Updated Nov. 9
Three laps into Sunday's race at Texas, Jeff Gordon was sitting pretty.
He had his 24 car out front and the unthinkable had just happened. Championship points leader Jimmie Johnson was headed back to the garage with a mangled piece of machinery, the result of contact with Sam Hornish Jr.
Though Texas hadn't been his best track throughout his career, his luck had changed in recent visits. Last fall he finished second, and back in the spring he finally broke through with his first victory at the track.
Johnson's accident was seemingly yet another indication that Gordon's fortunes had indeed changed at the track. As they ran at that very moment, with Gordon in first and Johnson 43rd, Gordon was within 31 points of Johnson in the standings.
Alas, races don't end after three laps -- there were 331 more to be run.
When the race returned green, Gordon wasn't able to keep his car up front very long. After 11 laps he lost the lead and would never regain it. As the laps progressed, he continued to slip back through the field.
| Chase standings | |||
| Driver | Points | Deficit | |
| 1. Jimmie Johnson | 6,492 | --- | |
| 2. Mark Martin | 6,384 | -108 | |
| 3. Jeff Gordon | 6,323 | -169 | |
| 4. Kurt Busch | 6,281 | -211 | |
| 5. Tony Stewart | 6,207 | -285 | |
| Complete Chase | Traditional points | |||
He settled in around 18th as his team worked desperately to make an adjustment that would send him surging forward. But the 24 team never found a magic elixir. Instead, only the fuel failings of others helped him pick up a few spots in the waning laps for a 13th-place finish.
With Johnson finishing 38th, Gordon was still able to make a dent in his points lead (from 192 down to 112), but he knows full well he missed a golden opportunity to really put the heat on Johnson heading into the final two races of the season.
"I'm just terrible at this place," Gordon said. "I don't know what it is. It just challenged us all day today. We seemed to be the best at the beginning of the race, and we made some adjustments trying to make it better based on what I was telling them, and we just went backwards from there and lost some track position. So it was a frustrating day."
Power Rankings after Texas:
| POWER RANKINGS | ||
| Current | Driver | Previous |
| 1 | Jimmie Johnson | 1 |
| Though 2007 will remain his most dominant season for wins (10) and top fives (20), 2009 is his best for laps led. After a dominating run at Phoenix he has led 2,210 laps this season. His previous best came last season when he led 1,959 laps. | ||
| 2 | Mark Martin | 2 |
| Though he'll need Johnson to have a mishap like he had at Texas, he still has hope of claiming that elusive championship. More than likely though, Talladega looks like it'll be the killer just as many suspected. | ||
| 3 | Jeff Gordon | 3 |
| It's been a tough month for Gordon and his 24 team. After running off four consecutive top fives in October, Sunday's ninth-place finish was his best in three November races. | ||
| 4 | Denny Hamlin | 6 |
| When he's not wrecking or losing an engine, he has been pretty good, claiming top-five finishes in five of the nine Chase races. | ||
| 5 | Kurt Busch | 7 |
| Looked like he was going to have a chance to pull off back-to-back wins, but his car faded in the second half of the race and he had to settle for sixth. | ||
| 6 | Tony Stewart | 5 |
| Started eighth at Phoenix, but faded quickly and was never a factor. With a 25th-place finish Sunday, he has finished outside the top 10 in four of the nine Chase races. | ||
| 7 | Juan Pablo Montoya | 6 |
| Wasn't quite able to snag another top five, but did manage to walk away with a top 10 after a couple of rough outings at Talladega and Texas. | ||
| 8 | Kyle Busch | 8 |
| "We're not satisfied with finishing 12th, but on the other hand we're excited to start finishing 12th," said Dave Rogers after his second race as Busch's crew chief. "Joe Gibbs Racing made this [crew chief] change with three [races] to go so I can learn Kyle [Busch] and I can learn the guys to get that communication established. We had some valuable lessons today. We learned a lot, some we learned by failures. Our last stop there, me and the guys didn't communicate clear enough and went the wrong way on our adjustments and we tried to balance the car out. I'm disappointed but we know the big picture is 2010. All those little lessons we can learn right now and getting them out of our way will make us that much stronger next year." | ||
| 9 | Clint Bowyer | 11 |
| He has back-to-back seventh-place runs and has finished in the top 10 in four of the past six races. | ||
| 10 | Ryan Newman | 9 |
| A tough day at Phoenix made worse by damage he received in the big, multi-car pileup. He has finished outside the top 10 in six of the past seven races. | ||
| 11 | Greg Biffle | 12 |
| A so-so afternoon at Phoenix for Biffle, who started sixth but faded into the teens where he ran most of the day. | ||
| 12 | Matt Kenseth | 10 |
| Just when it appeared Kenseth and his 17 team were getting their act together, they put in a dud at Phoenix. | ||
| 13 | Kasey Kahne | 13 |
| Despite starting top five in each of the past two races, he wasn't able to parlay that into top 10 runs. | ||
| 14 | Jeff Burton | NR |
| Though results have improved with Berrier as his crew chief, qualifying has not. Burton has started 30th or worse 13 times this season, including 36th on Sunday and 42nd last week at Texas where he finished ninth. | ||
| 15 | Carl Edwards | 14 |
| The 99 team isn't exactly ending the season on a high note. Edwards has just two top 10s in the past 12 races. | ||
