colored No. 24 Chevrolet that dominated the pre-Chase Nextel Cup season is the same Jeff Gordon on the verge of turning The Chase into the foregone conclusion a non-Chase season would have been by now.
Gordon overcame phantom fuel woes to survive the green-white-checkered challenges of Clint Bowyer and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Busch and notch his second-straight victory Saturday night, winning the Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
With consecutive victories at Talladega and Charlotte, Gordon has extended his point lead from nine to 68 points over teammate Jimmie Johnson and 78 points over Bowyer, who sits third in The Chase after his second-place finish. Tony Stewart is fourth in The Chase, 198 points behind. None of the other 12 “Chasers” are within 200 points of Gordon.

POWER TEAM: Team owner Rick Hendrick hugs Jeff Gordon in victory lane Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway. (Phil Cavali Photo)

Still, Gordon, who has been the model of consistency this season with six victories and 25 top-10 finishes, is taking nothing for granted.
While the 68-point lead is by far the largest any driver has had since the beginning of The Chase five races ago, Gordon said it is not yet insurmountable.
“There’s too much racing to go,” he said. “Just like we were trying to survive at Talladega and ended up get-ting a win, we were just trying to survive here and get to 500 miles...We have some great things going our way — call it luck, karma or whatever you want, we have some great things happening — but we still have five races to go.”
Johnson, who spun on lap 230 after leading six times for a race-high 95 laps, settled for 14th place, despite climbing back into the top six prior to the race’s final caution with 10 laps to go.
That caution, which was followed by a 12-minute red-flag period to dry oil on the track leaked by the No. 66 Chevrolet of Jeff Green, set up a pair of mad dashes for the checkered flag.
The first began when the race went green with five laps to go and saw Ryan Newman rocket from fourth to the lead, taking the outside groove as Gordon, Busch, Bowyer and Jeff Burton sputtered initially on the restart and battled among themselves.
Newman’s lead quickly grew to more than five car lengths, but the No. 12 Penske Alltel Dodge lost grip at the exit of turn two, slamming into the wall with three laps to go and handing the lead back to Gordon with the green-white-checkers restart remaining.
From there, Gordon held off Bowyer and Busch for the 81st Nextel Cup victory of his career and his fifth at Charlotte, but his first here since 1999.
Newman said the left-rear tire blew, causing the accident, but Goodyear engineers said the tire was still up.
“We ended up blowing a left-rear tire,” said Newman, who finished 28th and was denied his first victory of the season. “I felt it pop, and it spun around and hit the wall. We tried to complete some more laps, but that was it.”

CLOSING IN: Jeff Gordon (24) leads Clint Bowyer (07) and Kyle Busch down the backstretch Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway. (Rusty Burroughs/HHP Photo)

It was a bizarre ending to what had been a fairly mundane race that saw Gordon take the point on lap 285 and build a comfortable lead during a long green-flag run that lasted until the caution waved on lap 324.
“It was a crazy chain of events and I just couldn’t believe it was happening,” said Gordon. “Probably, kind of like (Newman) was while I was battling with (Kyle Busch) and (Newman) was going around us on the outside.”
While Gordon — with the exception of the Newman incidents — was able to hold his own at the front of the field, Johnson tumbled backward after the restart with 10 laps to go, even as fellow Chasers Burton and Carl Edwards moved into the top five, finishing fourth and fifth, respectively.
Dave Blaney was the only non-Chase participant in the top seven with a sixth-place finish and Tony Stewart ended a frustrating night, which included a pit-road mishap with Paul Menard followed immediately by a collision with Kasey Kahne that damaged Stewart’s car and cost him valuable track position as he challenged for the lead, in seventh.
“We’re just frustrated. We should’ve been better than that,” said Greg Zipadelli, crew chief for Stewart’s No. 20 Chevrolet. “Those things happen, but they shouldn’t happen to us. We need to be a little bit more intense and think about everything...It just seems like it isn’t our season right now. We will keep digging. We will never give up.”
That is something Gordon is very aware of, despite his 198-point advantage over Stewart as the series heads to Martinsville for the Subway 500.
“Until (Stewart’s) mathematically out of it, that guy’s a threat,” Gordon said. “I never count him out. I know how good that team is and I know how good he is.”
Stewart has been strong at Martinsville, recording a pair of victories there and leading more than half the laps there in 2005-06.
But he is one of several Chase participants — not the least of which is Gordon — to have had success at the treacherous half-mile.
Gordon has seven victories there — more than any other active driver — and Johnson has three. Kurt Busch and Burton have each won once at Martinsville.