Thank fuel mileage for the best race of the season (cont'd)

Seconds after Johnson ran dry, Biffle began slowing off Turn 2, the battle of wits between the two teams having claimed another casualty. Denny Hamlin, who wound up finishing third, saw it all unfold in front of him, and his synopsis was a concise one. "I think the 16 and the 48 kind of baited each other into running hard, and that's what happened," he said.

It certainly seemed that way. Then there was Martin, the cagey veteran, biding his time and feathering the accelerator, and capitalizing on gambles by others gone awry. He ran out of gas just before the finish line, but by then, it didn't matter. "Old man, you snookered us again," Gordon endearingly told his Hendrick Motorsports teammate in Victory Lane. And yet, Martin knew he may not have won had the drivers in front of him taken the same approach he did.

"Jimmie and Chad going hard is what allowed us to win the race," said Alan Gustafson, Martin's crew chief. Still, it's not an easy thing for a driver to balance going fast and going slow at the same time. And given that Biffle and Johnson both entered Sunday in strong position to qualify for the Chase -- a luxury Martin, 13th in points before his victory, did not enjoy -- it was much easier for them to roll the dice. Of course, it was hard to see that big picture through the immediate disappointment of Sunday afternoon, when two drivers who each thought they had the race won were left wondering what happened.

"If I'm Jimmie Johnson or Greg Biffle, I'm going to push a little harder," Gordon said. "It's going to be really hard to discipline yourself. That's where I give Mark Martin so much credit. He's such a great driver and a smart driver. I think he could have pushed harder to hold Jimmie off, and maybe even caught Biffle. But I think his crew chief and him were communicating, and Mark was disciplined enough to say, 'We're not going to make it, and I've got to back off.' He played it perfectly."

So go ahead, criticize fuel mileage. Say Martin didn't really deserve to win Sunday's race, just as some have said Casey Mears didn't deserve that Coca-Cola 600 two seasons ago or Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't really deserve to win here in Michigan last year. And then look at the calculations and the gambles and the strategy and the disappointment that took place on the big Brooklyn oval. It all makes mashing the accelerator look quite simple, doesn't it?

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.