Johnson, Gordon switch spots in quest to be best

MIAMI -- The Checker Auto Parts 500 hadn't been completed for 15 minutes, and driver Jeff Gordon was a sweaty, frustrated mess.

He had just registered another top-10 finish in a sport where it is wise not to take such quality finishes for granted. His average finish, he knew, was right at about 5.2 for the nine races that had been run in the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship. And still, he knew it wasn't good enough.

Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, had been even better once again. Johnson had just become the first driver to win four races in a row since, well, Gordon himself did it en route to winning an amazing 13 races overall and a points championship in 1998. It gave Johnson a series-high 10 victories on the season, and a commanding 86-point lead in the Chase race heading into this Sunday's season finale in the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

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Gordon shook his head in a mixture of amazement and admiration for Johnson -- and that touch of frustration for himself.

"Unless you're going to lead the most laps and win the race, you're not going to gain any ground on those guys," Gordon said. "Heck, right now you couldn't even gain anything on them if you were finishing second."

But aren't these the same guys who share information all the time? Heck, they even shared a ride to Thursday's Chase Championship Contenders news conference at Doral Golf Resort and Spa. Can't Gordon just take whatever Johnson is doing and do it just as well, or possibly even better?

Gordon knows it is not that simple. They may seem similar in many ways -- and undoubtedly the two close friends are -- but they also are drivers capable of a wide range of emotions, different tendencies and human error.

"Just because we're sharing information doesn't mean we're going to run exactly the same," Gordon said. "We do drive different enough. I know what's under their car, and I always shake my head. I don't see how they make it work. But Jimmie drives different enough that it does. They are just flat-out stomping not just us, but everybody right now."

Gordon's crew chief, Steve Letarte, said that the average fan -- and truthfully even many more sophisticated followers of the sport -- have a difficult time comprehending the true relationship between the No. 24 team and Johnson's No. 48 team, and how it works.

"To be honest, it's hard for people to understand our concept here," Letarte said. "We share everything. It's a complete open book. I mean, it's the way the company's set up. It's the way our engineering is set up. It's the way Chad [Knaus, Johnson's crew chief] and I work.

"All four [Hendrick] cars are an open book to one another from Week 1 at Daytona testing all the way to the final laps at Homestead. We share air pressures during the race, pit strategies, setup information all weekend along. It definitely doesn't change when we get into the Chase. If anything, it gets a little bit tighter. We go out of our way a little bit more in the Chase to make sure we understand what each of us has so we know when it comes to the end of the race." (Continued)