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1 Lap Led Just Enough For Gordon

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By TONY FABRIZIO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 8, 2007

Updated: 10/08/2007 12:12 am

TALLADEGA, Ala. - Jeff Gordon's usual strategy at Talladega is to lead as many laps as he can and try to stay ahead of the inevitable wrecks.

Sunday, he laid back, came to the front late and led only one lap of the UAW-Ford 500.

It was the lap that counted.

Gordon's sixth victory at Talladega - he pulled outside teammate Jimmie Johnson and got a push to the front from Tony Stewart on the backstretch - gave him a season sweep at the track and made him the all-time leader in restrictor-plate wins with 12.

More importantly for Gordon, it moved him a step closer to winning his fifth Nextel Cup championship. He moved into first place with six races remaining: nine points ahead of Johnson, 63 ahead of Clint Bowyer and at least 154 ahead of everybody else.

This one was substance over style.

'I've never had to do that before,' Gordon said about hanging back for much of the race with Johnson and others because of uncertainty about how the Car of Tomorrow would perform in its first restrictor-plate race.

'I even told team owner Rick Hendrick during the week: 'Some guys are talking about that strategy, but I can't do it.' I changed after talking to crew chief Steve Letarte and seeing what other guys were doing.'

Gordon started 34th and ran mostly between 30th and 37th until the final 30 laps. With the race winding down, he hooked up with Johnson, who had started 19th and fell back for the first half of the race, and the two worked their way toward the front.

Johnson took the lead on the 183rd of 188 laps, leading an inside line past an outside line led by Ryan Newman.

At the white flag, Johnson and Gordon were 1-2 on the inside line and Tony Stewart had moved to the front of the outside line. Stewart was charging in Turn 2 when Gordon darted in front of him and got beside Johnson. Stewart had no choice but to push Gordon to the front.

Johnson finished second, Dave Blaney third, Denny Hamlin fourth and Newman fifth. Stewart, who led laps 153 to 174 before getting shuffled back and then making his late bid, finished eighth and held onto fourth in the standings.

'Luckily when I got high and Jimmie tried to block me, the No. 20 Stewart was there and had nowhere to go,' Gordon said. 'He drilled me. ... That's what you have to do - you have to put that rear bumper in front of those other guys' bumpers at the right time.'

Johnson said he was doing all he could to defend the bottom of the track, and didn't want to risk moving up any further.

'There was more going on behind me than I could really see,' he said. 'Evidently, the 20 had a big run. Jeff moved up front of it and it was strong enough to push him by me. I couldn't even side-draft him and slow him down.'

Although there were nine caution flags for 34 laps and an 11-car crash on Lap 144, the first COT race at Talladega did not produce the carnage some predicted. That's partly because drivers, apprehensive about crashing, stayed in line and clicked off laps.

'It was a little boring out there for us,' said Jeff Burton, who fell out with a blown engine after 92 laps. 'Just going around that top lane single file is not what any of us want. The drivers don't want that, the fans don't want that, and I don't think we are going to see a whole lot more of that.'

Newman didn't like it either.

'To see single-file racing and the guy that wins is sitting in the back all day just lounging around, that's not racing to me,' he said. 'I hope it wasn't what NASCAR intended with this car.'

The waning laps were more typical of races at Talladega, with some frenetic jockeying for position. During the final 19 laps, Johnson improved from 16th to second, Hamlin from 21st to fourth and Casey Mears from 18th to sixth.

Gordon and Johnson were the big winners in the Chase standings. Bowyer finished 11th and held onto third place. Stewart stayed fourth, but lost some ground. Harvick is fifth after finishing 20th with an engine problem, and Carl Edwards, after finishing a quiet 13th, is sixth.

Hamlin's fourth-place finish left him still trailing by 262 points, and Kurt Busch's seventh left him 215 points back.

Burton and Martin Truex Jr. both had failures with the Dale Earnhardt Inc.-Richard Childress Racing engines they were running. Kyle Busch was eliminated in the 11-car pileup and fell to 260 points back, and Matt Kenseth to 318 points back with a 26th-place finish.

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