For Gordon, wins seem so close, and yet so far away (cont'd)

His nemesis Saturday wasn't another driver, but air. Twice in the first five laps, Gordon drifted up into the outside wall. The first encounter was just a rub. The second one was a hard pancake, solid enough to send sparks flying and prompt words of alarm over the radio. "I think we're in trouble," he told his crew.

He was. Gordon, who started eighth when rain on Thursday set the starting field on owner points, had to pit for repairs. He lost a lap as his over-the-wall crew frantically pulled away crumpled fenders that were rubbing on right-side tires. He spent the next 44 laps racing not for the lead but for the free pass, which he finally received when A.J. Allmendinger wrecked in Turn 3. He was clearly still stewing over the incident even at the end of the race, when Letarte congratulated everyone over the radio for a job well done. "Except for hitting the damn wall," the driver groused.

"The first time I got it kind of soft and I was like, we'll be all right," he said afterward. "The car wasn't great, and the 88 [Dale Earnhardt Jr.] got underneath me, and the air from him being underneath me just made the whole car take off. It probably didn't help that we had the damage already. That just killed our night. I know we came back with a really nice finish, but it would have been so much better if we wouldn't have had that damage."

But nothing frustrated him more than his inability to move up through the field in traffic. In clean air, the No. 24 car was a bullet, running out to a large lead when he finally made it to the front. Of course, everyone else was able to do the same thing. It was when he gave up the lead by pitting on Lap 250 -- the No. 24 car was out of sequence from staying out earlier, so fresh rubber was a necessity -- that the struggles really began. "Unbelievable," he told Letarte over the radio. "Impossible." He was driving his butt off, he told the crew chief, but felt like he was standing still.

"If I could have gotten out front, I would have won the race. Anybody who got out front was going to win the race. It's ridiculous," he said.

"I'm exhausted talking about it. We just go to work as a team, make the cars best they can, don't get in the wall, and have a car up front and be able to make that two-tire call like Burton and those guys made and be in that position. That's all you can do. Because nobody seems to want to help it."

Actually, Burton took fuel only on his final stop, an obvious indicator of how invaluable track position was on the 1.5-mile layout. "Really big," the Richard Childress Racing driver said, when asked about the importance of being out front. "Important for everybody. You could see, whoever was out front ran their best. Being in the back of the pack was difficult. It was really hard to pass back there."

Letarte said every team in the garage was fighting the same problem. The only way around it? "Stay out. That's it," the crew chief said. "All you can do is be the leader. There's no fixing it. Not on a team side. We were watching like the 1983 Rockingham race, and even back then, if you go look, I think Petty won it. Well, he had the front valence, and the fenders that look different. Pandora's box is open. You can't close it. It's no different in Formula One or IRL or anywhere else. We all understand how aerodynamics work, and all the teams do a very good job of using it. Then when you lose it, you don't have very much grip."

After he gave up the lead, Gordon's only real chance was for the race to stay green the rest of the way -- a highly unlikely 84 laps -- and beat everyone else on fuel mileage. Those hopes faded when Juan Montoya slapped the wall. "I have no idea what to tell you to do," Gordon lamented to Letarte over the radio. "Trying to drive this in traffic is an absolute joke."

He was still steamed after the race. "I'm so frustrated with that," he said. "It's unbelievable how good my car drove out front. It was on rails. It was like having the best car, and then having the worst car when I was five cars, six cars back. That's just going to come down to track position, and I think Jeff Burton and those guys played it great."

From there it was into the hauler for a change of clothes for the trip home. The scarred racecar was loaded into the truck's upper storage bay for the short trip to Hendrick headquarters, only a few miles away. Sunday brings a welcome respite before the focus turns to Martinsville Speedway, where the quest will continue. Realistically, there's no title to chase anymore, at least not this year. There's only improvement, and that elusive, long-awaited return visit to Victory Lane.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.