Gordon's legacy continues at M'ville despite roadblock

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Jeff Gordon did nothing to hurt his Martinsville legend Sunday, despite a "disappointing" second-place finish in the Goody's Cool Orange 500.

When a rain shower caused a red flag and disrupted the event's flow with a little more than 100 laps remaining, Gordon had already staged a tremendous comeback in his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to sit fourth.

"Jeff Gordon," crew chief Steve Letarte said when asked the key element of his crew's dogged comeback. "I mean, he put a display on getting back up there.

HMS domination

The last time Hendrick Motorsports cars won four races in a row was 1998, until Jimmie Johnson won at Martinsville.

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"He's a magician here. I wish I knew what he did -- I'd bottle it and sell it. But he knows how to work traffic and he knows how to work lapped cars."

The Hendrick Motorsports leader's return from the low teens midway through the race after a mysterious tire problem ensured that Gordon remained the Nextel Cup points leader for the next two weeks.

The series is idle next weekend to honor the Easter holiday, leaving Gordon 28 points clear of second-place Jeff Burton.

While the last 40 laps of the race will be what people remember when they think of this Martinsville event -- with Gordon and Johnson sparring and trading paint before Johnson won by half a car length, Gordon did a lot to get to that position.

Gordon was running with the leaders at Lap 235 when he went into Turn 1 and his car speared straight ahead. Gordon, thinking he had a flat tire, moved high and plodded around the track until he figured out what was wrong.

He fell back to 15th before a caution flew, enabling his team to assess what had occurred. They never definitively did -- thinking some rubber buildup possibly had fallen out of the fender well and onto the right-front tire.

"I'm disappointed we had our trouble, whatever it was -- maybe a piece of rubber got on the tire," Letarte said. "Jeff did a wonderful job staying out of the wall.

"But it's just frustrating, you know? We come up here to win, and I'm not going to be happy with [anything else] no matter where we started or where we ran.

"I'm happy with the way the car performed, because it's a big task to get this car to turn here, and I feel we've done a pretty good job with that. And [teammate Jimmie Johnson won], so overall, it was a good day." (Continued)