Road-course skills now a necessity in the Nextel Cup

	Jeff Gordon displayed his road-course skills when he switched cars with Juan Pablo Montoya in a 2003 test. Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Remember Dan Gurney? An extraordinary road-course racer and winner in Formula One, Trans-Am and Indy cars, Gurney invaded NASCAR's Grand National division to win five races in the 1960s at Riverside International Raceway -- which just happened to be his home track.

Grand National, of course, is now the Nextel Cup and the name difference is the tip of the iceberg in the monumental changes that have taken place in NASCAR in the past 40 years. A road-course expert such as Gurney, for instance, likely wouldn't be able to make the occasional leap behind a Cup wheel and claim the checkered flag.

Road races such as this week's event in Sonoma, Calif., may be a small part of the Cup schedule but that doesn't diminish their importance for those seeking the Cup title. Home-grown drivers, consequently, have expanded their skills. If you want to be a champion, you can no longer rely on just being adept at making left turns on an oval track. Having world-class road racing talent has become a necessity, not a luxury.

Recall that Jeff Gordon created a rumor-mill furor in Europe when he tested Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams-BMW in 2003 on the road course at Indianapolis. During his seven laps, Gordon recorded times that were only three seconds off the slowest qualifying time for the 2002 USGP. More impressively, he was only 1.2 seconds off what Montoya did that day in setting the car up.

The move was promoted as a driver swap -- Montoya drove Gordon's DuPont Chevrolet -- but nobody on the other side of the pond believed team owner Frank Williams would go to all that trouble for a few appearance dollars. It was suspected this was a preliminary test for a full evaluation test and possible Gordon signing for F1.

We don't know for sure if Williams wanted to sign Gordon, or if Gordon was interested, but the speculation that Gordon was going overseas lasted for more than a year. That's an indication F1 journalists and fans thought it was possible  -- and that Gordon was regarded as a world-class road racer.

Gordon had never driven road courses prior to his NASCAR career, but he'll be perfectly at home this weekend at Infineon Raceway in the Sonoma wine country. Gordon has won five of the last eight races at Infineon and also has five wins at Watkins Glen, the other road course on the Cup schedule. He'll go into Sunday's Dodge/SaveMart 350 as one of the favorites.