DID YOU THINK THERE WAS ANY CHANCE THAT DENNY COULD RUN YOU DOWN? WAS THE MOTOR DOING ANYTHING WRONG OTHER THAN SHOWING BAD ON THE GUAGES?
GORDON - “There was a couple of a times under caution where I went to scuff the tires and accelerate and it hesitated and it popped a little bit and I thought ‘We’re done. ’ I thought that was it. I was in third gear when I did it though so sometimes they do that in third gear. On every restart when I was in second gear it took off perfectly throughout all the runs. It did everything as normal so I was shocked as anybody else. The think that gave me some comfort was that when we got going it seemed like the oil temperature would drop a little bit which was a good sign and the water pressure would drop a little bit and I didn’t see water spewing out the overflow so those were all good signs to me other than I was hoping we weren’t out of water. I thought that Jimmie was going to catch us. The second to last caution I was very frustrated with that caution. I didn’t see any reason to have that caution.
There was nothing on the track, there was no smoke, a guy got completely off the race track when I think it was a blown engine and I thought they were a little quick to throw that one. At that time I didn’t think anybody was going to catch us. The car felt great. We had like 18, 19 laps to go and the fast cars were in a lot of traffic and at that time we were just pulling away. The last caution knowing that Jimmie was only three behind me, when they took off and he got by the first car right way I think Junior and then got up to Newman, I said ‘No, we’re done. ’ I even came on the radio.
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