Gordon denies unfair CoT advantage

Speaking at Lowe's Motor Speedway last week, Roush told reporters that NASCAR and Goodyear did not let teams own tyres, preventing them from testing with the current specifications of rubber. Instead, they can only get the tyres leased during race weekends but they have to return them at the end of each meeting.

Roush claimed that despite this, some teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, have got around the limitation by testing their Cars of Tomorrow at tracks where NASCAR doesn't have any control and with different tyres built by other manufacturers.

"Well, the teams that have been successful and I'll name names - the Hendrick organization, the Gibbs organization and the Childress organization have been testing these cars multiple times a week on race tracks that were outside of NASCAR's control with tyres that were not Goodyears for the most part because they won't sell the tyres," said Roush.

Gordon responded to Roush's accusations on Friday at Dover, revealing that his team had tested on Goodyear tyres. He said they got the jump on rivals by buying a stock of year-old Goodyear tyres once the testing rules were clear last year.

"Well, anybody who says it's not fair, they don't know what they're talking about," Gordon said. "All we did was last year when [NASCAR] set the test rules, we bought up a bunch of tyres. Everybody else had that same ability to do that.

"Give Hendrick Motorsports credit for planning ahead, I think that's what should be said out there. Yeah, we're in Goodyears. But they're two-year-old Goodyears. They had already been sitting there in the warehouse for a year."

The four-time Nextel Cup champion, who owns equity in Hendrick Motorsports, also said that Roush should not complain because his team has the advantage of running one of its five cars as a permanent test-team, something that Hendrick doesn't have.

"I know Roush has made some comments about something, and you know, the difference is that we have a test team, a designated test team because we have four teams out there racing on the track," Gordon added.

"His test team is his fifth [race] team that's already out there on the track doing it every weekend, racing on the tyre and getting way better information than what we're getting. So, I don't know where they're coming on from that. We've had a test team for years that have not given us good information and we've used just 10 percent of it.

"Now we've gotten a really strong, solid test team that really has come along and is giving us the value that we're putting into that. That's what I'm excited about and I think that's just where the sport's been heading for years and where it's at today. Give credit where credit's due, in my opinion."

Roush announced this week that he has created a test team which is set to deal specifically with their issues with the Car of Tomorrow.

While Hendrick Motorsports have won all the Car of Tomorrow races of the year thus far, Roush Fenway's best results with the new car have been three fifth places with Greg Biffle at Bristol, Matt Kenseth at Phoenix and Carl Edwards at Darlington.