Martin wins with help from questionable caution

Jeff Gordon, dominating Sunday's race at Michigan Speedway, was still out front, but Martin suddenly found himself in a position to catch the leader.

"After the restart, I was real surprised because I nearly ran up right on him," Martin said following his fourth victory of the season and the 26th of his career. "I thought, 'What's going on here? Maybe I can get past him.'

"I really thought Jeff was going to just check out, but my impression is, we got a little slight better and he got a little slight worse."

Gordon's Chevrolet led 132 of the first 149 laps on Michigan's 2-mile, high-banked oval. But in the end, Martin pulled away to an easy win, beating fellow Ford driver Dale Jarrett to the finish by a comfortable 2.03 seconds.

That caution flag, the first of only two in the 400-mile race, waved on lap 118 after Gordon had built a lead of nearly 10 seconds over Martin and had lapped all but 11 other cars in the 43-car field.

The reason given by NASCAR for the yellow was debris on the track. What that debris was remains in question.

It was first reported as a piece of Sterling Marlin's tailpipe, but later reports said it appeared to be a piece of rollbar padding that might have been thrown from one of the cars.

"I saw people throwing things out the window right before the caution came out," Gordon said. "It makes me wonder what it was."

NASCAR officials said they planned to analyze the debris in an effort to find out where it came from.

Whatever the cause of the caution, it changed the race.

"Cautions come and go," Gordon said. "Sometimes they go your way and sometimes they don't. I thought the race was still going to come down to Mark, Jarrett and myself there at the end.

"They were gradually catching up to us all day long. That caution is what got them close to us. If that hadn't happened, I think we could have kept having great pit stops and made some gains on them."

Gordon remained in front after pitting during the questionable caution, and again after a four-car crash on lap 125 brought out the second and final yellow flag. But Martin was right on his heels.

He challenged Gordon for the lead several times, pulling alongside on lap 132 and again on 141 before finally taking the lead on lap 150. Jarrett then moved past Gordon into second on lap 157.

All of the leaders had to make one more stop under the green flag. Everyone took on just two right-side tires and enough gas to finish.

When the flurry of pit activity was over on lap 182, Martin was just ahead of Gordon, and Jarrett was third.

On lap 192, Jarrett caught Gordon and pulled alongside. They battled side-by-side for most of the next two laps before Jarrett, who now has five straight top-five finishes, moved into second place.

"I was happy to see them get to racing behind me," Martin said. "Dale Jarrett was strong. Before we pitted (the last time), he was catching me a little."

But Jarrett said it wasn't good enough.

"We got better all day long, but we couldn't get it just right," he said. " We couldn't get the car (to stay) down, and the fast way around this track is the low lane."

Gordon said his car became harder to drive as the race wore on.

"My car just got so tight at the end I couldn't hold (Jarrett) off," he said. "I hated to hold Dale up. I knew he wanted to go up there and run with Mark, but I was just trying to hold on to second. I thought if I could stay on the outside of him, maybe I could hold him off. But there was no way.

"Those two guys were fast all day long. I just got the jump on them early on and had no cautions to slow us down. When that caution came out, that got us behind and we were never the same."

Jeff Burton, Martin's teammate and the IROC race winner here Saturday, was fourth, followed by series points leader Jeremy Mayfield, Bill Elliott and Bobby Labonte.

Mayfield leads Gordon by 26 points, with Martin two more points behind and seven in front of Jarrett. Rusty Wallace, the 17th-place finisher, fell from second to fifth. He trails teammate Mayfield by 68 points.

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