CONCORD, N.C. -- Now that Tony Stewart has broken the ice, is Jeff Gordon going to win a race this season? Or Matt Kenseth?Gordon said, "I'm optimistic" about Saturday night's race here at Lowe's Motor Speedway, "because of how we performed at Kansas."We are hopefully getting much closer to running consistently in the top five and battling for wins."After his problems at Talladega, where he was knocked out of contention when a tire blew on a car in front of him, Gordon has to hope that this place turns the tide."Talladega is behind us, and there is nothing we can do about that now," Gordon said. "There's still a lot of racing left this year, and I'm not counting anybody out just yet."Everybody considered Talladega to be the wild-card race, and it was. But we're probably going to have restarts this weekend where guys are battling hard for position in a pack of cars, and there could be a points shake-up at one or more of the remaining races."Maybe so, but it probably won't be enough for Gordon to catch teammate Jimmie Johnson, who is starting to make what looks like a breakaway in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.Johnson, making his 250th tour start this weekend, has been king of this track almost from the first day he arrived. So he could take another big step toward a third championship here."Since the track has been repaved, we end up competitive at the end of the race," Johnson said. "But we've had tough practice sessions in the past and tough tests in the past."The test that we had a couple of weeks ago (the last major NASCAR test of the season) didn't go as we wanted it to."But I have a lot of confidence in the team, and I know when we get into race conditions our stuff will be where it needs to be."If it were the old track, I would feel more confident. But right now I think of it almost as Texas -- I've won there, but it's still a very challenging track. I don't know where we're going to be, and I've just got to show up ready for anything."(Contact Mike Mulhern at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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