Break of the Race: Jeff Gordon

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- What started out as a bright, sunny day at the head of the class ended with cloudy, threatening skies and a back-of-the-pack finish for Jeff Gordon.

The defending Winston Cup champion started on the pole Sunday for the Virginia 500 at Martinsville Speedway, but short-track gremlins wouldn’t let him hang on. By the end of the day, he was one exhausted driver, weary from fighting a car without power steering, and saddled with a 23rd-place finish, two laps down.

	Jeff Gordon Credit: ASP

“The car was driving so good and I was so mad, that I think that’s the only thing that got me through it, was my anger,” Gordon said. “Every time I went in the corner I was so mad that I just had to jerk on the wheel.”

Gordon led twice for 68 laps early, and seemed a threat. But eventually the power-steering system conked out, and Gordon was left to wrestle a 3,400-pound vehicle around a half-mile track on his own strength.

“It’s like running five or 10 miles,” he said. “Those first one or two miles were a killer, and then you get numb and do what you can to get to the end.”

Contact with Jimmy Spencer on lap 100, the day’s third caution, knocked Gordon back to ninth. A flat left front tire followed on the day’s sixth caution, at lap 210, while trying to dodge a wreck. Gordon entered the pits in second place behind then-leader Tony Stewart. He exited in 30th because of crew members trying to mend the power steering, then had to go to the rear of the field because he’d pitted too soon.

On lap 253, he spun between turns 1 and 2, prompting the seventh of the day’s 14 cautions. More repair work followed, putting him four laps down. Meanwhile, his brain trust debated options, which included going behind the wall for an extended fix, or installing Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jerry Nadeau in relief. Nadeau had a much worse day than Gordon; his No. 25 Chevrolet was beaten up on the track, and eventually expired because of overheating, ending Nadeau’s day at 341 laps.

“I just started getting into a rhythm and knew how good the car was,” Gordon said. “And I knew how many positions we were going to lose if we came in and tried to fix it or if we came in and tried to put Jerry in there. And I didn’t want to put him through what I was going through. He’d already had a bad enough day as it was.”

Gordon did manage to drive his way out of the basement, and salvage points by sticking it out. Still, he tumbled in the overall standings. He entered the day in sixth place behind leader Sterling Marlin. He heads to Talladega in eighth place.

“It wasn’t what I wanted to do out there -- especially at Martinsville,” Gordon said. “But we had to take what we could get and to get a 23rd out of that, we can’t complain too much.”