Letarte unafraid of pushing Gordon toward success

	Steve Letarte's willingness to disagree with Jeff Gordon has won the driver's respect and has Gordon aimed squarely at the '07 title. Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

Here are five things we learned last weekend at Pocono, the second-straight race where rain played a major factor.

1. Steve Letarte, not Jeff Gordon, won the race.

For the last few weeks I've been trailing Letarte and Gordon for a feature that will appear in an upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated, and I can report that right now, Letarte, at age 27, is already considered in the garage to be one of the top two crew chiefs in NASCAR, standing side-by-side with his good friend Chad Knaus. Letarte has an interesting biography: The son of a racer, he started working at Hendrick Motorsports at age 16 by sweeping the floors in the No. 24 shop. He did every conceivable job and he slowly worked his way up the job ladder. Serious, thoughtful and intimidated by no one, Letarte replaced Robbie Loomis at the top of Gordon's pit box in September of 2005.

At the time, given Letarte's youthfulness, it looked like a questionable move by Rick Hendrick. But Gordon lobbied hard for Letarte because Gordon believed the two had already developed the one thing together that is essential to a successful driver-crew marriage: chemistry. Plus, even though Gordon was a four-time champion and Letarte had never won a race as a crew chief, Gordon wanted Letarte for the job because the strong-minded Letarte doesn't have a problem with overruling Gordon if he truly believes that what he's doing is the right thing.

Which brings us to Sunday. Knowing that storm clouds were approaching Pocono Raceway, Letarte ordered Gordon onto pit road even though he still had plenty of gas in his tank. Letarte smartly wanted Gordon to pit out of sequence with the other drivers, meaning that Gordon would inherit the lead when everyone else would have to come onto pit road. This would give Gordon a window of about 20 laps to steal the race if the rain came during this time. Letarte also knew that Gordon wouldn't go a lap down by making a green-flag pit stop. Because the track is so long, the leaders simply wouldn't have enough time to pass Gordon.