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Road rules R. Gordon earns road sweep with win at Watkins GlenPosted: Sunday August 10, 2003 5:12 PMUpdated: Monday August 11, 2003 2:55 PM
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) -- A driver named Gordon won again at Watkins Glen. Only this time, it was Robby, not Jeff. Two years after Jeff Gordon took the race when Robby Gordon's telemetry went up in smoke with him in the lead, misfortune reversed itself. The result was a victory for Robby Gordon on Sunday in the Sirius at The Glen that gave him a sweep of this year's NASCAR road races. He also won two months ago in Sonoma, Calif. "I don't think any race track owes you anything," Robby Gordon said. "The key is just to run hard every weekend."
On Sunday, the four-time Winston Cup champion became a punching bag. He roared away at the start only to be spun out by rookie Greg Biffle on the first turn. "I don't know what happened," Jeff Gordon said. "I got a great jump. It's the first lap. There's no reason to blast the thing down in there, but he just blasted me." But the final lap was even worse. After racing all the way back to third, Jeff Gordon ran out of gas on the final turn. He was hit first by Dale Earnhardt Jr., then clobbered by Kevin Harvick and wound up facing the wrong way against the wall just 200 feet from the finish line. "I didn't think we could get up to where we did," Jeff Gordon said. "It's pretty amazing, but it doesn't mean anything now." Biffle said the spinout Sunday wasn't intentional, and he was not penalized by NASCAR. "If it's any consolation, tell his spotter I couldn't stop," he told his crew on the radio. "I feel terrible." So did Jeff Gordon. Robby Gordon did not. He stayed out of trouble and his crew had the fuel mileage figured out. "There was a big 55 on the dashboard," Robby Gordon said, explaining that a stop on that lap would allow him to cover the last 35 after his final fuel stop. In the end, he went 39 -- a number reached because caution laps allowed Robby Gordon to save gas after his crew chief made a decision to alter the plan. The key for Robby Gordon was pitting when Rusty Wallace went off the course on the 51st of 90 laps. "I saw Rusty lock up the right front tire, and I called and said, `Rusty's in the sand,"' Robby Gordon said. Crew chief Kevin Hamlin reacted quickly.
"We heard the guy on the loudspeaker say, 'trouble,' so we decided to dive in for gas," Hamlin said. He called Robby Gordon and said, "Pit now, pit now." That move paid off when the field pitted under caution two laps later. That put him ahead of them, and Robby Gordon took the lead when those still in front of him pitted on lap 61. "Track position is so important," he said. "I don't know if we had the best car today, but we won. That's what teamwork is all about." It was his third career victory, and this time nobody complained. It wasn't that way two months ago at the other road course in Sonoma, Calif., when Robby Gordon won after violating the so-called gentlemen's agreement by passing teammate Harvick under caution. Robby Gordon's only other victory, two years ago at New Hampshire International Speedway, also resulted in controversy. He took the lead near the end of the race by spinning out Jeff Gordon. On Sunday, Harvick was summoned to the NASCAR trailer for hitting Jeff Gordon, just as Biffle had been after hitting him in anger last month in New Hampshire. "If he was out of gas he should have gotten out of the groove," Harvick said. Biffle also was called in, but for another infraction. "They must have been mad at me spinning out Jeff on the first lap," Biffle said. The rare sweep was the first in NASCAR since Jeff Gordon won both road-course events for the second year in a row, in 1999. Robby Gordon's Chevrolet beat the Dodge of road-course ace Scott Pruett by 2.33 seconds to take the $4 million race. The winner led only once, for the final 30 laps. It was the best career finish for Pruett, a former Winston Cup driver who has spent most of his career in sports car racing and the CART series. He also was trying to conserve fuel at the end, so there was no dramatic charge at the winner over the final laps. "We had a strategy that we thought we could play," Pruett said. "It all depended on how many yellows we got, and they all worked out." Earnhardt finished third in a Chevy, followed by those of Jimmie Johnson and Harvick, the winner of last week's Brickyard 400.
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