Around Iredell Sports

2007 Oct-08

Gordon wins Talledega

By Mike Mulhern
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TALLADEGA, Ala. - Chevy teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson played rope-a-dope all afternoon, laying far back in the pack, during what looked like a day for Dodge and Toyota teams to shine.

Then in the final 30 minutes Gordon and Johnson charged into contention for a dramatic eight-lap sprint to the finish, and Gordon made a dramatic move in the final seconds to foil both Johnson and Tony Stewart and win the UAW-Ford 500 by a nose at Talladega Speedway.

The one-two finish, plus troubles to many title challengers, puts Gordon and Johnson in firm command of the Nextel Cup championship chase.

“I have no idea how I got by my teammate,” a stunned Gordon said after the last-lap theatrics in front of a packed house of some 155,000. “When they got three-wide I said this was my opportunity. I got a push from Dave Blaney, and Jimmie tried to block me. I moved up, and Tony was right there with nowhere to go, and he drilled me.”

That bump was enough to push Gordon to the lead, and he won the scramble through the final mile.

“Man, I’m excited,” Gordon said. “That was an awesome win. I really thought Jimmie was going to win this race. I didn’t think anybody was going to get by him.

“I didn’t think I could win with this package.”

So Gordon — who led one lap — becomes NASCAR’s all-time winner on restrictor-plate tracks, with 12 now. “And I’m glad nobody threw anything on the track,” Johnson said.

“Are you sure?” Gordon said of the record. “Dale Earnhardt was the man. I watched him and learned a lot. I was very fortunate to race Dale for the win in the Daytona 500 early in my career. I’m pretty blown away we have won that many restrictor-plate races.”

Stewart appeared the man to beat down the stretch, but he made some mistakes while trying to block Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch in a battle for the lead on lap 175 of the 188-lapper. As Stewart swerved down and up, Newman drove by into the lead, with teammate Busch pushing him, in one of car owner Roger Penske’s best big-track efforts.

But Johnson, with Gordon pushing him, charged up through the pack into the lead on lap 183.

Then the last lap Gordon snaked his way around Johnson and chopped off Stewart — in a bold move that left Stewart no options — and held on for the win.

Stewart left the track without comment.

For much of the race NASCAR’s car-of-tomorrow debut here at the sport’s biggest, fastest track looked like it should be considered the car-of-yesterday, with much of the racing simply single file, with no passing. Drivers would at times get racy and go three-wide. But then they’d settle back into a single-file train.

And drivers were generally critical of the new car.

However, despite pre-race worries of a crash-fest, there were two major multi-car incidents, showing how cautiously most of the race went.

So Gordon, four races into the 10-race playoffs, is the new tour leader, by a comfortable margin against most of the other men still in title contention. He’s nine points ahead of Johnson.

Clint Bowyer (finishing 11th) fell 63 points down. And no one else is within 150 points of Gordon. Everyone lost ground to Gordon and Johnson. Stewart (eighth at the line) is 154 points down, Kevin Harvick (20th) 202 down, Carl Edwards (14th) 205 down, Kurt Busch (seventh) 215 down, Kyle Busch (36th) 260 down, Denny Hamlin (fourth) 262 down, Martin Truex Jr. (42nd) 300 down, Matt Kenseth (26th) 318 down, and Jeff Burton (43rd) 336 down.

Making up 200 points on Gordon and Johnson is very likely impossible, barring a major catastrophe.

“We laid in the back; we didn’t want to do it that way, but this car has a lot of unknowns,” said Gordon, who had to rally from a pit-road penalty, running over an air hose on lap 140 that nearly cost him a lap. “Hardest three-quarters of a race I had to run. But I knew there would be some bumping and banging, and we’ve got a championship on the line, and we dodged the wrecks and it all worked out.

“As uneventful as it was back there in the back, I was nervous the whole way. And it may have worked for us, because we missed that big wreck.”

Toyota’s Blaney finished a tight third, with the best run of his career. “One lane took over, usually the top lane, and it was hard to get the bottom lane going, or the middle lane,” Blaney said. “I probably took away Tony’s chances for winning with my move, but I had to protect myself, and it’s hard not to stay in the same lane with Jimmie Johnson here.”

Blaney’s run showed that Toyota perhaps is turning a corner. It was a great day for Toyota, for a change.

“I was trying to defend that bottom lane,” Johnson said. “But there was more going on behind me than I could see. And Tony gave Jeff a big push.

“But the big picture racing was important today. I haven’t finished a fall race here in some time.”

However elsewhere it was yet another bad day for many of NASCAR championship contenders. Kyle Busch, Burton, Truex and Kenseth were all big losers.

Kyle Busch was knocked out of the race and Hamlin suffered damage when Bobby Labonte appeared to cut a left-side tire on lap 145 and his car abruptly turned left into heavy traffic. Labonte’s car slammed into Robby Gordon, blocking the track. Jamie McMurray, Kenseth, Dave Blaney, David Ragan, David Reutimann and Paul Menard were all caught up in the melee, too.

“It surprised me,” Labonte, a front-runner much of the day, said. “The tires are up, so I don’t know what the problem was. I don’t know how it happened. It was weird. For some reason it just took off.”

“This week again….This is unfortunate for our chase chances, but we knew Talladega would be our mulligan,” Busch said. “We even circled it on the calendar that this was the one we were going to wreck in, because every time we come here it seems if there is a crash we’re in it.

“Not very much optimism now. The team wants to be optimistic, and they want me to be optimistic, but I’m sorry, it just being realistic — you’re so far back it would take a lot to get back in this deal.”
Burton’s title bid and Truex’s bid both appeared to go up in smoke when their engines blew midway through the race. And Dale Earnhardt Jr., also in a Chevrolet, blew an engine too. Harvick, yet another Richard Childress-powered Chevy, and a title contender, dropped a cylinder late.

Engine men had worried about problems because the NASCAR-mandated rear-end gear was so high that drivers were turned many more RPM than usual here. The normal Talladega engine turns 7200 RPM; yesterday drivers were turning 8500 to 8700 RPM.

Burton came into the race 186 points behind the leader. Truex came into the race 158 points down. Kyle Busch was 136 down when the race opened.

“Obviously this about wraps it up for us,” Burton said. “But we’re turning 8500 RPM steady, and we don’t normally do that here.

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