Dodge opens strong with top-heavy finish in the 500

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- How good was Dodge in Sunday's 50th Daytona 500?

Robby Gordon, who's only owned a Dodge race team for about 10 days, finished eighth -- his second-best career finish in 10 Daytona 500 attempts -- and was the exclamation point on six Dodges in the top eight positions, behind winner and lead Dodger Ryan Newman.

Daytona 500

Dodge Results

Pos.	Driver	Team
1.	R. Newman	Penske
2.	Ku. Busch	Penske
5.	R. Sorenson	Ganassi
6.	E. Sadler	GEM
7.	K. Kahne	GEM
8.	R. Gordon	R. Gordon
11.	B. Labonte	Petty
15.	S. Hornish	Penske
32.	J. Montoya	Ganassi
33.	D. Franchitti	Ganassi
34.	K. Petty	Petty

• Store: Daytona 500 winner

"First, second, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and 11th -- pretty darned impressive," Gordon said.

"That's exceeding expectations, for us," said second-place finisher Kurt Busch, who was the best Dodge driver in the series last year. "It felt like Toyota power was a bit stronger than us and maybe the Hendrick cars were handling better.

"But we were working hard at keeping our nose buried in our own book, and trying to figure out what we could do to make our cars faster. So maybe the hard work shined through."

Gordon's crew chief, Frank Kerr, was even more impressed after overseeing a changeover to Robby Gordon Motorsports' 11-car fleet of new chassis. He only laughed when he was asked what the team might do after being a Dodge program for 20 days.

"That was great -- great for the team [because] everybody's put so many hours in, with the changeover," Kerr said. "We've been working in shifts actually, trying to get stuff changed over -- and then we had the wrong nose on one car and we had to switch it here, plus four others that were done, back at the shop."

Gordon acknowledged the good night might be offset by a penalty he expects to receive for starting Speedweeks with the wrong nose piece -- an unapproved Charger nose that was delivered by mistake from Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Gordon's Dodge connection -- rather than the mandated Avenger nose.

"It's definitely a good start," Gordon said in between TV and print interviews in a dark garage. "Now we just have to see how many points we're going to get taken away from us [by NASCAR]. At least we got a good baseline before they start taking them."

Gordon's baseline included a low-key effort that saw him never inside the top 20 until less than 40 laps remained in the race.

"We just rode around until it was time to go -- we wanted to be in the race at the end," Gordon said. "My car was good. I was just surviving and trying not to put myself in position to tear my car up until about the last 40 laps."

Gordon didn't get into the top 10 until there were 11 laps to go, after the race's sixth of seven cautions flew for an accident started when defending Daytona 500 winner Kevin Harvick and Dave Blaney got together heading into Turn 3. (Continued)