Jeff Gordon didn’t lead a lap Sunday until the last one. But that, of course, was plenty to win the UAW-Ford 500 and take the lead in the Chase for the Nextel Cup standings.
Gordon and teammate Jimmie Johnson finished 1-2 with one of the most bizarre, masterful and trying strategies ever displayed at NASCAR’s biggest, wildest track.
And they entrenched themselves firmly as co-favorites to win the Chase. Johnson is in second place, only nine points behind Gordon.
They rode near the back of the field for most of the race, giving themselves time and space to avoid the massive crashing that had been anticipated in NASCAR’s first pairing of the Car of Tomorrow design with traditionally frantic restrictor-plate racing.
“I’m telling you, that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in a race,” Gordon said of lagging back for three-fourths of the race. “I like to think I’m patient, but this was beyond patience. I’d never yawned in a car before. But I yawned, riding back there today.”
They waited until after the “big one,” the inevitable multiple-car wreck here, to begin working toward the front. This time the pileup involved 11 cars with 44 of the 188 laps remaining on 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.
“Today wasn’t a typical Talladega race,” Gordon said. “Today, guys were being a lot more careful.”
That was evident from the start when Gordon, Johnson and third-place Chaser Clint Bowyer actually dropped into a whole separate drafting line, far behind the front-runners.
Even up front, extreme caution was the rule of the day, with eight of the nine yellow flags coming out due to blown tires or engines rather than driving mistakes.
“We decided to ride at the back and try to avoid the problems, and it took a really long time before we had a big problem [the 11-car crash],” Johnson said. At that point we felt relieved. Then we kind of worked our way up there.”
With five laps to go, Johnson and Gordon went to the front, 1-2 until the final lap.
“I really thought Jimmie was going to win the race,” Gordon said. “I didn’t think anybody was going to get around him, let alone me.”
But Gordon got help from a serendipitous source. Tony Stewart, fourth in the Chase standings, had chosen to avoid trouble all afternoon by running up front. As the white flag flew, Stewart tried to make a horrific run back to the front.
Gordon whipped his Chevrolet up high and alongside Johnson, and at that moment he caught a tremendous bump-draft from Stewart.
To draw alongside Johnson, “I got a push from [Dave Blaney, who finished third],” Gordon said. “Luckily when I got by and Jimmie tried to block me, [Stewart] was there and had nowhere to go. He drilled me, and he’s the one who pushed me up front.”
The win was Gordon’s fifth this season, the 80th of his Cup career and his 12th restrictor-plate victory, breaking the late Dale Earnhardt’s record of 11 plate wins.
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ehinton@tribune.com
