Robby Gordon gets the win
at The Glen, 2nd of season
By DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer


Race Results
Points


AP

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. - Robby Gordon, thanks in large part to a quick dive onto pit road at what turned out to be a very opportune moment, scored his second road-course victory of the Winston Cup season by winning the Sirius at The Glen on Sunday at Watkins Glen International.
Gordon came to pit road immediately after seeing Rusty Wallace slide off the course in Turn 10 of the 11-turn, 2.45-mile course on Lap 51 in the 90-lap race.
His Richard Childress Racing crew gave him four tires and a full load of fuel, and Gordon made that last the rest of the way. He took the lead when the last of the cars that hadn't been inside their pit window when the last yellow came out had to get fuel, and never gave it back up as the Childress team made it back-to-back victories with different cars.
Scott Pruett, a road-course "ringer" driving a fourth Chip Ganassi Racing Dodge this weekend, made the same dive Gordon did to get into contending position. He slammed his way past Kevin Harvick in Turn 1 on a restart on Lap 79 to get second and stayed there, conserving fuel so much in the final laps he was unable to make any kind of run at Gordon. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who led a Winston Cup road-course race for the first time in his career, came in third.
For Harvick, the contact with Pruett was part of an eventful day. There was a fire in the Brickyard 400 winner's pit stall early on, and he nearly stopped on the track once when he accidentally hit the kill switch on his engine. But Harvick fought back toward the front. On the final lap, he was battling to hang on for a top-five finish when Jeff Gordon's car began sputtering as it ran low on fuel.
Jeff Gordon was holding on to fourth coming through the final turn when Harvick got into the rear of his Chevrolet. As Jimmie Johnson moved by Harvick to take fourth place, Jeff Gordon wound up spinning and crashing short of the start-finish line. Harvick finished fifth while Jeff Gordon wound up 33rd.
It was a maddening end to a frustrating day for Jeff Gordon. It took him just over 72 seconds to win the pole on Friday, but it took far less time than that for him to go to the rear of the field when the green flag flew Sunday. That was because Jeff Gordon spun off the track in Turn 1 on the first lap after getting contact from behind from Greg Biffle, who'd started alongside of him on Row 1.
"I feel terrible," Biffle said over his radio about the incident between him and a driver with whom he'd had a run-in with at New Hampshire a few weeks ago. As bad as he felt, though, Biffle came away from the incident with the lead.
Kyle Petty slammed his car into the foam barriers guarding the guardrail in the track's inner loop later on the first lap, bringing out a yellow flag.
Green-flag racing resumed on Lap 5 and continued until after the fuel fire in Harvick's pit brought out the second yellow on Lap 21.
A handful of cars had made green-flag stops before that yellow, and when the rest came in under that yellow the track position wormed turned in favor of those who'd been in earlier. Pruett and Johnny Miller didn't pit at all and wound up in front for a time, but when Pruett came in on Lap 33 the lead went over to Jeff Burton.
Christian Fittipaldi got turned by Steve Park and cracked up some foam barriers on Lap 34 to bring out another yellow. The front-runners all stayed out this time, with Burton trying to hold off Earnhardt Jr. and Biffle after the green flew again on Lap 37.
Earnhardt Jr. worked his way around Burton for the lead on Lap 43 just before Tony Raines' got spun into the guardrail to bring out another yellow.
Earnhardt Jr. stayed in the lead until things took a big turn on Lap 51 when Wallace skidded his Dodge off the track and into the mud outside a gravel trap on Turn 10.
Earnhardt Jr. and the cars closest to him up front were speeding by the pit road entrance when Wallace wrecked. Cars running back in the field, however, saw Wallace's slide and dove to pit lane immediately - chief among them the race's eventually winner.
Since the ideal strategy in a road-course race is to pit under green just before a yellow comes out, the cars that came in immediately got a track-position gain. Once Earnhardt Jr. and the cars that had followed him in under yellow, there were 19 cars ahead of the former race leader.
First among those was Bobby Labonte's Chevrolet. Labonte didn't pit at all because he was still short of his window to go the distance on fuel. Neither did Ricky Rudd or Jamie McMurray, and all three would come in by Lap 61.
That turned the lead over to Robby Gordon, who'd been part of the group to stop immediately when Wallace wrecked. For what seemed like the 100th straight race the questions began. Would the strategy work out for Robby Gordon? Would he or anyone else make it the rest of the way on fuel?
As it turned out, Jeff Gordon would run out of fuel and out of luck with the last-lap incident with Harvick, while Robby Gordon had all the gas he needed to complete a road-course sweep in 2003. He's the fourth driver to win at two different road courses in the same Winston Cup season - Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace and Tim Richmond also accomplished the feat.