Gordon grabs victory at The Glen

By Tim Packman, Turner Sports Interactive
August 13, 2001
9:59 AM EDT (1359 GMT)

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- There's no doubt about it: Jeff Gordon is hot -- flaming hot.

Jeff Gordon celebrates his victory.

Gordon led twice in his flame-adorned No. 24 Chevrolet, but the last time was the most important. He passed Jeff Burton for the lead with 12 laps to go in the 90-lap event, then held him off on two restarts for victory in Sunday’s Global Crossing @ The Glen.

The margin of victory was 0.172 seconds, with 13 lead changes among 11 drivers.

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“I snuck inside of him on the restart and that’s probably not very smart,” Gordon said. “Because I about lost second and third at the same time. I had to fight pretty hard to get back underneath him.

“I knew he didn’t have as fresh a tires as I did. But he was running pretty good and I knew I had to get by him early. I got by him, then he was all over me at the end."

On the last lap, Gordon suddenly found himself quickly closing on Elliott Sadler's badly-damaged machine, while Burton made one last effort to regain the lead.

“When Elliott Sadler crashed, I was trying to be cautious as we went by," Gordon said. "Jeff didn’t want to be cautious, he wanted that win and he could’ve had it. He got into my rear bumper there on the last corner just to tell me he was there.

“I like racing Jeff Burton and I look forward to racing with him hard because he races me clean.”

Jeff Burton recorded his second career top-five finish on a road course.

Burton’s second was his second career top-five on a road course and third top-five finish this season.

“We had a good chance to win this today,” Burton said. “We got beat by the fastest car and we were the second-fastest. He got by me, I got back by him and then he got back by me again.

“It was just damn good racing. It was an awesome move he used to get by me. I would have loved to have that track position on some of those caution restarts.”

Rounding out the top five finishers were Jeremy Mayfield, Ricky Rudd and Todd Bodine.

Jeremy Mayfield went from 39th to third Sunday.

Mayfield had to take a provisional, starting 39th on his way to his fifth top-five of the season.

“Man, what an afternoon,” Mayfield said. “We had to take the provisional because we didn’t qualify very good. We kept working on the car in practice to make it drive well.

“We had good brakes, motor and fuel mileage. To come to a road course and finish top-three, let alone even top-five, heck, if we would have been top 10, we would have been happy.”

The victory was the second in a row for Gordon, after he won last week’s Brickyard 400. His fourth victory at Watkins Glen was his record seventh career road course win, breaking a tie with Bobby Allison, Richard Petty and Rusty Wallace.

Dale Jarrett ended up in the Turn 1 gravel pit twice.

Gordon also separates himself even further in the championship chase with his series-high fifth victory this year. After starting on the Bud Pole, Dale Jarrett had problems staying out of the gravel in Turn 1 and finished 31st, one lap down.

Unofficially, Gordon leads Rudd by 194 points while Jarrett falls to third, 265 behind Gordon.

After finishing 25th Sunday, Sterling Marlin remains fourth, while a 26th-place finish left Tony Stewart in fifth.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s 12th-place finish moves him up into sixth, while Kevin Harvick’s seventh pushed him up two spots to seventh. Engine problems left Rusty Wallace last, dropping him to ninth in the standings and effectively ending his championship run.

But with 14 races remaining on the schedule, Gordon said it's too early to hand him the championship trophy just yet.

“I’ll tell you what, you can’t beat the level of confidence that we have right now,” the three-time champion said. “We can’t get over confident though, we just have to keep doing our jobs the way we’ve been doing it.”