NASCAR Quick thinking helps Gordon beat Wallace

Robby won, while Jeff Gordon had a bout with bad luck at The Glen.
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) -- The wrong Gordon won again at Watkins Glen.
Two years after Jeff Gordon took the race when Robby Gordon's telemetry went up in smoke with him in the lead, misfortune reversed itself.
The result was a victory for Robby Sunday in the Sirius at The Glen that gave him a sweep of this year's NASCAR road races. He also won two months ago in Sonoma, Calif.
"I don't think any race track owes you anything," Robby said. "The key is just to run hard every weekend."
Actually, he didn't have to run as hard and wasn't as fast as Jeff, a four-time winner of the race who had the pole after a record-setting qualifying run Friday.
Bad race
On Sunday, the four-time Winston Cup champion became a punching bag. He roared away at the start only to be spun out by rookie Greg Biffle on the first turn.
"I don't know what happened," Jeff said. "I got a great jump. It's the first lap. There's no reason to blast the thing down in there, but he just blasted me."
But the final lap was even worse. After racing all the way back to third, he ran out of gas on the final turn. He was hit first by Dale Earnhardt Jr., then clobbered by Kevin Harvick and wound up facing the wrong way against the wall just 200 feet from the finish line.
"I didn't think we could get up to where we did," Jeff said. "It's pretty amazing, but it doesn't mean anything now."
Biffle said the spinout Sunday wasn't intentional, and he was not penalized by NASCAR.
"If it's any consolation, tell his spotter I couldn't stop," he told his crew on the radio. "I feel terrible."
Thinking ahead
So did Jeff, but not Robby. He stayed out of trouble and his crew had the fuel mileage figured out.
"There was a big 55 on the dashboard," Robby said, explaining that a stop on that lap would allow him to cover the last 35 after his final fuel stop.
In the end, he went 39 -- a number reached because caution laps allowed Gordon to save gas after his crew chief made a decision to alter the plan.
The key for Robby was pitting when Rusty Wallace went off the course on the 51st of 90 laps.
"I saw Rusty lock up the right front tire, and I called and said, 'Rusty's in the sand,' " Gordon said.
Crew chief Kevin Hamlin reacted quickly.
"We heard the guy on the loudspeaker say, 'trouble,' so we decided to dive in for gas," Hamlin said.
That move paid off when the field pitted under caution two laps later. That put him ahead of them, and Gordon took the lead when those still in front of him pitted on lap 61.
"Track position is so important," he said. "I don't know if we had the best car today, but we won. That's what teamwork is all about."