Runner-up finish is a mixed blessing for Jeff Gordon

MARTINSVILLE, VA - Finishing second to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt, Jr. wasn't without substantial benefits to Jeff Gordon.<br /> <br /> When Gordon crossed the finish line .344 seconds behind Earnhardt in the Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, he did so as the new leader in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.<br /> <br /> With Earnhardt, a non-Chase driver, winning the first race of the Chase's Eliminator Round, Gordon goes to Texas and Phoenix two solid finishes away from advancing to the championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.<br /> <br /> But Gordon narrowly missed the major prize, a victory that would have locked him into the season finale ahead of a test session at Homestead. <br /> <br /> In one respect, Gordon can blame himself for the second-place finish. He had to fight back from a pit road speeding penalty that dropped him to the rear of the field for a restart on lap 206 of 500.<br /> <br /> "Yeah, unfortunately I lost this race today because of my mistake on pit road," Gordon said. "That was on me. We played catch-up for the rest of the day."<br /> <br /> Gordon was shuffled back on the next-to-last restart with 64 laps left. He came to the flag in second position, to the outside of race leader Clint Bowyer, with Earnhardt in third. Stuck in the outside lane after Earnhardt filled the hole beneath him, Gordon slipped to fifth before he could get back in line on the bottom.<br /> <br /> Did Gordon expect Earnhardt to leave him room to get into line at that point?<br /> <br /> "I was hoping," Gordon said. "I mean, he let me in on one other one (an earlier restart). I think the next time I was third, and he never even tried to move down, so I filled the gap. It's something we're going to talk about a little bit, because I have a feeling that what happened was, when I didn't let him in, he felt like, 'I'm not going to let him in again.'<br /> <br /> "I don't really know. But I'm not upset about it. You don't expect anybody to do anything. You hope-yeah, sure, you hope. I mean, I hoped Tony Stewart was going to let me in, too, one time. We about crashed going down into turn 3. That's racing. That's just part of it."

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