Gordon get’s 86th win in rain-shortened race at Pocono

[media-credit id=43 align=”alignright” width=”212″][/media-credit]Jeff Gordon was leading at the right time when the rain came back.  Gordon was in front after a restart crash and won the Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono Raceway.  The race was called for rain at lap 98.  This gives Gordon his 86th career win and Gordon also has the most wins at Pocono Raceway with six.

“To start 27th and only have one caution, and work our way all the way up there like that, is pretty awesome. We got a great re-start and got into that inside lane ahead of Kasey (Kahne) and then I saw the No. 48 (Johnson) get sideways and somehow I just came out on the other end of it leading. So, I’m just so excited right now. I know that you don’t want to win them quite like this, but we’ve earned it because of all the things that we’ve done this year.” Gordon said.

Gordon, who moved to 13th in the series standings and now holds the second wild-card position for the Chase.

“You can’t ever give up. It doesn’t matter where you’re at. You’ve got to just try to go out there and win races. For all the things that have gone wrong for us this year, I still can’t believe what just happened.” Gordon said.

Kasey Kahne also had good luck on his side.  Kahne finished second with a flat tire.

“I screwed up in the pits and slid through a little bit and got on top of the hose so we couldn’t use the air hose there. So that slowed us up and we lost a lot of track position there but only one or two positions but a lot of time. And after that we were able to get back through on that restart and Jeff (Gordon) got a great restart which was awesome for him and the 5/24 shop.” Kahne said.

Martin Truex Jr. finished third, Brad Keselowski fourth and Tony Stewart finished fifth.

“I’m real proud of Steve Addington (crew chief) and these guys. We didn’t necessarily throw a Hail Mary at it, but we kind of went back to where we started yesterday and worked from that.” Stewart said.

The start of the Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono Raceway was delayed for an hour in a half due to rain.  It was the prelude to an eventful day.

The race started just before 3pm with Juan Montoya on the pole.  Montoya led the first nine laps before Denny Hamlin took the lead over.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. led 20 laps until his transmission went and he had to take the No. 88 car to the garage for repairs.  It took the 88 team 18 laps to change that transmission.  Earnhardt Jr. finished 32nd but remains the series points leader by five points over Matt Kenseth.

“We don’t have third or fourth gear, so we’re going to have to change the transmission. I know the guys in the transmission shop at Hendrick are disappointed. We don’t have parts so we put it in yesterday and during qualifying it was fine and when we restarted it was kind of aggressive and then a bit of a vibration and the car was just really out of time and it just kind of started missing some shifts and difficult to get in gear and things like that and then finally in third and fourth coming out of the tunnel, it didn’t didn’t have any fourth.” Earnhardt Jr. said.

Johnson inadvertently gave Gordon the help and luck he needed to capture his first win of the season. Johnson got loose on the final restart and got into Matt Kenseth, sending Kenseth into the outside wall in turn 1. Kenseth then slid down the track and took out Denny Hamlin and several other cars. Gordon went low and passed the front six cars for the race lead before the final caution flag came out.

“When I was cooling my tires down through the tunnel coming to the green I noticed that something didn’t feel right. I kept trying to clean the tires off and it got a little better so I just assumed I had trash on my tires, but when I got down into turn one I realized that I had a right-rear (tire) flat. Unfortunate that we lost the lead there and we got a couple of cars in the process. I shouldn’t feel bad about that but not much you can do with a right-rear flat.” Johnson said.