Gordon rides wave of emotion at Phoenix

Throughout his stellar career, Jeff Gordon has heard the boos from many NASCAR Nextel Cup fans, boos that started when a young Gordon often beat the likes of the legendary Dale Earnhardt.

But it was Gordon who honored the late Earnhardt after winning the Subway Fresh Fit 500 Saturday night for his 76th career Cup victory -- tying him with Earnhardt for sixth on the all-time win list.

Moments after out-dueling Tony Stewart for the win, Gordon took a flag emblazoned with Earnhardt’s car No. 3, held it out the window of his Chevrolet and then made a slow parade lap around the one-mile Phoenix International Raceway.

“We wanted to do something cool for Dale and pay tribute to him,” said Gordon, 35, a four-time Cup champion and Vallejo, Calif., native who drives for Hendrick Motorsports. Earnhardt was killed on a last-lap crash at the Daytona 500 in 2001.

“I miss him a lot out there,” Gordon said. “To do something he did in this sport is pretty overwhelming.”

Stewart was second for Joe Gibbs Racing and his teammate Denny Hamlin was third. Gordon’s teammate Jimmie Johnson, the reigning Cup champion, was fourth.

Gordon said his team had been “holding on to that flag for a long time. I can’t believe we finally won in Phoenix.”

Indeed, it was his first victory here in 17 tries, and his first win anywhere since last July at Chicagoland Speedway. Gordon started on the pole and had a strong car all night, but also needed some luck.

Stewart was leading Gordon with 30 laps remaining in the 312-lap race when Gordon came in for a pit stop. At that moment, a crash brought out the yellow flag, which enabled Gordon to inherit the lead from Stewart when the race resumed.

After the restart, Stewart stormed past Gordon. “He had me, I thought our night was done,” Gordon said.

But Gordon came back and passed Stewart on the next lap and kept the lead to win by less than a second.

“We’re really happy about the way the car ran tonight,” said Stewart, himself a two-time Cup champion. “[I’m] really proud of the way the team rebounded after last week” at Texas Motor Speedway, when a crash ended his chances to win.

Gordon also stayed in front in the Cup points standings, with a 74-point lead over Jeff Burton and a 160-point lead over Matt Kenseth. Burton finished 13th in the race and Kenseth was fifth.

This was the third race for NASCAR’s new Car of Tomorrow, but was considered the vehicle’s first true test because the first two races were on tracks of only a half-mile.

NASCAR developed the car to increase driver safety, reduce team operating costs and promote closer racing. But for much of a cool, breezy night, the racing was far from hair-raising.

In the first half of the race, there was only one pass for the lead on the track. The passing picked up in the final 30 laps, but Hamlin said the Car of Tomorrow still needs work.

“To be as nice as I can, it’s frustrating,” said Hamlin, who led 70 laps early until he was caught speeding on pit road and forced to go back to 31st. He quickly climbed back to the top 10 but couldn’t regain the lead.

“It’s hard for me to complain, and people will say ‘but you went from the back to the front,’ ” he said. “But it took 300 laps to do it, and it shouldn’t have.”

Among other drivers, Mark Martin finished 10th for Ginn Racing in his first race in the Car of Tomorrow. Martin, 48, is driving a limited schedule this year and missed the car’s first two races.

Bakersfield native Casey Mears continued to struggle. The race was only 42 laps old when Mears was collected in a crash that also involved David Ragan and David Stremme. Mears’ crew fixed his Hendrick Chevrolet but he finished 37th.

After Gordon finished his victory lap with the Earnhardt flag, Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- who finished 19th -- came over to Gordon’s car.

“He told me that was a class act, what we did,” Gordon said. “I was proud that he said that.”

But next week the Cup series travels to the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where the Earnhardt fan base is as strong as at any track in the country.

Said Gordon, with a smile: “I better carry a flag there, too.”

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Toyota is developing a new engine that it hopes will bolster its teams’ sagging performance.

The engine is being developed at Toyota’s Costa Mesa facility, and the automaker hopes to have it ready by late May for the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., said Jim Aust, president of Toyota Racing Development.

“We certainly didn’t expect all seven cars to make every race, but we didn’t really think it would be this bad,” Aust said before Saturday’s race, in which only three Toyotas started.

Toyota also is helping one of its teams, Michael Waltrip Racing, develop an entire new car that’s more competitive. The other two teams are Bill Davis Racing and Team Red Bull.

james.peltz@latimes.com