Gordon's finish good enough

On a day when NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow became the car of today, Jeff Gordon's third-place car was good enough to put him first in the Nextel Cup Series standings.
When Mark Martin, the Cup standings leader entering Sunday's race at Bristol Motor Speedway, decided to skip the race, it gave Gordon the chance to claim the top spot in points.
But it wasn't easy.
He had a poor performing car for most of the race and had to fight his way in to the top three at the end.
He was in second when the race ended with a green-white-checker finish, three laps to determine the winner.
Gordon slipped to third when Jeff Burton passed him on the closing laps. Neither driver could catch Kyle Busch, Gordon's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports. But the third-place finish put Gordon atop the Cup standings.
"The kind of day it started to be for us, to come home third, obviously, I've got to be very, very happy," said Gordon, driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. "I didn't really want to see that last caution. We were real, real tight on those new tires at the end. But man, we made such great ground up throughout the day, to go all the way to the back and we were fortunate to stay on the lead lap. It was certainly a lot of work; a handful for us today."
Gordon said the race at Bristol was far from fun. He had to work his way through the field, never an easy task at Bristol, to put himself in position to win the race.
"I don't even think I had anything for Kyle with my new tires," Gordon said. "We were just too tight and I knew that Jeff would be tough on that restart. I made a mistake - I went to the inside. I don't think it would have mattered. Jeff would have drove by me on the inside if I would have gone on the outside. But I'm very happy to come home third."