Gordon savors end to 31-race winless drought

BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) _ Jeff Gordon hoisted the enormous Bristol Motor Speedway trophy over his head, hesitant to ever put it down. <br><br>It had been so long since he last stood in Victory Lane _ confetti

Sunday, August 25th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) _ Jeff Gordon hoisted the enormous Bristol Motor Speedway trophy over his head, hesitant to ever put it down.

It had been so long since he last stood in Victory Lane _ confetti raining down on him, fireworks popping above _ that Gordon wanted to savor every moment of this win.

``It feels like the first one all over again,'' Gordon said after bumping his way past Rusty Wallace to win the Sharpie 500 on Saturday night and snap his 31-race winless streak.

``I can tell you, we do not take wins for granted. These things are hard to come by and we appreciate them. That moment there in Victory Lane, I wanted to pause it and burn it into my memory forever because it's just such an awesome, awesome feeling.''

For the first 23 races of this season, all Gordon felt was mounting frustration over his inability to get in front and stay there. There were weeks when the Hendrick Motorsports team gave him great cars, but driver error sabotaged their efforts.

And there were weeks when the No. 24 Chevrolet was simply junk, unable to even sniff the front of the pack. Races like these left the entire team wondering what had gone so wrong since Gordon wrapped up his fourth Winston Cup championship last November.

For a driver and a team used to dominance _ he now has 59 victories in a career that has included 10- and 13-win seasons _ not winning since Sept. 30, 2001 was absolute agony.

``When you go as long as we've gone without a win and you realize just how hard it is and how hard you work for them, and just how everything's got to fall in place to get there, you look back and go, `How in the world did we win 58 races?''' Gordon said.

Well, he won 47 of them with Ray Evernham as his crew chief and the original ``Rainbow Warriors'' servicing his cars. But Evernham split midway through the 1999 season to become a car owner, and the Warriors also branched out.

So Gordon had to adjust to new crew chief Robbie Loomis' style and a new crew. It took some time, but they broke through last season with six victories and the Winston Cup title.

Then everything hit a snag, personally and professionally.

First Gordon struggled on the track, then his wife, Brooke, filed for divorce after seven years of marriage in March. For years, they were the most dashing couple in NASCAR.

So the 31-year-old Gordon has been going it alone this season, performing a delicate balancing act of figuring out who he is while trying to focus on his job. As the winless streak dragged into the summer, it became difficult for Gordon to convince his critics that his pending divorce wasn't a distraction.

He swears he never lost his focus but admits he sometimes wondered what was wrong with him.

``You go through times when you work just as hard and are doing everything the same, and it's just not happening,'' he said. ``You just start to question a lot of things, but my confidence in my driving, I don't think that I ever really questioned that.''

He knew the only thing that could make him happy was a victory, and he wanted that badly.

So Gordon went to Bristol, where he had four career victories but none in the prestigious Saturday night race. He was sure he could get one. He broke a six-race qualifying slump by earning the pole, then led a race-high 235 laps.

But Wallace seemed in control in the waning laps until lapped traffic slowed him and gave Gordon a chance to steal the win. He did it with three laps left in the race, tapping Wallace's Ford enough to knock him out of his way and coast on by.

Wallace, riding his own 50-race winless streak, was furious and plotted his revenge. But lapped traffic made it impossible for him to catch Gordon and bump him back.

``I tried desperately to knock the heck out of him, I just couldn't catch him,'' Wallace said. ``It's been a long time since I've won. I guess my day is coming, but, man, I tried real hard.''

It was similar to another bump-and-run Gordon put on Wallace to win the spring race at Bristol in 1997. Gordon has no regrets over either episode. With a chance to break his streak, he was going for it.

``If he wants to pay me back, if that's the way he wants to go about it, I've been knocked around, I've been moved out of the way, and I've been wrecked,'' he said. ``I go to the next race, focus on what I've got to do, not taking guys out and doing paybacks.

``He's going to be upset. He lost the race and he wanted it as bad as I did. I don't expect him to be happy. We may talk, we may not talk. We'll just kind of go to Darlington and see what happens. But I'm not calling him.''