Until this season, the short tracks got the better of Jeff Gordon. No more. After mastering Martinsville, he looked unbeatable by Bruce Newman As defending Winston Cup champ, Jeff Gordon gets his pick of pit position. Pit number 1 made all the difference. (Margin of victory: .490 of a second) Jeff Gordon, Chevrolet, 500 laps at 82.223 mph* Terry Labonte, Chevrolet, 500 laps Bobby Hamilton, Pontiac, 500 laps Rick Mast, Pontiac, 500 laps John Andretti, Ford, 500 laps 3 hours, 11 minutes, 54 seconds; 7 flags, 35 laps run under caution Bobby Hamilton 94.120 mph with point totals (and points earned this weekend) 1 Jeff Gordon 3,903 (180) 2 Terry Labonte 3,822 (175) 3 Dale Jarrett 3,741 (115) 4 Dale Earnhardt 3,562 (118) 5 Mark Martin 3,483 (138) *Record (previous record: Cale Yarborough, 79.336 mph, 1978) He began the decade racing midget cars on the United States Auto Club circuit, but that may have been the last time Jeff Gordon did anything that even sounded small. In his five Winston Cup seasons he has developed a knack for livin' large by winning a driving championship, the inaugural Brickyard 400 and the hand of Miss Winston, all by the age of 25. So there was a kind of perverse logic in the fact that the only places Gordon appeared to have trouble was at the short tracks. He just couldn't seem to bring himself to think small at the bullrings, where small is all. That changed in a big way this season, as Gordon so thoroughly mastered NASCAR's paper-clip joints that in seven short-track races he had one third-place finish, three second-place finishes and three victories, the last win coming at the Hanes 500 at Martinsville Speedway's .526-mile hatbox. In a place where one mistake can be ruinous, Gordon simply didn't make any—although after the race the always-demure driver wouldn't boast about perfection, as if vanity would be his downfall in a tight points race with Terry Labonte, who finished second. "This team may make one mistake, and I may make one mistake, but it doesn't happen a second time," Gordon said. "Sometimes things pop up and bite us, but they don't bite us twice." Pole sitter Bobby Hamilton led much of the day, but Gordon was tattooed to his rear bumper almost the entire time. Gordon's pit crew, the Rainbow Warriors, got him out in front of Hamilton during three separate caution stops; each time, Hamilton retook the lead. During the final stop, this time under green, Hamilton tarried in the pits just three seconds longer than Gordon. But those three seconds were the difference, as Gordon gained his ninth victory of the season, the most any Winston Cup driver had enjoyed since 1993, when Rusty Wallace, another short-track master, won 10 events.