The 2007 Busch Series race in Montreal wasn’t quite the same as the outcome of the 1979 Daytona 500, but it had enough similarities that race fans still talk about it today.
Advertisement
The ’79 500 saw Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough wreck on the final lap, allowing Richard Petty to casually pass by for his sixth career win in the Great American Race.
The ’07 Busch race north of the border saw Robby Gordon and Marcos Ambrose go at it on the road course of Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. But when all was said and done, neither driver won — Gordon’s ‘win’ was disqualified, and Kevin Harvick came from third to claim the victory.
Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of the outcome of the race. After Ambrose spun Gordon out of the lead, Gordon gathered his car back up and proceeded to intentionally spin Ambrose out of the lead, even though the race was under caution. Then when the race went green with three laps left, Gordon restarted from the second position, even though NASCAR had instructed him to restart 13th.
Regardless, Gordon took the final green flag and led the closing laps, despite NASCAR informing his crew chief that the performance would not be counted. He crossed the finish line first and celebrated with burnouts as if he had won, ironically alongside Harvick — the driver NASCAR would later declare the rightful winner.
In the end, the only person who believed Gordon had truly won was Gordon himself. NASCAR disqualified Gordon’s win, left him with an 18th place finish, and Ambrose spun out and unable to regain the lead, ultimately finished a disappointing seventh. Harvick was declared the winner of the first-ever Busch race in Montreal.
Gordon still disagreed. “I did the most laps, I was the first car to complete them, I won the race,” Gordon said. “We came here to win the race, and that’s what we did.
“You always go back to your position if you get spun out, and [Ambrose] spun me under the caution. They told me originally to go back to second place, and I went back to second place. Then halfway around the last [caution] lap, they said to go back to 13th place or 14th place, something like that. I was never running 13th or 14th, so I don’t know what to say.”
NASCAR gave Gordon a rulebook to explain the infraction
Gordon was called into the NASCAR hauler post-race, where officials explained why the sanctioning body would not honor his win, and then to add insult to injury, handed him a rulebook that he dutifully took back to his hauler.
As it turned out, Harvick won, Patrick Carpentier finished second, followed by Max Papis, Ron Fellows, Stephen Leicht, and of course, seventh-ranked Ambrose, who tried to take things in stride.
“I knew that he was going to try and hit me, and we were talking whether we should pull over and let him pass,” Ambrose said of Gordon. “But, you know, I’ve got two laps to go and I’m trying to win the race. If somebody is going to take me out, they’re going to take me out. I’m disappointed. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get mad.”
Gordon would subsequently be penalized even further, as his tantrum prompted NASCAR to suspend him from the following week’s Cup race at Pocono. As the saying goes, sometimes when it rains, it pours.
