Gordon recovers from rare pit-road mishap, penalty

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- It's not often that a pit-road penalty turns out to be a stroke of good fortune.

But that was the case for UAW-Ford 500 winner Jeff Gordon on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.

A routine pit stop during a caution flag on Lap 140 suddenly turned into disaster when Gordon hooked a hose for the air wrench with the rear bumper of his No. 24 Chevrolet. That's considered "removing equipment from the assigned pit area" -- and requires the driver to pass though the pits.

"I give NASCAR credit," crew chief Steve Letarte said. "I didn't see the infraction initially, but it was clear as day when I saw the tape. They did a good job officiating it.

"It was just unfortunate and it just shows that there's always something to be worked on. Our pit crew has been phenomenal. They were phenomenal all day [Sunday]. Something small like that can change your weekend."

As the field came down to take the green, Gordon ducked onto pit road to serve his penalty and came out in 36th place. Seven laps later, an 11-car accident brought out the caution the No. 24 team needed to catch back up.

"That [penalty] may have worked for us because that kept us out of that big wreck over there off of Turn 4," Gordon said. "It's kind of crazy but it could have really bit us and put us completely out of this race and we were fortunate to get back in it."

Gordon, with the help of two Hendrick teammates, worked his way to the front and led just one lap -- but it was the one that mattered most.

Sometimes you'd rather be lucky than good. But Letarte would rather not take his chances.

"It was definitely fortunate," Letarte said. "I think we would have been hanging back anyway, so I'm not sure we would have been in it, but we can't have mistakes like that in the Chase and expect to be lucky like this every week. There's definitely areas we need to work on."