Gordon takes points hit with Pocono crash

LONG POND, Pa. -- Jeff Gordon's hopes for a fifth NASCAR Winston Cup championship took a hit Sunday, to the tune of a 308-point deficit following the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway.

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Matt Kenseth finished 13th and his point lead fell from 234 points to 232, over third place Pocono finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr. Gordon is third in the standings.

But Gordon indicated he had not won his four titles by being a quitter, and neither he nor his Hendrick Motorsports team was going to quit now.

"We were trying to salvage the best day that we could," said Gordon, who ended up 36th after completing 155 laps. "But we were going to lose points anyway, because Kenseth is real strong and we weren't having a great day.

"You can't give up or dwell on the negative -- this sport doesn't allow you that luxury (and) this team never gives up until it's all over."

	Jeff Gordon's battered Chevrolet sits against the wall at Pocono.

And despite the deficit, Gordon's team proved Sunday it wouldn't give up. After he was unable to move from against the wall, Gordon dropped his window net and told crew chief Robbie Loomis the car was "finished."

However, the crew repaired it and Gordon came back on track, albeit 40 laps down, to pick up at least one spot, from June Pocono winner Tony Stewart, whose car's engine expired.

With that, Gordon said he was confident heading to next weekend's Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, an event he's won three times, in 1994, 1998 and 2001.

"We've lost a lot of points the last couple weeks," said Gordon, who has fallen from 174 points behind after he finished second at Infineon Raceway three races ago. "We'll go to Indy and see if we can't make some up.

	Gordon is winless at Pocono since 1998, when he took the last of three career Pocono victories. Credit: Autostock

"This is when I constantly say we race ourselves and not everybody else. Right now, we've just got to quit beating ourselves."

That was part of Gordon's problems Sunday.

On a restart with about 75 laps to go, Gordon was hit by another car while he was mired in mid-pack. Gordon lost control and smacked the wall in Turn 3, deranging the car's suspension enough to send it to the garage.

"I'm fine," Gordon said after exiting the track's infield care center. "It hit harder than I thought it was gonna hit because I slowed it down a bunch with the throttle. It wasn't that bad."

Gordon indicated what happened to cause the accident.

"I know we got hit from behind, but we were all jumbled up over there (in Turn 3) on the restart so it was kind of a train wreck -- a chain reaction," Gordon said.

Even before his accident, Gordon, who qualified 25th, had struggled to stay near the front of the field.

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"The guys were doing an excellent job, just trying to maintain," Gordon said. "We had good pit stops. We drove up there (front of the field) in the beginning but once we got up there we couldn't get the balance of the car.

"It's the same thing we've been struggling with all weekend, so it was a tough day. In terms of flat-out running, we were about a 10th place car.

"We'll just see what we can do with it and go on from here. We just want to put out our best effort every weekend."