Stewart beats Robby Gordon for win at Sonoma
By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive
June 25, 2001
12:20 PM EDT (1620 GMT)
SONOMA, Calif. -- Tony Stewart used a masterful strategy and took advantage of a downright stubborn Robby Gordon to win the NASCAR Winston Cup Dodge/Save Mart 350 Sunday at Sears Point Raceway.
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Tony Stewart took his 11th career Winston Cup win.
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Stewart, making his fifth Winston Cup road course start, passed leader Gordon at the head of the backstretch with 11 laps to go when Gordon tangled with the lapped car of Kevin Harvick and lost all his momentum. The leaders ran back to the fifth caution caused when Ron Fellows failed to clear Bill Elliott and hit the frontstretch wall after passing him in Turn 11.
Stewart ended up with a comfortable 1.176-second margin of victory over Gordon. Bud Pole winner Jeff Gordon, Ricky Rudd and Rusty Wallace rounded out the top-five finishers.
A caution flew when Johnny Benson and Dale Jarrett were among a multi-car pileup in Turn 11 coming to get the white flag. It didn’t affect the finish.
Ward Burton, Bobby Labonte, Jeff Burton, Bill Elliott and Mark Martin rounded out the top 10.
The race’s critical moment came when Robby Gordon was threatening to drive away on cruise control to win over the six-time Winston Cup road race winner Jeff Gordon.
The decisive pass was set up when Raybestos Rookie of the Year leader Harvick came out of the pits right in front of the leader after a four-tire stop that included a 15-second penalty for speeding. Robby Gordon passed him but Harvick latched onto his rear bumper with fresher tires and worried him like a bull terrier for several laps.
For the second straight lap heading into Turn 4, Robby Gordon, thrashing his tires to stay in front of a car that was in effect two miles behind him, slipped wide on the exit of the turn. Going into the new “Bud Bottleneck” section, Harvick tapped the leader trying to get around him and both cars slid wide on the exit.
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Robby Gordon finished second in his debut in the No. 7 Ford.
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Stewart had hung back to get a run and he blew by both cars exiting the Bottleneck onto the backstretch Esses. He ran out into the lead and after Gordon failed to anticipate the final restart with seven laps to go. Gordon, the mercurial driver who has bounced in and out of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, lost his latest chance for opportunity and ability to mesh and result in a victory.
“We were decent at the beginning of the race,” said Stewart, who started third. “They made some changes on the last stop that made us as good as the 7 and the 24. I’ve had so much bad luck here I just wanted to make it to the end.”
Robby Gordon had grabbed the lead on the first lap following a restart with 27 laps to go when he pressured leader and prohibitive favorite Jeff Gordon into driving too hard into Turn 11 on the 86th lap. Jeff Gordon locked up his front brakes and slid out, and Robby Gordon, who was in a one-race deal replacing regular Ultra Motorsports driver Mike Wallace, drove beneath him.
Several laps later Stewart converted the same Jeff Gordon mistake into second. From there, he watched Robby Gordon and Harvick lock horns.
“I guess Harvick was trying pretty hard to get his lap back, but it probably wasn’t the right time for him to be doing that with me and Tony and Jeff racing for the win,” Gordon said. “That’s racing. What goes around comes around and we’ve got a lot more races to run.”
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Ricky Rudd finished fourth and moved to within 19 points of second-place Dale Jarrett.
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“If that would have been anybody with any sense, they would have known I had fresh tires on,” said Harvick, who added bluntly he had no sympathy for Robby Gordon. “We were there for a long time, we were quite a bit faster than Robby and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”
Jeff Gordon, who started from the Bud Pole, pitted on lap 73 -- letting hard-charging Robby Gordon into the lead for the first time. The Cerritos, Calif., driver who split with Morgan McClure Motorsports after only five races of a five-year deal earlier this year had exhibited possibly the strongest car all day but was troubled by poor fuel mileage.
Robby Gordon pitted for four tires and fuel on lap 78 and was sitting second behind Jeff Gordon when the race went back to green with 27 laps remaining.
“I just lost track position and I made a couple mistakes,” Jeff Gordon said. “I got into (Turn) 11 too hot a couple times and got the thing wheel-hopping. I lost the lead and then second place because of it, but it looked to me like Tony had the best car at the end.”
After the series’ most recent road course winner, Steve Park brought out the second caution when an engine fire stopped him on the course, the top 14 cars didn’t pit and Jeff Gordon, who had led the first 32 laps, re-assumed the lead.
Brian Simo was the first road race specialist to fall out of the race. The transmission failed on his Ford after he had picked up a couple of spots early in the race and he brought out the race’s first caution when he pulled off just past the pit exit.
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Bobby Labonte wound up seventh, six places behind his Joe Gibbs teammate.
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That caution enabled Fellows to lead for the first time when crew chief Brian Pattie picked up Simo’s problem on the frontstretch and instructed his driver, who was on the backstretch, to pit immediately. Fellows, who had barely made it into the top 10, was therefore able to pit before all the other leaders.
It was not the first time track position and pit strategy dictated what occurred on the race track.
Fellows had again raced his way into the top 10 and was trying to pass Elliott for ninth when he came to grief and was out after limping past the start/finish line.
“When he came off the corner he was trying to drive straight and I was still too far under him,” said Elliott, who scored his second top-10 finish in the last three races. “I was trying to get out of the way and he just hit my right front and went into the wall. What do you do?”
That was a question asked by many on Sunday.
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