| | This has been anything but the year in pictures for Jeff Gordon and the Rainbow Warriors.
To date, 2000 will go down as the year in Kryptonite for Gordon and his superhuman No. 24 Chevrolet. This, that -- and more this and that -- have taken the glow away from another multiple-win season for the three-time Winston Cup champion.
|  | | An turbulent 2000 season turned ugly Sunday for Jeff Gordon . |
Before Sunday's high-speed, curvy, Global Crossing @ The Glen, Gordon had all the makings of a superhero in decline. He lacked only one thing. Thanks to Lex Luthor -- er, The Penguin -- er Tony Stewart, The Gordonator has satisfied all the criteria for depression.
He has a foe.
The villain in this season of despair has emerged to wreak havoc on Gordon's powerless days. The arch-enemy has arrived to bask in the glow of Gordon's impending demise. The dirty rotten scoundrel of the paved speedway has Brooke tied to the railroad tracks and the train's on schedule.
Tony Stewart, NASCAR's bad-boy apparent, has shifted his attention to Gordon. Let the plundering and the pillaging begin.
Stewart vs. Gordon -- The Spar in the Car -- is full-throttle and set for a speedway near you.
With a Lap 2 booby-trap near the fastest part of Watkins Glen International Raceway, Stewart slammed Gordon into the outside wall and left his Chevrolet in a haze of sparks and tire dust. Stewart's cosmetically damaged Pontiac limped to a sixth-place finish. Gordon's Chevrolet, worse for the wear, lost a lap under repair and managed to salvage a 23rd-place run on the road course.
Gordon had the homefield advantage. Six straight times he had won road course races in the Winston Cup Series. Six straight times he had turned right and left better than anyone else. Gordon had Stewart right where he wanted him. Ali was on the ropes; Randy Johnson was ahead 0-and-2; John Elway was down six with less than a minute to go.
This wasn't road racing, though. It was road rage.
With a slip of the wheel, Stewart won the first sortie and Gordon was foiled again.
"The next time you get near me, I'll put you in the wall," Gordon said in a post-race meeting reminiscent of NASCAR's good ol' days when men were men, and the wall was a reckoning tool.
For the first time in his short career, this was Gordon the stock car racer, not Gordon the Californian with the marketing savvy. This was Mr. Gordon, the three-time Champ standing up for himself. This was fire coming from the ice.
"You wrecked me," he said.
Obviously, Gordon thought Stewart planted him in the fence on purpose. Stewart, never one to back down from fisticuffs, thought it was pure racing misfortune.
"I thought I had given him enough room, but I guess I didn't," said Stewart.
Either way, if Gordon is an honorable man as he'd have you believe, then Stewart should have plenty of scrap sheet metal available after this weekend's race at Michigan. After all, Gordon said Stewart was destined for a meeting with the wall.
If not Michigan, then Bristol, for sure. With the high-banked wreckfest at the world's fastest half-mile only a week after Michigan, Gordon could save his frustration and set an inescapable trap at in the Tennessee mountains.
Boy, it'd be like the good 'ol days. This isn't Earnhardt vs. Labonte. This is Earnhardt vs. Labonte 2000 with Stewart and Gordon taking the place of the veterans.
Just like last season when Earnhardt planted the pass in the derriere on Labonte at Bristol, nothing could spark this season to the finale like a good piece of payback from Gordon.
After all, when was the last time the movie ended with Lex Luthor on top?
Phil Furr, a freelance writer based in Charlotte, N.C., writes a weekly auto-racing column for ESPN.com. | |
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 You make the call: Who was at fault Sunday on Lap 2?
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