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Sunday, August 5
Gordon wins third Brickyard
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS -- Early Sunday afternoon, the last thing on
Jeff Gordon's mind was winning the Brickyard 400.
"We started the race with a lot of doubts in my mind, that's
for sure. I thought I had the slowest car out there at one time,"
Gordon said, laughing.
|  | | Jeff Gordon celebrated in Victory Lane after winning the Brickyard 400 for a third time. |
After some great pit work by his Hendrick Motorsports crew,
Gordon, who turned 30 a day earlier, surged to the front and
celebrated his birthday by becoming the first three-time winner of
the Brickyard and solidifying his lead in the Winston Cup
championship chase.
"Well, I had to win it because my crew chief was going to wring
my neck if I didn't because I was chewing him out so bad at the
beginning of the race," the three-time Winston Cup champion said.
Crew chief Robbie Loomis and the rest of the crew spent most of
the 160-lap race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2½-mile oval
making adjustments on the No. 24 Chevrolet.
"I said to Robbie, 'I want to be careful to not get this too far
out of whack on our setup because I think all we need to do is just
get up front.' And I believed if we got the track position we'd be
pretty good," Gordon said.
They got it right just in time.
A two-tire pit stop gave Gordon track position and he took full
advantage, passing gambling Sterling Marlin for the lead on a
restart 35 laps from the end.
With a full house of 320,000 spectators jammed into the vast
speedway grandstands -- many of them cheering for the former Indiana
resident -- Gordon was able to control one more restart and stay out
front for the 56th victory of his Winston Cup career.
"At the end, when we took two tires, it was absolutely the
perfect thing to do," Gordon said. "The car drove great once I
got out front. This is the best way of celebrating my birthday."
Gordon, who started 27th in the 43-car field, didn't break into
the top 20 until nearly a third of the race was gone.
"You start the race with a car as bad as we did today and get a
win like this, man, that's special," said Loomis, who became
Gordon's crew chief at the start of the 2000 season.
Marlin, running a fuel strategy that would have allowed him to
run to the end without stopping, took the lead when all the other
lead-lap drivers pitted during a caution period on lap 132.
"It was our only shot to win the race," said Marlin's crew
chief, Tony Glover. "You can't line up eight or ninth and win the
race."
Gordon and several others took only two fresh tires and Gordon
came out of the pits just behind Marlin in second. On the restart
on lap 136, he drove his Chevrolet to the lower edge of the race
track and raced past Marlin's Dodge.
"We had been leading earlier in the day and running in the top
five and I thought we could hold him off," Marlin said. "But it
took the car a couple of laps to get going on restarts."
He got one more shot at Gordon after Jerry Nadeau's crash on lap
139 brought out the last of seven caution flags. On the restart on
lap 143, though, Marlin got bottled up behind the lapped car of
Todd Bodine.
"Unfortunately, a car was trying to get a lap back and he got
between Gordon and me and that was tough," Marlin said. "If we
could have got by Todd I think we could have worked on him a
little. I missed a gear on that one and got too far behind. We give
it all we had the last 20 laps and just came up short."
Marlin, hoping to give Dodge its first victory since its return
to NASCAR's top series after a 16-year absence, wound up matching
John Andretti for the best finish so far by the new Intrepids.
Gordon, who previously won the inaugural Brickyard in 1994 and
again in 1998, was able to cruise the rest of the way, beating
Marlin to the finish line by 0.0943 seconds -- about 10 car-lengths.
The winner earned $428,452 from the race record purse of $6.75
million. He averaged 130.790 mph in the race slowed by 28 laps of
caution.
Johnny Benson and Rusty Wallace, who also took only two tires on
the last stop, finished third and fourth, followed by rookie Kurt
Busch and Ward Burton.
Steve Park, who was leading before the last stop and appeared to
have the strongest car most of the day, wound up seventh.
It was Gordon's fourth win of the season, matching Dale Jarrett
for the series lead.
With Jarrett failing to lead a lap and falling back to 12th in
the late going, and Ricky Rudd getting hit with a mechanical
problem that left him 39th, Gordon extended his series lead to 160
points over Jarrett and 179 over Rudd. Rudd came into the race
second, trailing by just 45 points.
Park led three times for a race-high 39 laps, while Gordon led
twice for 29.
"I'm a little disappointed," Park said. "The last pit stop just
got us a little bit behind and, with only 20 laps to go and a bunch
of cautions, there wasn't enough time to work out way back up
front.
"My hat's off to Jeff Gordon. Those guys made the right call." Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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