Jeff Gordon ended his 66-race winless streak by scoring a convincing victory at the Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Race. Gordon’s first since Texas Motor Speedway in April 2009, gave him 83 career Sprint Cup wins, tying him with Cale Yarborough for fifth on NASCAR’s all-time list.
Jeff Gordon's first victory with his new primary sponsor, "Drive to End Hunger" AARP's programm, wasn't an easy task. To do so, Gordon had to overcome initially a poor 20th qualification -just like the rest of Hendick Chevrolets, and to avoid all big early crashes during the race including a 13-car pileup on the backstretch that blocked the track with crippled cars and stopped the action on Lap 67.
Crash took place after a slight contact between Matt Kenseth's No. 17 Ford and Brian Vickers' No. 83 Toyota cut Vickers' left rear tire and ignited a wild wreck that damaged the cars of Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton, Jamie McMurray, David Reutimann, Casey Mears, Travis Kvapil, David Gilliland, Bobby Labonte, Regan Smith, Andy Lally and Robby Gordon.
Still the ultimate and most difficult task that guide Gordon back to the Victory Lane was to beat Kyle Busch at his best, turning the clock back 15 years, when it was the Intimidator and the Golden Boy going nose-to nose every racing week. Busch had already won the Truck race. He never gave up the lead in Saturday's Nationwide race. And when he battled the lead away from Tony Stewart on a restart with 21 laps to go, it seemed that Busch was destined to sweep all three races at Phoenix. But Gordon had other plans to end his racing hunger.
"He's tough. I respect his talent, that team, and he's aggressive. I think everybody knows, you don't want to have to restart up against him. He's just won a lot of stuff lately. And to be quite honest with you, to me, there's nothing cooler. I think he was on a mission [Sunday], that's for sure. And when Jeff Gordon has a good car and he has the opportunity to beat you, he's going to beat you," Busch said. "There's no doubt about that. He's my hero and I've always watched him and what he's been able to accomplish over the years. It's no surprise that he beat us."
Gordon passed Stewart for second on Lap 292, but was still more than a half-second behind Busch with the laps counting down. But as Gordon's No. 24 Chevrolet began to hunt Busch's No. 18 Toyota -- stealing away precious hundredths of a second with every lap -- everyone began to believe that the gap between the two cars will close soon. And on Lap 304, 8 laps from the checkered, Gordon found himself in a long-familiar spot. And unlike 2010, when it seemed like everything that could go wrong, Jeff Gordon was determined to grab the chance to finish his winless drought.
"Man, what an awesome, awesome, feeling it is when you've got the car right like that. And they give you 20 [laps] to go and it's your job to go get it done, you've got what you need to go do that and then you pull it off. I thought, 'Even if I catch him, what am I going to do with him?'...We caught him, he got loose, I got underneath him and I didn't know what to expect. I got into [Turn 1], he was right on my door. I got loose, got up into him, they said 'clear' and I went. Because I knew I'd need to get away from him as fast as I could."
Busch could see Gordon coming fast for him, but even the "new Kyle" realized that there was little he could do to halt Gordon's charge.
"He was gaining on me really good and I knew he was going to get to me eventually and this place is so flat and it's one groove that we all run the bottom. He got so tucked up behind me in [Turns 3 and 4], he got me loose and I could not put the gas down. I mean, he was so far up underneath me that I could not go forward.
So I was loose, and he was just waiting for the exit of the turn to turn underneath me and get alongside of me and then once we got down into Turn 1, we both drove off in there pretty deep and I had enough where I could slow down and kind of run on what I thought would be the second lane. And he just drifted up a little bit into me and knocked me out of the way."
Five-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson finished third after starting 28th. Kevin Harvick came home fourth, a substantial improvement on his 42nd-place result at Daytona 500, and Ryan Newman claimed fifth.
Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, A.J. Allmendinger and Dale Earnhardt Jr. completed the top 10.
