For Gordon, wins seem so close, and yet so far away

CONCORD, N.C. -- The right side of the racecar looked like it had been wiped by a wide paintbrush, blending all the blues and yellows and oranges into one indiscernible stripe. The impact with the outside wall was remembered in a series of dents and ridges extending from the vehicle's nose to its rear quarter panel, resulting in something that looked less like a collection of sponsor logos and more like some twisted attempt at modern art.

It was a beaten and bruised No. 24 car that Jeff Gordon's crewmen loaded into the team transporter Saturday night after an eighth-place finish at Lowe's Motor Speedway. At 245 points behind Sprint Cup leader and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson with five races remaining, the quest for a fifth series championship is all but finished. But the quest for a first victory this season still goes on.

"The point situation is pretty much over," crew chief Steve Letarte said after an adventurous night that saw Gordon hit the wall twice, lose a lap, and come back to lead 46 laps. "We kind of look at the highlights, and the highlights are, we're going to go to Martinsville and hopefully run well. We've never won at Texas and Homestead, so we're going to put a lot of chips, a lot of stuff in that basket, see if we win on a high note. Since I've taken over, there were four tracks we haven't won at. We've won at Phoenix, we've won at Chicago, so there's two more we want to win at."

For Gordon, the Bank of America 500 was his season in microcosm: good, but not quite good enough. There were times when the No. 24 car was out front and sailing, and it seemed the end of a now 36-race winless streak was in sight. Then there were times when Gordon was mired in traffic, his process and his countenance frustrated by aerodynamics, his hopes of chasing down eventual winner Jeff Burton fading with every successive lap. He's still Jeff Gordon, still able to pull a top-10 finish out of a crippled car that probably shouldn't have finished that high. But it's now been a year since his last victory, at Charlotte last season. And the stunning prospect of a winless 2008 -- his first such campaign since his rookie year of 1993 -- looms ominously, like the sight of Johnson's No. 48 car in the rear-view mirror.

Winning for this team seems so close, yet so far away, all at the same time. Saturday's result was a familiar one -- strong enough to crack the top 10, even with trouble, but not strong enough to be in the mix at the very end. Gordon battled Kyle Busch and lapped traffic as Burton ran away from Kasey Kahne in the final laps.

"When we had the damage, to come back and get in the top 10 is phenomenal," said Gordon, who bounced back from a crash last week at Talladega Superspeedway. "It was nice when we were out front there, and the car drove that awesome that it gave us some hope that we could win it. But the only way we were going to win it is if the fuel mileage worked out and it went green all the way to the end."

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.