Gordon continues his victory parade

Maybe if his toughness-loving cult followers realized that, they'd heed those two regarding Jeff Gordon's 77 victories and counting.

With Earnhardt's 76 wins now topped for sixth on the all-time NASCAR winners list, Yarborough's mark, fifth with 83, is next up for Gordon.

Allison, tied for third with Darrell Waltrip with 84 wins, would be next. Allison actually claims 85, but more about that in a minute.

Either way, "The word is not 'if,' it's 'when,' " Allison said this week, of Gordon passing his mark. "It's when he gets there. Which is going to be pretty soon."

Yarborough said, "If he catches and passes me, more power to him."

So this is sure to be a more pleasant pursuit for Gordon than the last one.

Nobody has ever understood passion for NASCAR racing, and outrage over its outcomes, more than Allison and Yarborough -- witness their notorious fight after the 1979 Daytona 500.

Yet neither can understand what possessed the hooligans who reacted to Gordon's milestone with barrages of beer cans, some of them full, last Sunday at Talladega, Ala.

"Childish imbeciles," Allison called the culprits at the track where he and his late son Davey, in their time, were worshipped even more than Earnhardt.

"I've never seen anything like that in this sport," Yarborough said.

Out of the storm now, Gordon can move on into the clearing skies of NASCAR history, where the top five winners, so long obscured by the foolishness over sixth, reside.

Gordon will never threaten the top two, he himself said last week. Richard Petty has 200 wins, and "I guarantee I won't be passing David Pearson with 105," Gordon said at Talladega. "I don't plan on racing until I'm 45," and he'll turn 36 in August.

But Allison believes Gordon would have already passed Pearson, and would be chasing Petty for the lead right now, had Gordon and Ray Evernham, the crew chief who launched him, stayed together.

"He'd have 120 or 130 wins," Allison said. Evernham left Hendrick Motorsports in 1999 to start his own team.

"He's a tremendous race driver -- one of the best there ever was," Yarborough said of Gordon. "He's won his share, and he's going to win some more. But I just don't understand why the fans get upset over that."