NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Gordon And Johnson Are Back At It
NASCAR Sprint Cup Champions Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are feuding...
Jonathan Ingram  | http://www.RacinToday.com  |  Posted April 26, 2010   Talladega, AL
Jeff Gordon (Left) is mad at Jimmie Johnson (Right) after an incident during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
You can take away Air Talladega by subtracting the rear wings, but Err Talladega lives on.

According to Jeff Gordon, for example, Jimmie Johnson made a really big error. “He’s testing my patience,” said Gordon of his teammate and the driver of the No. 48 Chevy he co-owns. “It takes a lot to make me mad and I am pissed.”

Shortly after his teammate forced him below the yellow line, a slowing Gordon was collected when a four-wide gambit popped Jeff Burton’s gold Chevy out of the draft like a greased pumpkin seed and into the side of Gordon’s DuPont machine.

Later in an accident of his own making during green-white-checkered No. 2, Johnson goofed and wrecked trying to pass Greg Biffle, left stranded on the re-start. After finishing a lap down in the Lowe’s Chevy, Johnson’s points lead over race winner Kevin Harvick was down to 26 and his relationship with his Hendrick Motorsports teammate appears to have sunk well into the negative.

It may be time for one of those milk-and-cookies meetings with team owner Rick Hendrick for his two star drivers, the kind where the chosen snack goes down like cod liver oil.

As a car owner, in the mid-1980’s Hendrick was a party to the dinner hosted by NASCAR for drivers Geoff Bodine and Dale Earnhardt Sr. later made famous by the movie Days of Thunder. Not one to miss a trick, Hendrick adopted a snack version for clashes within his own team. He used a meeting over milk and cookies to settle the feuding between Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus, for instance, before those two won four straight championships.

The situation between Gordon and Johnson was listed as serious after the Texas dust-up. This week it’s a lot closer to serious, but unstable. When asked about the relationship between the drivers in the garage afterward, a Hendrick Motorsports official declined comment.

On a tough day for the Hendrick squad, at least Mark Martin quietly came home fifth after leading one lap. What happened to Hendrick’s Dale Earnhardt Jr., the leader of eight laps on five different occasions? “I chose the wrong line,” said Earnhardt Jr., who decided not to follow drafting partner Tony Stewart up high during green white checkered No. 3. The driver took responsibility for the mistake, but said he was encouraged after leading laps early in a car he said was a tick off the faster ones. “We could have just as easily finished upside down,” said Earnhardt Jr., 13th at the end.

The revived rear spoiler posted at a mandatory height of 70 degrees kept spinning Sprint Cup cars on the ground but the closing rate resulting from the larger hole punched in the air eventually produced a lot of contact as well as a record number of leaders, lead changes and excitement for the fans. The number of accidents was not a record, but the three green-white-checkered attempts was a first for any Sprint Cup event.


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Jonathan Ingram

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