Gordon bites lip, bides time before making his move

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- With as far behind the lead draft as Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson ran all day, they should have been required to buy a ticket to Sunday's UAW-Ford 500. Fans in the grandstands were closer to the leader than the Nos. 24 and 48.

But that was the strategy: Sit in the back, avoid the inevitable big crash and be around at the finish.

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"I've never yawned in a racecar in my life," Gordon said. "I yawned back there, just riding along."

Telling a race driver to be patient is like a 90-pound weakling trying to pick a fight with a heavyweight champion. It's just not the brightest thing to do. But when the big picture includes a Nextel Cup championship, you bite your tongue and do what you're told.

It was a calculated gamble for the two Hendrick teammates who are in a nip-and-tuck tussle for the title: Put the race setup on the car, don't worry about where you qualify and save your equipment for the end.

"I've never done that before here," Gordon said. "I actually even told Rick Hendrick earlier in the week coming in here, ... 'I can't do it. I think we've got to go out there and race and just let the chips fall where they may.' And I changed that, talking to Steve [Letarte] and seeing other guys. It was tough. I don't like going out there and just riding in the back. I want to be up there battling for the lead, leading laps and all that stuff."

So Gordon and Johnson puttered around Talladega Superspeedway at a sedate 185 mph, running single file at the tail end of the lead lap, lap after boring lap. They would have played "count the license plates," had there been any license plates to count.

It wouldn't have been a surprise if either one had tried to find something else to listen to on the radio.

"It was terrible," Gordon said. "I'm telling you, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in a racecar. I like to think that I've got pretty good patience but that's beyond patience. There's just nothing fun about that, but I knew that was the smart thing and I knew that if we never lost the draft, we could work our way back up there.

"We proved it one other time in the race, right before the green-flag stops came. I knew we could do it. It was just a matter of when we got up there to them, would we be able to do anything with them."

There's one problem with the "passive aggressive" strategy: It requires a series of events to happen in a sequence.

"There are so many circumstances that have to go your way," Johnson said. "If there isn't a big wreck or it's a caution-free race, like we've seen, you're riding around in the back and you've then got 30 or 40 great racecars that you've got to get by.

"So I think circumstances determine how that strategy plays out. [Sunday], it worked out well for us."

The plan appeared to unravel when Gordon hooked an air hose when he left his pit stall on Lap 139 and was given a pass-through penalty, which put him 36th -- six spots behind Johnson. But that ended up being a blessing in disguise, as the two were well behind the 11-car pileup which collected Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth seven laps later.

That set up the perfect scenario. As a trio of Dodges held the high road, Johnson, Gordon and teammate Casey Mears -- along with Tony Stewart -- all Chevrolets -- found the bottom groove ready and waiting, and took full advantage of it.

Once Johnson broke out in front for the Bowtie Brigade, Gordon only needed to remain patient for a little longer. With the white flag in the air, he found an opening to the outside on the backstretch, veered in front of a charging Stewart and rode the momentum past his teammate for his 80th career victory -- and sixth at NASCAR's longest track.

It was a move worthy of some of Talladega's greatest legends -- and the fans, who have showered Gordon with boos and beer cans here in the past, held their fire as he completed his burnout -- and some even cheered. Sweet home, Alabama, indeed.

"That was a risk worth taking on the white-flag lap," Gordon said. "My spotter played a very important role there at the end. If you wait until the white flag, you'll go back five spots instead of 10 or 20."

"[Sunday], it wasn't about teammates. It was about competition and trying to win the race."

Another COT race. Another 1-2 finish for Gordon and Johnson. Who's yawning now?

Others may get more credit for their restrictor-plate prowess, but Gordon has become a master of making all the right moves.

"If you look at a lot of my wins on these tracks, what happens is, I try to get the outside or to the inside on the last lap if I possibly can or a couple of laps to go, if possible," he said. "And then I try to let the line behind me dictate whether we win the race or not.

"[Sunday], it was another one of those moments where that line behind me happened to be Stewart with a lot of momentum. He had no choice. He either hit the wall, hit the cars inside of him or push me. He pushed me."

A lot of patience went a little way at Talladega on Sunday.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.