Fifth-place finish at Martinsville keeps Jeff Gordon third in Chase standings
Hendrick Motorsports' Jeff Gordon finished fifth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. // Victor Newman, NASCAR Scene
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MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Jeff Gordon overcame an early dustup with Juan Pablo Montoya and a car that didn’t handle to his liking on short runs to finish fifth in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway.
The bad news for Gordon was that he lost more ground in the standings to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson, who finished second in the Tums Fast Relief 500 and stretched his advantage over the four-time champion to 150 points.
Gordon remained third and pulled within 32 points of second-place Mark Martin while losing 15 points to Johnson.
“If they continue to run like that and finish like that, then there’s really nothing we can do,” Gordon said of Johnson’s No. 48 group. “Even if we would have won the race today, it was only going to cut into it slightly. But that’s our goal.
“That’s what we work hard to do and we come out of here at least with them in sight. We didn’t give up a lot of points, which at one point it looked like we could have.”
Gordon started second, but spent most of the first half of the race just hanging onto the top 10 as he struggled with his Chevrolet on the shorter runs. Among the challenges Gordon faced was contact with Montoya around lap 100, after which he was none too pleased.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Montoya, but I’m pissed,” he said over the team radio.
Gordon later spoke with the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver about the incident. Montoya went on to finish third.
“He was better than me at the time, so I wasn’t really trying to battle with him at that time,” Gordon said. “It was way early; I was just trying to get in position to go. So I really don’t know what the deal was.
“I said congratulations to him and I told him I hoped that whatever I did to make him mad was done.”
Montoya, who moved up a spot to fifth in the Chase For The Sprint Cup standings, said he and Gordon “were good” following a postrace discussion.
“If you give me room, I’ll give you room,” Montoya added. “He wasn’t giving me any, so I played the same game.”
Gordon benefited greatly from a 137-lap green-flag run between the 11th and 12th cautions to move into the top five in the final 150 laps. He lined up third on a restart with 12 to go, but lost two positions in those laps as another caution flag waved, setting up a green-white-checkered finish.
“We were really gaining on them on the long runs and towards the end of that one long run, the green-flag pit stop and all that, that’s where we made all of our gains,” he said. “To me, we actually lost positions on those last couple runs. I would liked to have finished third and maybe had a shot at Jimmie for second.”
Gordon had hoped to recapture his winning ways at Martinsville, a place where he has scored seven victories, but none since the fall 2005 race.
Instead he dropped even further out of title contention with four races left in the 2009 season. Are Gordon’s title hopes now history?
“It’s never over,” he said. “It’s far from over. I mean those guys [Johnson and his team] are certainly putting themselves in a great position and they’re outrunning us and they’ve got to make sure they keep doing that because it’s not like we’re finishing 15th or 20th or 30th.
“We’re not going to give it to them. Just keep fighting.”
