Jeff Gordon earns season-best finish at Texas, takes over Sprint Cup points lead; teammates don't fare as well - MotorSportsTalk

Jeff Gordon thought he had a pretty good chance to win Monday’s rain-postponed Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Gordon continues to seek his first Sprint Cup win of the season, but he can’t be too disappointed after recording a season-best second-place finish to race winner Joey Logano.

“That was a great battle,” Gordon said. “At one point, I didn’t think we had a shot at all.

“We had a pretty good restart (on the final restart). Joey was right on me and I was pretty loose in (turns) one and two. I wish I would have gone a little bit higher in three and four, but he got that run off four.

“Then he got into the back of me, and I thought I was going to wreck. At that point, I was like, ”Second will be good.'”

But even better, Gordon leaves Fort Worth atop the Sprint Cup standings, jumping up three places in the rankings.

“I so badly wanted to get this Texas A&M Engineering, maroon and those Aggies a win today here in Texas,” Gordon said after the race. “That was an awesome race all day. I have to thank all the fans that came out and all those watching at home.”

In the last pit stop before a green-white-checker finish, Gordon’s crew chief Alan Gustafson decided to call for only two tires on the Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, while Logano had four tires on his Penske Ford.

While it helped Gordon get back on the track in the No. 1 position, there just wasn’t enough time or laps left for him to hold off Logano, who charged to the front on the backstretch and held on for his fourth career Sprint Cup win.

“No, we didn’t,” Gordon said when asked if he didn’t have enough to hold off Logano. “We were real strong in the first half of the race and when the sun came out, some guys came to the front and we just kind of lost the handling and got real tight.

“Great call by Alan Gustafson. Everybody on this No. 24 team did an awesome job in the pits.”

Gordon had the best day of all HMS drivers, by far.

Kasey Kahne finished 11th, but the news wasn’t as good for six-time Sprint Cup champ Jimmie Johnson or Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Earnhardt wrecked on lap 13, just two laps under green flag conditions after the first ten were run under a yellow/green caution.

Earnhardt made a mistake and drove off the track with his left front wheel into the water-logged infield grass on the edge of turn one. The grass slam did severe damage to Earnhardt’s front end and splitter, but that wasn’t all.

Earnhardt lost control and the car abruptly went up the racetrack and slammed head-on into the outside retaining wall, catching fire at the same time.

Earnhardt eventually got his car to the bottom of the track and exited. He was uninjured and attempts to get his car back on the track failed, leaving him last in the 43-car field.

Johnson, meanwhile, was right behind Earnhardt when the incident happened and a chunk of the grass, as well as rubber from the left front tire of Earnhardt’s car slammed into Johnson’s windshield, requiring three pit stops to fully repair.

Johnson then had tire issues that caused another unscheduled pit stop, ultimately leaving him with a 25th-place finish, two laps behind the winning Logano.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

Jeff Gordon earns season-best finish at Texas, takes over Sprint Cup points lead; teammates don’t fare as well

Hunter Lawrence defends Haiden Deegan after controversial block pass at Detroit

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