Gordon facing early deficit after Atlanta wreck

That race was still better than how the veteran Hendrick Motorsports driver fared in Sunday's Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, his final race at the 1.54-mile speedway.

A spin from Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin on Lap 257 triggered a wreck that collected another three cars, with Gordon's Chevy SS taking the brunt of the damage after it was sent careening into the outside wall and then a non-SAFER barrier-protected segment of the inside wall.

“I saw the No. 11 (of Hamlin) going sideways. I had him cleared. I stood on the gas and went by him; but I guess he might have clipped the No. 1 (of Jamie McMurray) and it turned the No. 1 back into me," said Gordon, who wound up 41st. "After that I was just along for the ride. It looks like maybe the No. 31 (of Ryan Newman) came down in trying to avoid the No. 11 and got into the No. 1 and then he clipped me in the left rear and sent me down the back straightaway."

Of the four that took damage, only Newman's car was salvageable. The RCR driver managed to use a separate late-race wreck to get back into the fold and squeeze his way toward the front for a 10th-place finish. Hamlin and McMurray weren't as lucky, as the pair finished 38th and 40th, respectively.

McMurray had a front row seat for what sparked the wreck but wasn't quite sure what happened at first. After seeing video of the event, it seemed pretty clear to him.

“So, the No. 11 just got loose," McMurray said. "It’s pretty hard to pass and you run wide-open so long that you take what you can get when you can get it. And the restarts are the best place to pass on the track; especially if you’re on the bottom. That’s a pretty big advantage here. You’re just racing as hard as you can and unfortunately we just had an accident there."

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver finished 27th at Daytona and currently stands 32nd in points after two races.

While McMurray appears to think Hamlin got loose by taking a gamble, it's possible that the new technical package had a significant hand in it. The rear spoiler has been lowered from eight to six inches, decreasing the rear downforce of the car. This wreck could have just been a matter of Hamlin not having enough handle in the back of his No. 11, along with a slick race track.

"I apologize to all those cars involved," Hamlin said. "It's tough. We had a good FedEx Ground Toyota for most of the day, we just lost the handle there … kind of put us in a spot we hadn’t restarted all day and just got a little loose."

Out of all the cars involved, though, it affects Gordon the most. Not only is it not the finish he wanted at a track that holds such an important piece of his career, the unfortunate showing puts him in a 72-point hole to start his final season after a 33rd-place finish in the Daytona 500.

"I hate it for this team. We were struggling," Gordon said. "We didn’t have the 3M Chevrolet that I thought we were going to have, but we weren’t giving up on it. We were going to make gains and we finally got ourselves in the top 10 and I think we had a shot of getting into the top five. But obviously it's not the way we want to start our season.

"We just have to dig ourselves out of this hole."

MORE: