Gordon's crew chief pleased with year

Gordon himself all but conceded the title already to his Hendrick teammate Jimmie Johnson following a tenth place finish at Phoenix, while the reigning champion took his fourth consecutive victory during the Chase.

"I think I'm definitely on the same page with Jeff," Letarte said. "Mathematically we're still in it, but the opportunity for one of us to go out and beat one another by 18 positions without having a failure or an accident is not really realistic. We haven't even been running quite like we want here lately.

"I think our worst finish is 11th in the Chase. Jimmie's guys are definitely hitting on all eight cylinders. While if they make a mistake, we'll be extremely happy and try to jump on it and capitalize and bring this championship home.

"But, you know, when it comes down to it, we really want to race it out at Homestead. When you get to an 86-point gap, that's not really racing it out, that's more who is going to have the luckier day.

"We really don't want it to come down to luck. We want it to come down to racing on the track."

Letarte, who has been Gordon's crew chief since 2005, has had his best season since taking over his current role.

Gordon has won six races thus far, something he had not achieved since his last championship season in 2001. He also has 29 top tens, which shows he's had one of his most consistent seasons ever.

Despite being second in the standings right now, Letarte says he feels proud of what they have achieved as a team this year, while admitting that he takes blame for probably losing the chance of a fifth title for Gordon.

"All summer long, everyone talked about how this looked like the Jeff Gordon of old," Letarte added. "I'm very proud of what we've accomplished there. Missing out on the last four races of the year is not going to take away what we've done all year long.

"But I would be a very poor crew chief if I didn't take a big portion of this blame and say that we didn't run well enough because the cars weren't well enough and the setups didn't work. That's what falls on my shoulders."

Letarte joined Gordon as crew chief in the No. 24 team for the last 10 races of the 2005 season, taking over form Robbie Loomis, who had been on that role since 2000. Before that, Ray Evernham led Gordon's team to three Nextel Cup Series titles.