Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Gordon will keep lookout for Stewart, Martin

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2002 | 10:06 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

Jeff Gordon knows a thing or two about racing for a NASCAR Winston Cup championship and the four-time champion knows how he will be racing in Sunday's season finale.

Cautiously.

Although he has been mathematically eliminated from this year's title chase, Gordon said he and the other drivers would treat championship contenders Tony Stewart and Mark Martin with kid gloves at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Stewart leads Martin by 89 points and can clinch the championship by finishing 22nd or better -- regardless of what Martin does in the race.

"I'm going to do everything I can to race them clean," Gordon said. "If they're racing one another, I'll give them the respect that they deserve to race for the championship.

"You would hate to see a championship taken away from a guy because somebody just gets into them and turns them around and knocks them out of the race. I don't want to be that person; I don't think anybody does."

At the same time, Gordon said the respect issue works both ways.

"I'm going to race for a win," Gordon said. "If they want to battle me hard and race for a win, they're putting themselves in a little bit of jeopardy so I think they need to think a little bit about it at the same time."

"I love the weight being on my shoulders and ... hopefully contending for that championship," Busch said. "I don't think we'll be bothered too much by (the pressure).

"I just get excited about it because I know that we have a shot at it. I know that we can put runs together to gather up points quicker than other teams and to give the Rubbermaid Ford a shot at the championship level."

"I am so upset, so out of my mind, that I can't organize a decent thought that would be reasonable to set a strategy around," Roush said.

"Geoff is looking at the thing but, by my arithmetic, that's the third time something that was unwarranted and unjust and untimely has happened to me and I don't forget those things."

CART star Christian Fittipaldi drove the car Sunday at Phoenix and finished 41st after wrecking on lap 258 when Jason Leffler in the No. 7 Dodge tapped him from behind.

Cooper is a resident of the Phoenix area.