Dover Jeff Gordon Preview

GORDON HOPES TO LEAD ALL PLUS, NOT ALL BUT, 25 LAPS AT DOVER

DOVER, Del. - - At the end of May at the monster mile, two-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon dominated the race until he had to pit for fuel with nine laps remaining leaving him third after leading all but 25 of 400 laps.

With DuPont headquarters right up the road in Wilmington, Del., Gordon did everything he could to dazzle his sponsors, except meet them in victory lane. However, like Gordon, DuPont would rather celebrate the championship with him at the end of the season, and racing for points when necessary is how to do it.

That certainly does not mean that Gordon and his team of Rainbow Warriors race for points in lieu of wins. The No. 24 DuPont Automotive Finishes team has brought home 10 wins this season, matching their 10 wins from each of the past two seasons.

"We've won a lot of races we shouldn't have won," said Gordon. "But at the same time we've lost some races we should've won and Dover is one of them.

"We made the right decision by coming in for fuel. Actually, we didn't have much of a choice. There were only a few cars on the lead lap, so we weren't going to be giving up very many positions.

"I wish we could have pulled it off for DuPont. However, they didn't become one of the biggest companies in the world by making decisions that don't benefit them in the long run. We'll try to get to victory lane for them again this Sunday."

Gordon will have a good shot at it again because he will be driving the same car he drove here in May. That car also won at Bristol and Rockingham.

In 11 starts at Dover, Gordon has three straight wins, two poles, five top- fives and seven top-10's with an average finish of 9.36. Gordon has led nearly 30 per cent of those laps and has led laps in eight of the 11 races.

Gordon has made strides toward his third championship. He has won seven of the last 10 races and has produced an average finish of 1.7. His points lead has gone from 67 after the race in New Hampshire two weeks ago, to 204 after last weekend's race at Richmond where he almost passed Jeff Burton for the win on the last lap. Second-place points contender Mark Martin was third.

We've had an unbelievable year, said Gordon. I thank God every day for blessing me and all the people around me.

The battle for the championship is far from over, though. If we have a couple of bad runs our points lead can go away in a heartbeat. We just need to keep that consistency going and we need to stay out of trouble for these final eight races.

We traditionally haven't run all that well at the end of the season. We're really making a concentrated effort to change that this year.

In the rare instance that Gordon is not racing for the win, he'll be thinking of those points and that championship.

     But when was the last time he was not racing for the win?