Jeff Gordon lived the metaphor for his season in the Sirius at the Glen on Sunday. Out of gas and struggling toward the finish line in third place, the four-time Winston Cup champion was nudged by Dale Earnhardt Jr., then rear-ended and spun into a barrier by Kevin Harvick less than 200 feet from the finish line.
Gordon had begun the race on the pole but was tapped by Greg Biffle and slid off the track on the first turn. Then, on the final lap, as Gordon's car rested against a retaining wall, facing backward, he watched all the cars he had worked to overtake race past him for the checkered flag and relegate him to 33rd place.
Gordon criticized Harvick for his aggressive move, but Harvick was unapologetic.
"If he was out of gas he should have gotten out of the groove," Harvick said.
Gordon had two 30-plus-place finishes in the first five races of the season, then reeled off nine top 10s in the next 13. He has finished 36th, fourth and now 33rd in his past three starts.
FREE MAN: One of the Winston Cup circuit's most successful and marketable drivers could be a free agent. Earnhardt said in January that he had agreed to extend his contract with Dale Earnhardt Inc. through 2007, but Sportingnews.com reported last weekend that he has not signed a contract and is working on a weekly basis for the company owned by his stepmother, Teresa.
STICKY ISSUE: Todd Bodine told the Winston-Salem Journal he believes as many as 16 teams may have used illegal traction control technology this season. The penalty for using such a device, which prevents rear wheels from spinning, would likely be immediate expulsion from NASCAR. But Bodine said because the device is nearly undetectable even in prerace inspections, the violations continue.
"There is one the driver himself can put in and take out when he gets in and out of the car," Bodine said. "I don't know exactly how they all work, but I know they're hard to find."
OFF COURSE: Buddy Rice became the second driver to use Chevrolet's new Generation IV Indy V8 engine Sunday, but finished 14th, seven laps behind winner Helio Castroneves in the Emerson Indy 250 because of what he deemed an "ill-handling car."
Sam Hornish Jr., the first to use the new engine, finished second with the Gen IV two weeks ago. He was sixth last weekend.
All Chevrolet teams are scheduled to use the new engine this week at Kentucky Speedway.
LAP DOG: Paul Tracy moved into second place in career CART laps led Sunday with 3,322, putting him ahead of Rick Mears, who had 3,286. Michael Andretti is the leader with 6,607. Tracy won the Champ Car Mid-Ohio Grand Prix on Sunday to take the top spot in the CART point standings.
RALLY: Markko Martin held off a furious rush by Petter Solberg in the final two of 23 stages to win the Rally Finland last weekend, inching closer to leader Richard Burns in the World Rally Championship standings.
Martin, an Estonian driving a Ford Focus, completed the 254.1-mile course in 3 hours, 21 minutes, 51.7 seconds, beating the Norwegian Solberg in a Subaru Impreza by 58.9 seconds. Burns, a Briton, was 0.1 farther back in his Peugeot 206 after winning stages 19 through 21 on the third and final day of the event.
Martin, just the third non-Scandinavian to win the rally, benefited from mechanical problems that forced Finland's Marcus Gronholm and his Peugeot to retire after leading six of the first 12 stages.
"I think the pace was so quick that it would have been a miracle if the drivers had kept the same speed for three days," Martin said. By earning 10 points for the victory, Martin moved into a tie for fifth in the overall standings, 12 behind Burns, with five races remaining.
