Same strategies, differing results for Hendrick duo (cont'd)

"The leaders had already come in, and we had to ride around for quite a while, and that gave us the few extra laps," Gordon said. "Then when we pitted, we just took our time with it. We were the only car that had to be at the tail end anyway, and plus I saved on the caution laps. I was turning the engine off, so I felt pretty confident that we could make it if we were only one lap short."

Added Letarte: "We just played the hand we were dealt. We didn't have a good enough car to drive up to the front. We got behind on that one run. We got the [free pass]. The guys did a great job. Jeff drove a pretty smart race. When our car was off, he kept it in one piece, and we knew we were close on fuel. I didn't think anybody could make it. I thought we had it won, to be honest."

Not quite. Toward the end, it looked like Gordon might come up one lap short. But he made his fuel last.

"I conserved a little bit under yellow. So when they said we were one lap short, I really wasn't that worried," he said. "But I was still letting off real early, and we didn't know the No. 99 [car of Edwards] was going to go for it. Obviously a great call by Steve Letarte on this DuPont/Nicorette Chevrolet. Great, great teamwork all day. It was a heck of a fight for us."

But it still wasn't the race victory Gordon has been looking for. He's now gone 39 events since his last Sprint Cup victory, at Lowe's Motor Speedway in October of last year. He's 14 days away from his first winless season since his rookie campaign of 1993.

Sunday, though, brought hope. Intermediate tracks like Texas have been one of Gordon's biggest hurdles in the new car, and he left Fort Worth with renewed confidence.

"We're not going to give up, that's for sure. I know it's late in the season, we haven't won yet, but that doesn't mean we're laying down. We're certainly not going to do that. Just like going for the pole on Friday. I mean, we're doing everything we possibly can," said Gordon, who's won at every active track on the Sprint Cup tour with the exceptions of Texas and Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the season concludes in two weeks.

"You know, I'd be a little bit more excited about our chances if we had run up front and ran in that second position all night or all day. The thing is, we're going to look at any possible way to win races. We're going to try to make the car go as fast as we can. When we have that opportunity to make it on fuel, you know, we're going to take the opportunity. That's what we did [Sunday]. But I'm still disappointed that we struggled with the handling. I had my hands full. Some of it's me, some of it's the team and the setup. That's something we've got to work on coming back to Texas. But I look forward to the next two opportunities to try to win. [Sunday] is an obvious sign that we can still win. No matter how the car's running, we can still win. We'll go to the next two and do everything we can to try to win."