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Bonus baby Gordon hits it big in Las Vegas
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com LAS VEGAS -- What little drama there was Sunday during the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 came courtesy of the pit stop and the occasional caution flag -- that is, the bulk of the 20 lead changes that occurred during the race were a direct result of those racing events. The circumstances notwithstanding, Jeff Gordon was the perfectly happy beneficiary of then-race leader Matt Kenseth's pit stop with 19 to go -- Gordon inherited the lead for the second time and then calmly ran away from second-place finisher Dale Jarrett. Gordon won $369,602 from the race purse and a $1 million bonus from the series sponsor. Gordon, who started 24th, picked his way to the top three by lap 180. "Early on, the car was real, real loose," he said. "We made some adjustments and that helped a little bit, but I think the key seemed to be when we made the two tire changes. It must have really freed the car up. It really came to life. We were driving by guys who took four tires on. The car was just on a rail."
Sterling Marlin, who led 23 laps late in the race and flirted with Dodge's first win in its return to Winston Cup racing, can take comfort in the fact that his third-place finish gives him the early lead in the points race. "[Saturday] was sunny, [Sunday] was cloudy," Marlin said of practice when his No. 40 was the fastest car. "I think we had a good setup for [Saturday]."
Not even the apparent return of "The Kid" -- a resurrection that can only bring smiles to the faces of the NASCAR powers that be -- could entirely mask the truth that, for the second consecutive week, a NASCAR race was bedeviled by early cautions before settling into long uneventful runs of green-flag racing. While last week's race at Rockingham was interrupted by a lap 1 accident, this week's episode made it all the way to lap 2 before being delayed, this time when Jeff Burton got into the wall in turn 2. Unfortunately, Burton's mishap did nothing so much as eliminate what little inherent drama his attempt to win a third consecutive Vegas race might have offered. As it was, Burton's was just the first of three incidents that marred the race before nine laps had been completed -- on lap 8, Brett Bodine tagged the wall in turn 4, bringing out the yellow, a minor incident that was followed almost immediately by a more serious one between teammates Rusty Wallace and Jeremy Mayfield. After another caution on lap 28 -- to clear debris from the back straight -- the race settled into a rather tepid run of 66 laps dominated by an occasionally interesting duel between Dale Jarrett, the pole sitter, and Todd Bodine, winner of Saturday's Busch race. Bodine eventually finished fifth, his best result in almost three years. At the risk of describing anything done at speeds of 165 miles per hour as dull, it's still true that Sunday's action lacked much in the way of any real drama. Yes, there were 13 lead changes among 10 drivers, but with the exception of the jockeying that resulted from pit stops, but for that all-too-brief duel between Bodine and Jarrett and the occasional skirmish between whoever had the lead and the occasional challenger, the action on the track was ... dull. But the afternoon was by no means a total loss, obviously not to Gordon and especially not to Rodney Mims, a 21-year-old who works at a tire store in Clanton, Ala. Because Gordon was Mims' driver in the Winston No Bull 5 and won, Mims leaves Vegas $1 million richer. But even Mims' inspiring win couldn't overshadow the importance of the race victory for Gordon."Last year, this race was the most frustrating day we've ever had," he said of the day he finished 28th with his new crew chief, Robbie Loomis. "Me as a driver and Robbie as a crew chief, we were pulling out hair out at this race last year. We told ourselves that we are going to figure this place out."
And indeed, they have.
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