Out of the lead, time for Gordon to flip the switch

RICHMOND, Va. -- Overshooting the first turn at Watkins Glen. Sliding up into Matt Kenseth at Michigan. Banging off Jeremy Mayfield at California. For Jeff Gordon, whose mini-slump at the end of the Nextel Cup regular season cost him the series points lead, they're all nothing more than incidental preliminaries.

The Chase arrives next week at New Hampshire International Speedway. And with it, the four-time champion believes, will return the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team that led the championship standings for 21 of 26 race weekends, until a 317-point margin was wiped out in one night at Richmond International Raceway.

Johnson rolling

After back-to-back wins at California and Richmond, Jimmie Johnson is hitting his stride as the Chase starts.

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"We're probably going to be pretty irritable to be around if you're anybody but our race team, because we're going to really be focused on communicating, on making sure we do everything possible we can," Gordon said late Saturday night after a fourth-place finish at the .75-mile track. "I think it's just a mental and physical focus you have to have for these next 10 races. I just think there are certain guys, certain teams that elevate their games a notch when it's time to do it. And I think Jimmie [Johnson's] has obviously shown they're capable of doing that. I think that's the kind of race team we have this year, and I think we're going to show that."

Johnson's series-leading sixth victory of the season, recorded Saturday in the Chevy Rock and Roll 400, gives the reigning Nextel Cup champion a 20-point lead on his Hendrick teammate entering next Sunday's playoff opener on the 1-mile flat track in Loudon, N.H. Gordon clinched his Chase berth before any other driver, and then suffered through a run of sub-par finishes that led many to wonder if his team, so dominant through so much of the year, was peaking at the wrong time. Saturday's result was his first top-five finish since Pocono, more than a month ago.

"It was important for us to not have another bad race," Gordon said. "I'm pretty excited that we pulled a top-five out, that we led the amount of laps that we did. Even though we did lose 10 more points, our pit stops were spot-on. [Crew chief] Steve [Letarte] and I, I thought, communicated really well. For the most part, we were making the car better all the way up to that last adjustment."

Through all of his travails of the past month -- losing the race at Watkins Glen by overrunning a turn, and placing 19th or lower at Michigan, Bristol and California -- Gordon has consistently said that when playoff time arrives, his team will return to form.

"Even though we're behind Jimmie going into next week's race, we really are a championship-caliber team," said Gordon, who as Johnson's listed car owner, ironically leads the series owner standings by 20 points over his own vehicle. "I'm extremely excited about the chance we have to get this thing done."

While Gordon continues to rack up top-10 finishes -- he now has 21, three more than any other driver -- his last victory was in the first Pocono race in June. Is it possible to simply flip the switch? Some of his competitors in the Chase believe so. (Continued)