With this year's Chase dreams slowly driving away from him, Jeff Gordon showed last weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway that he won't give up on his championship hopes that easily. Still a long-shot for the title, Gordon and his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team fought through adversity all night long to salvage a top-10 finish.

The night started off on the wrong foot, as Gordon hit the wall twice just five laps into the 500-mile event. Pan-caking the right side, Gordon was forced hit pit road on Lap 9 to change right-side tires and pull the fenders away. Definitely not the way he wanted to start the evening, Gordon quickly found himself one lap down to the leaders.

"Oh, man, you know the first time I got it kind of soft and I thought all right, we're going to be okay," Gordon said of his early brushes with the wall. "And then the car wasn't great and the No. 88 got underneath me and just the air from him being underneath me just made the whole car take off. It probably didn't help that we had the damage already, so man, that just killed our night. I know we came back with a really nice finish but it would have been so much better if we hadn't had that damage."

Fighting hard and continually adjusting on his beat up race car, Gordon was able to get the free pass on Lap 54, when A.J. Allmendinger brought out the second caution of the day.

The driver and crew of the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet fought hard all night long to put the car back out front and in contention for the win. The four-time Cup Series champion put the DuPont Chevrolet out front for the first time on Lap 204, leading a total of forty-six laps before coming home in the eighth-spot.

Making the best of a bad situation last weekend, Gordon and his Hendrick Motorsports team head to a track where they know a thing or two about winning. In thirty-one starts at the Martinsville Speedway, Gordon has seven wins, seven pole awards, nineteen top-5s, twenty-five top-10s and only three finishes that were worse than 12th-place.

Certainly a threat for the win, Gordon thinks he can break his winless streak by heading to the hills of Virginia.

"I would definitely say Martinsville is our best shot," Gordon explained. "A good qualifying effort on Friday certainly helps your chances during the race, especially if you win the pole. Because pit road is so tight here, winning the pole and choosing pit stall number 1 can be a huge advantage. That stall doesn't speed up the stops, but it does allow you to drive straight off the end of pit road and not go around anybody. If you can gain one or two spots on pit road, that's one or two spots you don't have to gain on the race track."

Still winless in 2008, many thought the driver with 81 career victories would break through last week at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Gordon was the defending race winner and seemed to have a fast ride. Now with only five races remaining before he goes winless for the first time since his rookie year in 1993, Gordon knows the pressure is on.

"I wouldn't say this is our only remaining opportunity to win this year, but it may be our best," Gordon admitted. "We ran well at Kansas and Charlotte, so I'm looking forward to the remaining mile-and-a-half races to see if we can make more gains in that program. And we've been strong here recently, so I believe this is a race we can win and make gains in the standings."

With last week's top-10 finish, Gordon remained eighth in the standings and is now 245 points out of the top-spot. As his future teammate Mark Martin pointed out in Dover a few weeks back, Gordon is always a threat for the title.

"All they have to do it just hit the set-up on the race car. Something that he really likes. And that can come any day on any race track. Once that starts, that will translate to other race tracks," Martin explained. "No one needs to count him out. Some people weren't around when he came into this thing. He was the most incredibly talented driver that a lot of us had seen. And he still is that same guy and same incredibly talented race car driver and has potential to get on a roll and be a Chase contender for sure, here."

With five races down and five left to go before this year's Chase is decided, anything can happen. For Jeff Gordon and his entire No. 24 DuPont crew, they hope to take that next step in the right direction this weekend at Martinsville and make themselves a true contender for the title.