Little known member of 24 team the hero at Pocono

"Excellence does not require perfection" - novelist Henry James

Clearly what literary critic and turn of the century novelist Henry James said regarding excellence came true for the 24 team this weekend at Pocono. The DuPont Chevy was far from perfect. How far? My guess is The Family Truckster from National Lampoon's fame would have given Jeff Gordon's car a run for the money when the yellow flag flew on Lap 106 at Pocono. His brakes were trouble, his tires were bad and Ryan Newman was breathing down his neck like a debt collector on a deadline. It got so bad that Gordon was quoted on the in-car audio as saying "we're done" moments before NASCAR threw the caution (watch video).

Beau Estes co-hosts the Jack Daniel's Post-Race Show with Nikki Alexander. It can be seen following every Nextel Cup race live on NASCAR.COM.

• To see past shows, click here
• Send Beau your thoughts

Why do I bring all of these troubles up? Because the NASCAR record-book will forever state that on June 10, 2007 Jeff Gordon won his fourth race of the year and the 79th of his career. He won it based on a move suggested by his pit crew. In essence, the move was to stop for fuel on green in order to try and roll the dice that the race would be rain shortened and they would be in the lead when nature sank the event (watch video).

Now I know some of you think the timing of the caution that allowed all this to happen is slightly shadier than the Amazon rainforest and we will get to that -- I promise. For now though, I want to talk about the man behind the man behind the man (Microsoft's grammar check program just exploded as I typed that last sentence in).

The driver of the No. 24 car as we all know is Jeff Gordon. Type in his name on Google and you'll get 1,380,000 hits. His crew chief is Steve Letarte. Steve's name gives you 14,500 pages.

The man behind the man behind the man (I'm on computer number two now) is Shannon McGlamery. Shannon is Gordon's genius spotter who thought the whole crazy scheme up. "Time the rain / radar -- get to 101 laps -- PIT NOW! -- divide that by the square root of pi = Victory Lane" (I'm quoting what I imagine to be his maniacally cunning thought process here for the above equation).

How much love does this Stephen Hawking type mind that had Kyle Petty considering retirement on national television (In jest ... I think) get on the Internet? Well, the Good Will Hunting of NASCAR lands a grand total of 33 hits on Google. How can this be? Perhaps the 24 team is trying to keep Shannon under wraps, only to rush him to the track under the cover of night and finally then will they unleash his powers on the rest of the racing world -- or perhaps they're just bringing Mr. McGlamery along slowly. (Continued)