For Gordon, even good might not be good enough

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Fans observed from behind a blue chain separating the No. 24 pit box from the pedestrian traffic along pit road, a few even setting up Texas Longhorns camp chairs in a grassy area next to a spare racecar nose. It was the perfect place to watch Steve Letarte pace, listen to Jeff Gordon fret over the radio, and soak up the drama of seeing a four-time NASCAR champion cling to a series lead that seems to be slipping away.

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They threw everything at Jimmie Johnson on Sunday -- staggered pit stops for track position, duck-ins to top off the fuel cell, adjustments that made Gordon's blue and red racecar one of the best at Texas Motor Speedway by the end. And still, it wasn't enough. Gordon parked on pit road after the Dickies 500 with another top-10 finish in a season full of them. And then he watched his Hendrick Motorsports teammate perform celebratory burnouts along the 1.5-mile track's frontstretch, Gordon's championship lead disappearing like the clouds of white smoke fading into the night sky.

He finished seventh, salvaging a more than respectable finish out of a car that was terrible in race practice Saturday and troublesome for long stretches of Sunday's event. He now has 28 top-10 finishes, six more than the next closest driver. In the eight races of the Chase for the Nextel Cup, he hasn't finished worse than 11th. And in the past three weeks, he's watched his lead in a series he's dominated all season drop from 68 to 53 to nine to now a 30-point deficit.

"They're spanking us," he said of Johnson, who won his third consecutive race and ninth of the season, the most in one year since Gordon won 13 in 1998. "They're putting it to us, and I don't like it. We're very competitive, and we're just getting beat. We've got to go to work. We've got to get it back. Those guys have done an excellent job coming from behind the last couple of races. Now here they are with three in a row. They're on a great roll. We have to answer back, that's all there is to it."

But time is running out, much like it did Sunday, when crew chief Letarte adjusted and cajoled and massaged a vehicle that didn't give the driver much help until too late. For much of the race, Gordon battled a loose rear end that prevented him from getting enough grip in the back of the car. Knowing how much track position helped them in the track's spring race -- where Gordon led 173 laps but finished fourth after slapping the wall late -- Letarte had Gordon stay out during a pit sequence, which put his driver briefly into the lead. But the car just wouldn't cooperate. Gordon fell back to 16th, and struggled to make up ground in traffic.

"That's as fast as I can go," he told Letarte over the radio.

"Do the best you can with it," the crew chief replied.

He did, rallying to finish seventh. But he was never able to challenge Johnson for the win. "This really is probably one of my worst tracks," he said of Texas, along with Homestead-Miami Speedway the only two active Cup venues where he hasn't won. "This place is so finicky, I really have a tough time trying to judge what we need to go fast here. I'm glad to get out of here with a seventh-place finish, to be honest with you. There are times when I thought I was going to be backed in the wall."

"It's very frustrating when you come to a mile-and-a-half track and you struggle, especially a place that's this fast," Letarte added. "There's not much a driver can do for you when the car's not right. But I'm really proud of the guys [Sunday night]. They've never given up on a race this year, and I think it shows with our top-five and top-10 totals. Obviously, we need to run a little better and get to where we need to be in the points, but we can't hang our heads about this. If we lose the championship running in the top 10, then it wasn't meant to be."

The twist of the knife came at the very end, when Johnson passed Matt Kenseth for the lead with three laps remaining, a move that turned a 15-point lead into 30. The pre-Chase days when Gordon enjoyed a 317-point lead felt long ago in the dusk at Texas, where for the first time this season it seemed the championship was getting away. Yes, there are two races remaining, and 30 points is only the difference between first and fourth. But given Gordon's historic struggles at Homestead, where the season concludes Nov. 18, next week's race at Phoenix -- where the No. 24 car won in the spring -- looms as a potential decider.

"All we can do is go out and perform the best we possibly can, just like [Sunday night], and hope that it's enough to be ahead of the guys we're racing like Jimmie," Gordon said. "We can't control what they're doing. They're doing a great job. You can't take anything away from that. It's hard for anybody right now to step up and beat them, let alone us."

At times Sunday night Gordon's frustration was palpable. "I don't give a s--- what you do. Just free this thing up," he grumbled once over the radio. But even after Texas, his average finish in the eight Chase races is 4.6, better than Johnson's 5.2. Gordon is showing the same numbing consistency he used to build his mammoth lead in the regular season. But in the Chase, good isn't good enough against a teammate who suddenly appears bulletproof.

"Jeff hasn't had bad races the last few races," Johnson said. "He's been strong. It's not like he's had bad nights."

But Sunday felt like one anyway. "I'm just mad we sucked [Sunday night]," Gordon said, waking away from pit road. This week, he'll celebrate his wife's birthday and his one-year wedding anniversary. Then he'll go to Phoenix, and make what may be a last stand in a championship race that once seemed his alone.

"We've been battling as hard as we can to get the best finishes that we can," Gordon said. "It's disappointing we got beat like we have the past three weeks. All we can do is go to the next race and hope to turn it around and get some momentum back on our side. There's really no way to put it other than they've been performing excellent, and we haven't stepped up to where we need to."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.