Gordon

After building a lead that reached 395 points over runner-up Ricky Rudd following the Oct. 21 race at Talladega Superspeedway, Gordon has stumbled a bit.

He finished three places behind Rudd in sixth two weeks ago in Phoenix, then slipped to 25th Sunday at Rockingham while Rudd was running eighth.

That lead, though still substantial, is down to 326 points with three races remaining, including Sunday's Pennzoil 400 in Homestead, Fla.

"We just want to finish the season the same way we've run most of the year," said Gordon, who leads the series with six victories and 18 top-five and 23 top-10 finishes in 33 starts.

"It would really take a miracle for us to win it now," said Rudd, who never has won a Winston Cup title. "In fact, we're thinking more about those guys behind us than that guy ahead of us."

Tony Stewart , a two-time winner at Homestead, is bearing down from behind, trailing Rudd by just 75 points. Close behind are Dale Jarrett , 128 behind Rudd, and Sterling Marlin , 193 out of second.

Meanwhile, though, Gordon would love to wrap up the championship on Sunday. To do that, he needs to gain another 44 points on Rudd -- leaving Florida at least 370 ahead.

At the very least, Gordon needs to finish only 28th or better in each of the last three races to clinch and become only the third driver to win four or more titles in NASCAR's top stock car series. The others are Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt, who both won seven championships.

"We tested at Homestead and I feel very good about what we have there, so hopefully we can go there and not have a day like we had last Sunday," Gordon said. "To me, it's just a nail-biter until this thing is over with anyway. You just never know. We've got to fight hard and just keep doing what we're doing until we get to the finish.

"It doesn't matter to me when or how or where, just as long as we win it," added Gordon, whose last title came in 1998. "That's what we're shooting for. We're not trying to clinch it with three to go, or two to go. When you start wishing that kind of stuff, that's going to get you in trouble."

A year ago, Bobby Labonte clinched the championship in Homestead with a fourth-place finish.

Bad economy
At least six Winston Cup team owners are looking for sponsorship for 2002 and finding it tough to get even a nibble.

Brett Bodine, one of only two remaining owner-drivers in the series, is in that precarious boat as the 2001 season comes to an end.

"The way I look at it is that if I can make my business and my company survive the downturn, then I'm doing a real good job," Bodine said. "The weak will fall away.

"Fortunately, some of those teams looking for sponsors are for their second team. That's not their bread and butter. That's their second team, so they don't need to have two teams. We only have one team, so we have to make sure that one team is funded at a level that the business can survive and that we can try to become more competitive for the 2002 season."

It appears that the days of drivers competing for a spot in the 43-car starting lineup at each race could also succumb to the failing economy. It's quite possible that instead of 46 to 50 cars showing up each week, it could be as few as 38 or 39.

"We've warned NASCAR as owners," Bodine said. "We were already on the edge in a good economy of just getting by, and in a downturned economy, it's gonna be hard to hang on.

"Fortunately, we have really tried very hard to keep our fixed cost and our overhead as low as possible so that we could survive on possibly less money than we received this year. By no means are we one of the better sponsored cars, but we were sponsored at a level that we could survive and see an improvement in performance over 2000. Our position is that if we can be at least funded at the same level as 2001 for 2002, we can continue to do business in NASCAR."

Stat of the Week
Sunday's race on the 1½-mile oval at Homestead-Miami Speedway will be the sixth of seven events on flat tracks -- banking of 12 degrees or less -- on the Winston Cup schedule this season.

So far in 2001, Gordon and Jarrett have each won twice, while Ricky Craven and Jeff Burton have won the last two flat track events at Martinsville, Va., and Phoenix, respectively. Jarrett's four top-three finishes on these tracks are the most this season. Stewart, winner of the last two Homestead races, hasn't finished better than fifth on the flat tracks this season.

The season ends Nov. 23 on the flat, one-mile Loudon, N.H., oval.