When you're hot, you're hot: Gordon overheats, holds off Hamlin for the Darlington win

Caution flags and consistency again in question

DAVID POOLE / The Charlotte Observer

Sunday, May. 13, 2007

• Updated points | The top 35 and beyond
• Race results | Unofficial scoring from Darlington

DARLINGTON, S.C. – Perfect? Jeff Gordon was nowhere close Sunday at Darlington Raceway.

That, however, did not keep Gordon and his team from winning the Dodge Avenger 500 to extend Hendrick Motorsports’ spotless record with NASCAR’s car of tomorrow.

Gordon’s No. 24 Chevrolet spewed steam like an antique choo-choo for the final 100 laps or so, overheating so badly that most of the driver’s family left the track early figuring it’d never last it to the checkered flag.

But down the stretch, Gordon and crew chief Steve Letarte made the right decisions and had everything else – including a call that will further discussions about NASCAR officiating – break their way to give Gordon his third victory in the past four weeks.

Rick Hendrick-owned Chevrolets have now won eight of the season’s past nine races, including all five using Nextel Cup’s new car, and nobody is more fed up with that than Denny Hamlin.

First, let’s make it clear that Hamlin said Sunday’s loss was on him and his team.

“We gave away another one to Hendrick Motorsports,” he said after a pit road mistake buried him back in 16th with less than 60 laps to go. He fought all the way back to second, but this is not the first time he’s felt a mistake has cost him a win this year. And it’s getting old, fast.

“This has got to end,” Hamlin said. “We have to win a race sooner or later. Everybody will talk about how Hendrick won another race, but this was our race.”

Still, had a caution come out when Hamlin said one absolutely should have for debris on the track, it would have set up a green-white-checkered finish and there’s little doubt he would have capitalized on that in a No. 11 Chevrolet that led 179 laps and wasn’t about to blow up like it seemed Gordon’s was.

“Somebody’s entire underbody was on the track,” Hamlin said. “I knew a caution was going to come out. I knew it. If it had, it’s game over. But there was no caution, and Hendrick gets another break.

“But I don’t mean to open up a can of worms on that. Forget I said it.”

Not these days, especially when Gordon said Hamlin was exactly right.

“There absolutely should have been a caution,” Gordon said. “But there never should have been one on the caution before that. There was nothing on the track. At the end, there was oil and debris everywhere. It comes back to NASCAR’s consistency, and it can work with you or against you. Today, it worked for us.”

Hamlin led 168 of the first 221 laps, and after getting a little off on one green-flag run worked back toward the front before the pivotal pit stop. He was running second when he came under yellow after Kyle Busch hit the wall on Lap 303, but when two lug nuts fell off the right-front tire on that stop he thought he we done.

“I was thinking the best-case scenario was a top five after that,” Hamlin said. “Our pit stops range from 12.5 seconds to 18.5. We know they’re capable of doing fast ones, but I think their heads are getting in the way of their hands. It’s the mental aspect.”

Gordon wasn’t in a particularly good frame of mind, either. He’d been ill all day, he said later, because he hasn’t been sleeping well. This is the final weekend his expectant wife, Ingrid, will be traveling before the birth of their first child, too, so emotions are a little volatile in his camp these days.

It didn’t help, of course, that every sign pointed to the fact he was about to cook his engine. But he came off pit road second behind teammate Jimmie Johnson on the same stop where Hamlin had his problem, and then got a pleasant surprise on a caution on Lap 345.

That’s when, after just six laps of racing following a previous yellow, Johnson came in for fresh tires. Gordon needed to keep his car moving to keep air flowing anyway, and didn’t think new tires would do that much good anyway. So he stayed out and inherited the lead – one he’d never give up.

Johnson restarted seventh on Lap 349 and immediately moved up to fourth. Gordon figured Johnson would catch him on the fresh tires. So did Johnson. “I thought we were golden,” he said.

But since several lapped cars stopped for tires, too, Johnson didn’t make up ground as fast as he figured he might. Hamlin, meanwhile, was 10th on the restart and then seventh after the caution that Gordon thought was uncalled for, with 13 laps left.

On Lap 360 Hamlin went three-wide with Johnson and Ryan Newman on the backstretch in a move that eventually got him to second. He was 2.9 seconds back, though, and although he made up two-thirds of that without the caution both he and Gordon thought should have come he really had no hope of catching up.

Johnson finished third, giving Hendrick Motorsports at least two top-five finishers in each of the first five COT races. Newman wound up fourth with Carl Edwards fifth.

“We’re not dominating these races,” Letarte said. “We’re dominating the finishes. We’re out-teaming them in a lot of these races.”

Not perfect, but perfectly good enough.

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