It’s Close, but Title Is Gordon’s

The relief showed in Jeff Gordon’s jubilation after he won his second Winston Cup championship in three years.

Gordon, whose nerve-racking 17th-place finish in Sunday’s season-ending NAPA 500 at Hampton, Ga., gave him the title in the fourth-closest finish ever, stopped his multihued Chevrolet at the finish line, climbed onto its roof and waved his arms wildly as most of the estimated 152,000 fans cheered.

“It’s the biggest sigh of relief ever,” Gordon said. “This was a trying weekend, cutting it as close as we did. It was not exactly what we wanted to do. I was worried all day long.”

Gordon, 26, needed to finish 18th or better to clinch the title and by doing so--despite starting 37th in the 43-car field and losing a lap early in the 325-lap race on the redesigned and repaved 1.544-mile oval--won his second title in three years.

Bobby Labonte, meanwhile, proved he is the best at the Atlanta Motor Speedway oval, no matter how they configure it.

Nobody had enough to stop Labonte’s Pontiac. And the finish was reminiscent of a year ago, when he dominated the race but was upstaged by his brother Terry winning the title.

Dale Jarrett passed Mark Martin for second place three laps from the end to finish second in the standings--14 points behind Gordon and 15 ahead of Martin. It was the closest three-way finish in NASCAR history.

Gordon beat Dale Earnhardt for his first title in 1995.

Gordon started near the back of the field Sunday after crashing his primary car in a pit road accident Saturday morning, and compounding the problem with a bobble on his qualifying lap later in the day in a backup car.

“Any chance we had to win this race went away [Saturday] morning,” Gordon’s crew chief Ray Evernham said. “We had to worry about winning the championship and that’s what we came here to do.”

For the first time since 1981, Earnhardt went through a NASCAR Winston Cup season without winning a race.

Earnhardt, whose most recent victory came at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 10, 1996, has gone 59 races without a victory after his 16th-place finish Sunday in the NAPA 500 at the same track.

Earnhardt has won 70 races and a record-tying seven Winston Cup titles in his brilliant career. He finished fifth in the point standings this year, his worst showing since a 12th in 1992.