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Monster effort Gordon dominates Dover for MBNA Platinum 400 win
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com DOVER, Del. -- Long about the time his lead was passing the nine-second mark, Jeff Gordon was probably wishing he had himself a CD player in the dash. Or at least a tape deck. Heck, talk radio? After all was said and done, Gordon was forced to suffer in silence; but, he still managed to gallivant his way to a laughably easy win in Sunday's MBNA Platinum 400 at Dover Downs International Speedway. Though his final margin over second-place finisher Steve Park was less than a second, for much of the afternoon Gordon's lead consistently danced between one and five seconds. But as impressive as that multi-second lead was, there's this: The Driver Soon To Be Formerly Known as "The Kid" (he turns 30 in August) subdued The Monster Mile en route to lead a record-setting 381 of 400 laps. "I don't ever remember dominating quite like this," Gordon said after the race. "It's been a while. When the cars are working the way they're working right now, it makes my job a whole lot easier. I know from [the outside] it looked like the car was on a rail and was easy to drive. But there is no easy way around Dover.
"This is the best car I've ever had here. We could stay out in front even after the tires went away." Still, even when Ricky Craven passed Tony Stewart on lap 274 to move into second, more than eight seconds behind Gordon, it seemed that his time at the front was valuable simply for its novelty. But as the laps ticked off and Craven steadily chipped away at Gordon's lead, getting it down to fewer than two seconds on a number of occasions, things got the slightest bit hairy for the No. 24. But when Craven undermined his chances with a poor pit stop on his final green-flag pit stop of the afternoon with 47 laps left -- Craven's crew got him in and out in 18.9 seconds versus Gordon's 14.4 -- Gordon's win seemed all but assured. "I knew we couldn't touch Jeff," said Cal Wells, owner of Craven's car. "Jeff was on rails. We weren't going to beat him. But second place ... coulda, shoulda, woulda." Ultimately, Craven's day wasn't undone by the pokey pit stop as it was by some bad racing luck. When Ron Hornaday Jr. got loose coming out of turn 4 and spun on lap 362 -- bringing out the fifth and final caution of the day -- Craven, who had been immediately behind Hornaday, came into the pits. He was the only leader to do so. He entered the pits second and exited seventh. "Nobody in front of us came," Craven said, "but we'd just run over a big bumper. I knew I could get back to [the front], but we can't ruin our day with a blown front tire. If the race had been maybe 50 laps longer...." It was a series-high eighth top-five finish this year for Gordon, a three-time Winston Cup champion. It also was the fourth win for Gordon on one of NASCAR's most difficult tracks and ties him with Bill Elliott and Ricky Rudd as the most by an active driver at The Monster Mile, where Bobby Allison and Richard Petty won seven times each. Stewart, trying to join Gordon, David Pearson and Rusty Wallace with three consecutive Dover victories, finished sixth.
Gordon's Chevrolet beat the that of Park by 0.828 seconds. Gordon, a 29-year-old driver from Indiana, now has 11 top-10 finishes in 17 career starts at Dover's concrete oval. Park's DEI teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished third with Craven and Dale Jarett rounding out the top five. Park was looking for his third career victory, but after closing within a half-second late in the race was unable to catch Gordon. "Jeff was just driving the wheels off the thing, and so was I trying to catch him," Park said. In addition to moving into a tie with Rusty Wallace for eighth place on the all-time wins list, Gordon's 54th career victory keeps him in second place -- 50 points behind Jarrett -- in the race for the Winston Cup championship. "I'm worn out, but Jeff wore us all out," Jarrett said. "Our car was probably a little better than the driver [Sunday]." Jarrett (three) and Gordon (two) are the only multiple-car winners this year through 13 races. "I feel like we're better than we've ever been before in championship seasons," Gordon said. "I don't know if things have ever been as good as they are here at the 24 team right now. But as far as dominating, that's still to come."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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