Notebook: Jeff Gordon fights Burton? You’ve got to be kidding

Notebook: Jeff Gordon fights Burton? You’ve got to be kidding


FORT WORTH, Texas—Cross one item off the list of things you thought you’d never see.
With the field running under caution in Sunday’s AAA Texas 500, Jeff Gordon strode angrily down pit road at Texas Motor Speedway and launched himself at fellow driver Jeff Burton. Gordon’s ultimate fighting skills may not be the most finely honed, but his intent to harm was clear.
A Lap 190 wreck, in which Burton turned Gordon’s No. 24 Chevrolet hard into the outside wall under caution, precipitated the fight, which was broken up quickly by two NASCAR officials.
Burton said the accident wasn’t intentional, but Gordon wasn’t buying the explanation when the drivers rode together in an ambulance to the infield care center.
“He felt like I came up on him and that he didn’t mean to wreck me, but, I’m sorry, I will never believe that,” Gordon said. “I’ve been driving a racecar long enough to know what your intentions are, and I know what they were there.”
Burton insisted he was trying to pull up beside Gordon after the two raced hard on the lap before the caution.
“Coming off Turn 4, he drove underneath me,” Burton said. “I should have let him go, and I didn’t. The caution came out, and he pulled up next to me to tell me he was upset, and he went on. Then I went to pull up next to him and acknowledge him, to say he was right, and I turned left, and he was turning left, and we just hung up.
“When we hung, off we went.”
Gordon said he had calmed down enough during his long walk down pit road to hold back in his assault on Burton.
“Well, he deserved a lot more than that, I can tell you,” Gordon said. “That kind of stuff is just ridiculous and uncalled for. … It was pretty stupid, and he admitted it later. But I certainly wanted to show him how upset I was, and I’m not ashamed of anything I did.”
Johnson knew crew swap might be coming
Cross off a second item from the list of things you thought you’d never see.
Crew chief Chad Knaus “fired” Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 pit crew in the middle of Sunday’s race and replaced them with Gordon’s No. 24 crew after a succession of blown pit stops kept costing Johnson positions he had gained on the racetrack.
It was a bizarre sight. The 48 crew was banished to “time out” at Gordon’s pit stall, where they sat with nothing to do, because Gordon’s car was irreparably wrecked. The 24 crew pitted Johnson’s car three times and performed flawlessly for the rest of the race.
Johnson finished ninth but lost his lead in the Sprint Cup standings to race winner Denny Hamlin, who opened a 33-point margin over Johnson with two races left in the Chase.
“We needed to do something,” Knaus said. “This is a team. The 24/48 shop has always operated as a team, and that’s the way that we see it. It’s sad that we had to do that, but in interest of Hendrick Motorsports and what we have to do, you have to do that stuff. It’s not uncommon. We've seen it happen before, and we'll get home and try to get it fixed up and get our boys back.
“I'm hoping we get back with the No. 48 guys and get everybody's confidence up and get this thing going in the right direction. It's not what we want to do, but sometimes things need to be adjusted a little bit, and we had to do that today.”
Johnson described the change as a wakeup call that had been needed for months.
“The alarm clock has been ringing for a while,” he said. “It’s been ringing, and this is a new level to that. But the alarm clock has been ringing for quite a few months.
“There wasn’t anything discussed beforehand, but when I saw the No. 24 torn up, and I heard a little bit of pit chatter about collecting guys on the radio, I had a feeling what was coming.”
Beware the in-car camera
In the category of something you probably thought you’d see sooner or later, Kyle Busch’s in-car camera showed the driver of the No. 18 Toyota flipping off a NASCAR official after being held a lap for speeding on pit road.
Busch earned an additional two-lap penalty for the unsportsmanlike conduct, but he had reason to be annoyed. A strong run for the No. 18 was spoiled on Lap 159 when Aric Almirola spun Busch in Turn 1. Busch brought his car to pit road for tires but had to speed to beat the pace car to the scoring line.
That brought the first penalty, which led to the second.
“I’m sorry I lost my cool to everybody on this team, to everybody at NASCAR and all of my guys that support me—Norm Miller (chairman, Interstate Batteries) and M&M’s and all of the guys,” Busch said after finishing 32nd. “It’s just so frustrating the way that you have such a fast racecar, and then you get spun out and you don’t expect to lose your cool, I guess.”
That apology may not end the matter for Busch, who also used obscene language during a postrace interview in the TMS media center after finishing second to Carl Edwards in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race.
“While we did penalize the 18 car for making an inappropriate gesture to a NASCAR official by holding him two laps, this is something we will discuss further early in the week and determine what other actions we will take,” NASCAR spokesperson Kerry Tharp said. “What he did was inappropriate and disrespectful.”
Hamlin, however, made light of his teammate’s ill-advised gesture.
In my opinion Kyle was probably just pointing. That he was trying to get the guy's attention, more than likely,” Hamlin said.
By Reid Spencer

Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service