The Battle of the Clones

It was bound to happen--the original versus his creation. In the closing laps of Sunday's NASCAR Cup race at Martinsville Speedway, it as a sure bet that The (Jeff) Gordon would win the race. After all, he had been running very well, staying toward the front of the pack throughout much of the race, falling back due to a serious mishandling incident, and working his way up through the treacherous traffic of Martinsville to once again challenge for the lead. With both the car and the driver in top form, victory was within his grasp. But as he returned to the front, he literally ran into his biggest obstacle to winning the race--his clone was also at the front.
Jimmie Johnson owes much of his racing career to The Gordon--who coached his protoge through his early days in NASCAR and is part owner of the car Johnson races--but he owes much more to his crew chief, Chad Knaus. Not to belittle the talent of Jimmie Johnson, but one must wonder if he wasn't driving on that particular team, would he be holding a .500 win average for the first six races, or would he even be the defending champion?
All through practice and qualifying, Jimmie had been complaining about the handling of his car, and his practice times were unusually slow for him. Somehow, Knaus and the #48 team worked on the car during the race, and made a very good car out of a back marker.
So came the Final Confrontation. The Gordon and his clone ran a very interesting and exciting race during the final three laps. All Jeffy had to do was get Johnson loose and pass him, because he clearly had the better car. He even looked as though he was going to make the bump and run and spin Johnson if he had to.
Other teams, such as Yates and Roush-Fenway, want to see hard competition between their drivers. But not Hendrick Motorsports, whose motto is "We Are Family." Frustrated as he was with Johnson's excessive and aggressive blocking, The Gordon just couldn't bring himself to take out his clone. After all, he did teach him how to avoid being taken out from behind by drivers like himself.