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Like a snake in the grass, Jeff Gordon snuck up and slithered through the field for the 80th win of his career at Talladega. Knowing how much fans hate him down there, I thought it was fitting he swept the ‘Dega stop in 2007. That man can win anywhere! Super Speedways, road courses, short tracks, you name it. And to think he did it leading only the last 1/3 lap of the 188 lap race. I was sure Kurt Busch, Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman or Jimmie Johnson would take the checkered flag. Heck, I thought Dave Blaney had a chance. Did you see Gordon slip between Johnson and Stewart? Classy move by Smoke not to rub the Rainbow Warrior off the track.

Some observations:

Can we all now say that Jacques Villanueve deserves a little credit? After qualifying 6th, the driver of the #27 Unicef Toyota put himself in the back of the field. He and his crew chief mutually concluded that with the car in qualifying and not racing trim, it would be best to let the first time Cup driver slip to the back. I thought that showed humility for the former open wheel champ will do a lot to earn him respect. Oh- the 21st place finish wasn’t bad either.

Drafting, drafting, and more drafting. Today’s winner admitted to yawning during the race. Junior complained of a boring race, though he did a nice job of leading for several laps. They all looked like a flock of flightless geese! It was nuts. Kind of interesting to see who would partner with who. You can definitely see that there’s more work in store for the Car of Tomorrow.

The not-so “Big One.” That 10 car pile-up triggered by Bobby Labonte fell well short of some of the Talladega wrecks we’ve seen. Not even “43″ himself has any idea what happened. Still, between crashes and engine failure, there was a lot of field missing at the end.

Speaking of engine failure…… Teresa haters are in full force tonight. As we know, DEI and RCR share an engine program, and one by one, we lost Martin Truex, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton, and on and on…….

The Chase Has A New Leader. He’s baaaack. Jeffrey Michael Gordon is now your new Nextel Cup standings leader. He leads HMS teammate Jimmie Johnson by four, with Tony Stewart and Clint Bowyer not that far behind. Kyle Busch sure has a hang dog look and seems to be ready to mail it in, Burton and Kenseth’s chase chances have been greatly injured. Besides the top four mentioned, I still think Carl Edwards, Kurt Busch, and Martin Truex will make noise. Poor Kevin Harvick may be stuck in the lower division with RCR teammate Burton.

All in all, it was a good race. There were some long, boring stretches, but we had a little bit of everything- including a final lap steal by the guy I think is the best racer in the business today.

Now it’s off to NASCAR’s home turf.