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Instead, it was the team's "other" drivers who finished well. Terry Labonte ended up fifth, with Joe Nemechek seventh at the checkered flag.
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| Joe Nemechek finished in the top 10 for the first time in nine races. Credit: Autostock |
The supposed stars of Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon and Johnson, finished 36th and 15th, respectively.
Sunday's race was the second time in 2003 that Nemechek and Labonte both finished ahead of Gordon and Johnson. But the first time, at Darlington, was a terrible day for Hendrick.
Nemechek was 13th, with Labonte 24th, Johnson 27th and Gordon 33rd.
Labonte, meanwhile, just chuckled when asked about he and Nemechek carrying the Hendrick banner Sunday.
"All the teams really work good together," Labonte said. "The 48 and the 24 work out of the same shop, and I think there are plans in the works for the 5 and 25 to be in the same shop -- which probably would help both of us.
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"But, yeah, it was a great run for us. We're happy. We'll take it."
Labonte started sixth and finished in the top-five, but he seemed surprised to finish so well. He ran outside the top 10 for much of the race, but his Jim Long-led crew worked on his No. 5 Chevrolet throughout the race.
"It was a good run for us, a good finish for us," Labonte said. "We really weren't as good as we had hoped we were going to be. But we made some adjustments on it and got the car pretty close and got a good finish on it, so that's good."
Labonte, like a lot of drivers, was close on fuel. But with two caution periods in the final 33 laps, Labonte was able to make it the checkered flag with out running out. But, yes, he was close.
"Oh, yeah," Labonte said with a grin. "We didn't have much. We needed those caution flag laps. If we didn't have that, we were probably going to run out."
Nemechek was cutting the margin close, too, as he finished the race with 1.5 gallons left in his tank. Crew chief Peter Sospenzo told Nemechek to try and conserve as much fuel as possible, so the driver didn't push as hard as would've liked.
"We had a couple gallons left," Nemechek said. "I was trying to save all I could. They didn't know if we could make it or not. Last week at Loudon, we ran out of gas with four laps to go, so go figure.
"Peter and those guys, they had some good calculations today, and we could go pretty good."
 | Gordon crashes on lap 125 | | 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. |
| | 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. |
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Nemechek had a couple problems to overcome before he could even think of trying to stretch the fuel mileage. He overshot his pit stall on one stop and had to back up, extending his stay on pit road by a few precious seconds.
And then his crew had to fix damage to the nose of his No. 25 Chevrolet.
"We needed a good finish," Nemechek said. "We had a pretty decent car, and got the nose knocked in with the 41 there. We had to fix it and went to the back of the line.
"Looking back at it now, without doing that, we wouldn't have been in the gas-mileage deal that got us back to the front. It all worked out good."
The finish was the best for Nemechek since he won at Richmond in May. Labonte, meanwhile, continued to knock on the door of victory lane.
Sunday's result was his third top-five of the season and the fifth top-10 in the last eight races.
"We've got to keep running like that," Labonte said. "If you can continue to run like that and be consistent like that, it makes it a lot easier to get (a victory)."
Nemechek, though, was simply happy to right the ship. Since winning at Richmond, his best finish was an 11th the following week at Charlotte.
But go farther back in the season. After finishing 13th at Darlington, Nemechek was ninth in the Winston Cup points standings. He came to Pocono 25th.
"We've just been having some terrible, terrible luck," Nemechek said. "It's unfortunate for our team. We were ninth in points going to Bristol, and we've had a few motor problems and we missed on our chassis a few times and got caught up in some wrecks.
"Everything that could happen to us has happened.
"We've fallen from ninth to 25th in points, and that's crazy. We've got a hell of a lot better team than that. Our team is kick-butt."
And so is Labonte's. After Sunday, who could argue with them?
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