Gordon wins rain-shortened Pocono race

LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — In a race marred by the death of a fan hit by light­ning, Jeff Gor­don earned his first vic­tory of the sea­son on Sun­day, tak­ing advan­tage of an acci­dent sparked by team­mate Jim­mie John­son and going on to win when the race was called because of a down­pour pre­ced­ing the storm.

Gor­don earned his 86th career vic­tory, win­ning for the first time since Sep­tem­ber 2011 at Atlanta Motor Speed­way to thrust him­self into wild-card con­tention in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

This win meant more than about all the oth­ers for Gor­don. This was the first time his wife and both of his two young chil­dren joined him celebration.

“That expe­ri­ence to me today means so much more than any­thing else,” he said.

John­son inad­ver­tently gave his Hen­drick Motor­sports team­mate the help he needed. Johnson’s No. 48 had a flat tire off a restart and slammed Matt Kenseth into the wall. Kenseth slid down the track and took out Denny Ham­lin and three other cars.

With an unex­pected open­ing trig­gered by the acci­dent, Gor­don zagged and zipped the No. 24 through holes like an All-Pro run­ning back, splash­ing his way to victory.

“When I saw the open­ing to get inside, I was tak­ing it,” Gor­don said.

It couldn’t have come at a bet­ter time. The skies opened and cars were ordered off the track. The race was called moments later with 98 of the 160 sched­uled laps com­pleted. Gor­don, who started 27th, had a drive to remember.

Gor­don, who turned 41 on Sat­ur­day, had a string of bad breaks this sea­son and knew he needed wins over the final six races before the Chase cut­off to have any shot at run­ning for a fifth cham­pi­onship dur­ing the 10-race play­offs. The win moved him into the sec­ond wild-card spot that would guar­an­tee a berth in the field.

Gor­don, who also won a rain-shortened race at Pocono in 2007, passed Bill Elliott for most career wins at Pocono with six.

Gor­don had win­less sea­sons in 2008 and 2010 — a late-career drought far removed from the years when he was a reg­u­lar in Vic­tory Lane. He had double-digit vic­to­ries in three straight sea­sons (1996–98) and seemed a lock to hit 100 vic­to­ries by 35 and put him­self behind only Richard Petty on the all-time list.

Petty leads with 200 wins and David Pear­son is sec­ond with 105. Gor­don is a com­fort­able third on the list.

He had a painfully mediocre start to sea­son — includ­ing con­sec­u­tive 33rd and 35th place fin­ishes at Tal­ladega and Dar­ling­ton — before find­ing his groove of late with crew chief Alan Gustafson.

Gor­don has three straight top-six fin­ishes and has fin­ished in the top six in six of his last seven races.

He was due for a break­through and kept grind­ing it out.

“The last sev­eral weeks, we’ve had some­thing to build on,” Gor­don said.

Kasey Kahne was sec­ond, fol­lowed by Mar­tin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski and Tony Stewart.

Kahne refused to rule out another Gor­don cham­pi­onship run if he stays in the Chase field.

“Absolutely. It’s Jeff Gor­don. Look what he’s done,” Kahne said.

With the storms com­ing — spot­ters told their dri­vers the heavy rain was com­ing — John­son was in prime posi­tion to fol­low last week’s win in Indy with another trip to Vic­tory Lane. John­son had a flat, though, and he made con­tact with Kenseth. John­son dropped back but suf­fered no real dam­age. Kenseth touched the wall and slid down the track. Ham­lin had nowhere to go except right into the side of the No. 17.

Ham­lin was taken to the infield care cen­ter and com­plained of dis­com­fort around his abdomen but was released.

Gor­don, who was sixth in the restart neces­si­tated by Kurt Busch’s wreck, took off and took the lead.

“I know that you don’t want to win them quite like this, but we’ve earned it because of all the things that we’ve done this year,” Gor­don said.

John­son blamed a right rear flat tire for spark­ing the accidents.

“I shouldn’t feel bad about that, but not much you can do with a right-rear flat,” he said.

Then the down­pour came. The sched­uled 400-mile race had already been post­poned about two hours because of rain.

“For all the things that have gone wrong for us this year, I still can’t believe what just hap­pened,” Gor­don said. “But, I think this is the one that makes up for all the ones that have got­ten away. I’m just so proud of this team.”

While Kahne and Gor­don had a great race for Hen­drick, John­son and Dale Earn­hardt Jr. had one to forget.

Earn­hardt was lucky to main­tain his over­all points lead after he was forced to the garage on lap 51 because of a busted trans­mis­sion. He later returned to the track and fin­ished 32nd.

It almost didn’t matter.

Rain or shine, the race belonged to Gordon.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Aug 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.