Gordon maintains remarkable Hendrick run.

Sunday, 13th May 2007

Jeff Gordon's remarkable start to the 2007 Nextel Cup season continued on Sunday at the famed Darlington Raceway as he claimed his third win of the season to maintain Hendrick Motorsports equally remarkable record with the Car of Tomorrow.

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On fresher tyres Johnson and Hamlin sliced up the order from seventh and ninth places respectively but when Hamlin finally burst through into second place on lap 361 Gordon held a three second advantage.

Try as he might, Hamlin couldn't close the gap completely over the final six laps as Gordon claimed his seventh career victory at Darlington. Hamlin managed to get the gap down to less than a second by the end but had to settle for second place while Johnson came home in a clear third place. Newman scored one of his best results of the year with a fourth place finish while Edwards recovered from a slow pitstop mid-distance to take fifth.

Sixth was Tony Stewart who also made a late race comeback after he suffered a puncture on lap 210 and dropped to 31st. However after regaining his lost lap without the aid of a ‘Lucky Dog' pass Stewart then put on one of his traditional gritty fight backs to pass Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr in the final laps.

Eighth place for Earnhardt Jr was of little consolation after an insane week for the driver of the #8 DEI Chevrolet. After the media circus of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Sunday's race was probably the most peace and quiet Earnhardt Jr has had all week although after officials discovered illegal rear spoiler mounting brackets on the car prior to the race, Dale Jr hasn't heard the last of Darlington yet.

Polesitter Clint Bowyer finished a solid ninth with Jeff Burton tenth, Martin Truex Jr eleventh and Kurt Busch a disappointed twelfth after a strong run that saw him challenging for top five honours for much of the day.

As usual Darlington was tough on the bodies and internals of the cars with several drivers suffering late race engine failures. Johnny Sauter, David Gilliland, Dave Blaney, David Reutimann, Tony Raines and David Stremme all suffered terminal overheating problems while Kyle Busch, Brian Vickers, Reed Sorenson and Ken Schrader were amongst those who visited the outside wall with a degree of force.