Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon did more than simply win this past April at Texas Motor Speedway. He excised 12 years’ worth of frustration, finally capturing a victory at one of the few tracks where he hadn’t yet triumphed.

Sunday, he’ll begin Sunday’s Dickies 500 with larger stakes. In third place in the 2009 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Gordon trails leader and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson by 192 points and second-place (and teammate) Mark Martin by only eight points.

A rigorous climb? Yes, but Gordon does have the chops and stamina to capitalize should Johnson and Martin falter. The April win gave him seven top fives and nine top 10s in 17 Texas starts, plus the confidence to find his way to Victory Lane there.

Johnson isn’t the only Chase driver with momentum; prior to last Sunday’s 20th-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway, Gordon had amassed five consecutive top-five finishes.

“We had been so close in the past,” Gordon said of his Texas travails. “But, whether it was me hitting the wall late in the race while leading or an electrical issue while leading, we just never were able to win – so to get that first win here was great for us. To get another win, though, we’ll need to take another step forward. If we showed up this weekend with the same setup we used in April, we’d run 15th. That’s just the way the sport is. Everybody is constantly learning and the competition is constantly getting better and quicker.”