LONG POND
Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch celebrated birthdays Sunday. And the only present they wanted was the checkered flag.
However, Kasey Kahne blew out the candles by winning the GoBowling.com 400 at Pocono Raceway, forcing Gordon to settle for second place and Busch third place.
Only three drivers in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history have won on their birthdays. Matt Kenseth (March 10) did it earlier this season at Las Vegas. Cale Yarborough (March 27) accomplished the feat twice - at North Wilkesboro in 1977 and Atlanta in 1983. Kyle Busch (May 2) did it at Richmond in 2009.
Gordon, who turned 42 and was making his 42nd career start at Pocono, came within two laps of pulling it off. He passed Kahne for the lead on a restart with eight laps to go, but a spin by Kenseth brought out the final caution of the race with four laps left. That set up a restart with two laps remaining, on which Kahne passed Gordon, ironically with the help of a push from behind by Kurt Busch.
It had to be disappointing to fall just short of Victory Lane, but each said they were satisfied with their finishes.
Despite four top-10 finishes in the previous five races, those finishes were not pretty, Gordon said. But he called Sunday's run at Pocono "impressive" and "well-executed."
"I feel like we've been fortunate to get some of the top 10s that we've gotten here recently," Gordon said. "Today, I felt like we finally actually went out and earned that one."
And Kurt Busch, who turned 35, felt his team had a "championship-effort type day."
"I feel like we've been fast every week when we unload and practice, and we qualify well and we start the race decent," he said. "We're just not closing the door. Today was one of those finishes where we closed the door."
But top-five finishes and moral victories weren't what Gordon or Kurt Busch needed Sunday. They each needed a win.
With five races remaining until the start of the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, time is running out to make a move. The top 10 drivers in the point standings after 26 races qualify, with two wild-card berths going to drivers ranked 11th through 20th with the most wins. Neither Gordon nor Kurt Busch has a win this season.
At least Gordon has the top 10 to fall back on. His second-place finish moved him one spot in the standings to ninth place, but he is only three points ahead of 10th-place Greg Biffle and eight in front of 11th-place Tony Stewart. A victory would have provided a bit of a safety net should he tumble out of the top 10.
Kurt Busch also moved up one spot in the standings, from 14th to 13th. He is 11 points behind Biffle.
However, Stewart, Martin Truex Jr. (14th in points) and Ryan Newman (15th) each have one win. They have the inside track on the wild-card berths over Kurt Busch.
Still, both believe they can make it.
"What's amazing is we finished 14th last week (at Indianapolis) and gained one point," Kurt Busch said. "We finished third this week and gained two points, so it's so tight."
Busch called the group of drivers ahead of him "Chase material."
He should know.
"For us, we're just putting the blinders on and worried about the 78 (car). I'm just excited to go back to these tracks a second time and execute with the mistakes we made the first time around."
Gordon, too, knows what he has to do.
Last year, he used a third-place finish and two seconds in the final three races before the Chase to qualify. He thinks he can do that again.
"This stretch of races that are coming up, it's one of the reasons we made the Chase last year," Gordon said. "They're good tracks for us, and if we can start to put the execution together with the performance, I feel like we have a shot at staying in the top 10. You always want those wins because you don't want to see yourself just squeak outside the top 10 and then not have the win."
A victory by Gordon or Kurt Busch on Sunday at Pocono would have been the best birthday gift.
Now, they'll have to settle for a belated present.
(Walsh covers motor sports for The Scranton Times-Tribune. Contact him at swalsh@timesshamrock.com or follow him @swalshTT on Twitter)