IN SIGHT It's called the Rally of the Pharaohs, and it looks pretty cool. FOCUS: JEFF GORDON Jeff Gordon has won at least two races in every Winston Cup season since 1994. That streak, one of the truly remarkable feats in motorsports, is on the line with six races remaining this season. Gordon's lone win so far was in Martinsville on April 13. But the driver of the No. 24 Chevy is showing a pulse of late. After his 19th-place finish at Loudon, Gordon has finished fifth the past three races, the first time he's strung three top-five finishes together this season. "Three top fives in a row, I'm pretty happy with that," Gordon said afterward. While Gordon, currently sixth in the standings, indeed may have been happy with that, there's no doubt the NASCAR star wants to keep his multiple-victory season streak alive. And just as last week's Kansas venture held historic promise for Gordon, so, too, does Saturday night's race under the lights at Lowe's Motor Speedway. After all, Gordon grabbed his first career win at Lowe's Motor Speedway at the 1994 Coca-Cola 600 in his second Winston Cup season. Among active drivers, Gordon and Mark Martin are tied for the most wins at LMS with four apiece. Gordon has raced at the track 21 times, winning the pole in seven of those. Look for Gordon to make a hard run this week not just at the top five but at a victory that has been eluding him for six months now. PIT PASS Brian Vickers"> Vickers Brian Vickers was Motorsport Magazine's "Rising Star of the Year" in 1999. That was when the Thomasville, N.C., native was 15 -- still too young to legally drive the streets of America without a parent or guardian. In 2003, at the ripe old age of 19, Vickers' star is still rising. Where it stops is anyone's guess, but Hendrick Motorsports clearly made the right choice when it signed the privateer to run a full Busch Grand National season this year. The three-time national go-karting champ, whose heroes include Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, also has a strong admiration for stock car racing. This week at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Vickers will try to make the next big leap. Vickers will attempt to make his Winston Cup debut in the UAW-GM Quality 500, running under the lights Saturday night in Charlotte. He'll drive the No. 60 Hendrick Chevy, with his Busch crew chief, Lance McGrew, calling the shots. Keep a sharp eye on Vickers, who's scheduled to run in the final four Cup races in the No. 01 U.S. Army Pontiac. He's a winner at every level so far (he has three Busch wins this year and is third in the points), and at a very young age, Vickers has future Cup star written all over him. Dixon's seen this before: Scott Dixon knows the Indy Racing League title could go to any of five drivers, and that it all will be decided in this Sunday's finale at Texas. But is the co-series leader nervous? "I've been in this position before back in Indy Lights when Townsend Bell and I were in the points battle going into the last race," Dixon said. "Luckily, I was able to win the race and win the title. "There's a lot more at stake now, but the mind-set is the same. You have to win the race to give yourself a shot at it." Dixon is tied for first with Helio Castroneves with 467 points; Tony Kanaan is next with 460; Sam Hornish Jr. has 448; and Gil de Ferran has 437. An outpouring of e-mail has arrived at the door of RPM.ESPN.com. Some of you out there really don't like Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, et al., for suggesting Ryan Newman's engineering mind could be plotting evil. And then, many of you really don't like fuel. If cars could run in circles by, say, gravitational force, it would put you all at ease. A few of you don't like us. But we can deal with that. The intriguing aspect of Newman's eight victories, 75 percent of which we'll call "fuel-mileage wins," is this: Do you like the computer age of racing (which we've been in for as long as you needed a computer to plug into your car before you could begin work on it), or do you yearn for the days when telemetry was handled via sensory inputs of the buttocks? Racing is won and lost via computer logs. Engineering extends to every aspect of what is as much science as sport. Some drivers are much better than others at being an extension of that computer guy who you invite to dinner and then wonder what he's saying 75 percent of the time. That's three quarters, to the lay person. Newman holds a mechanical engineering degree from Purdue. Many of you have rightly pointed out this advantage should not be held against him. Others have pointed out, and they too have a good argument, that watching Bill Elliott outdrive the field in Kansas but lose to the calculating Newman left you, well, wanting to watch golf on Sundays. You've come to Gas and Go because you don't want a fence-sitter. You want somebody to lay his neck on the line, someone not afraid to be skewered via computer by the large number of fans on either side of this argument. So, what is racing? Is it what Newman and his clever crew have done, playing pit stop and fuel games to give the second-year driver more wins than anyone in Winston Cup history has attained in a sophomore season? Or should it be something more -- guts, pure speed, insanity, brawn, anything but calculating, shrewd, computer reality? It's a tough call. Cars run on fuel. Tracks have certain degrees of banking, and races have a set distance. Yellow flags are a wild card factor. The weight of the car, horsepower and fuel mileage calculations are not wild cards unless a car has been involved in a wreck. It's hard to hold it against Newman and his crew for winning within the rules, making better use of the factors mentioned above than their foes. Some are upset about the comeback factor, with Newman running in 15th for much of the race and then -- BAM! -- he's the winner. You feel suckered. Your emotions were toyed with, your investment in whatever driver you like went the way of an Enron pension plan. We feel your pain. We really do. But assuming Newman isn't cheating -- and if he is, does anyone really think NASCAR wouldn't discover it? -- it's time to accept reality. This is how it is -- the tires are hard, the fuel mileage is king, he who plays the game best wins. Nobody blames a basketball or football team for coming back from a huge deficit and winning. Ali didn't win the rumble in the jungle by being the dominant fighter that day; he won with a plan and with guile. If that's good enough for boxing, isn't it good enough for auto racing? EXHAUST FUMES Jamie McMurray's strong rookie season is rolling right along, with an eighth-place finish last week at Kansas keeping him ahead of Greg Biffle in the battle for the coveted Raybestos Rookie of the Year award. McMurray leads rookie points with 265, while Biffle has 240. The two are familiar foes, having battled for the Busch crown last season, which was won by Biffle. But this week, McMurray may have a decided mental edge: He won the UAW-GM Quality 500 last year in only his second Winston Cup start after substituting for injured Sterling Marlin in the No. 40 Coors Light Dodge. "Obviously, everyone on (our team) is very excited about heading into Charlotte this weekend," McMurray said. "It's a pretty cool feeling to know you're coming into a race as the defending winner." McMurray has 10 top-10 finishes this season. He has been the race's top rookie 16 times, including the last seven races and nine of the last 10. OVERHEARD Kevin Harvick On Newman "If he can do that with his foot, then he's a magician -- and I'll kiss his butt if he's doing it with his foot." Ryan Newman On fuel issue "I can tell you for a sure thing, we're not cheating and we don't cheat. That's basically it. They can think what they want, and they can say what they want." Jeremy Mayfield On Newman "That's about six or seven races that he's won on fuel mileage this year. You've got to have so much fuel in there to make so much horsepower. They're certainly not giving up horsepower."

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