Jeff Gordon ran hard all day, and it paid off for him.

The left front portion of Gordon's No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet was demolished Saturday in Happy Hour practice, the result of a blown left front tire. Thus, the three-time champion was forced into a backup car for Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup Series race, the 30th of the 34-race schedule.

He qualified the primary ride eighth, but by bringing out the backup was sent to the rear of the field. No matter.

It only took 13 laps for him to take the lead.

188 laps later, he nearly took it to Victory Lane. During the four hours in between, Gordon saw all ends of the Talladega spectrum.

After surrendering the lead to eventual winner Dale Earnhardt on the 15th lap, Gordon was shuffled deep in the field. He battled back to regain the lead on lap-22, but didn't stay long. Earnhardt was back out front a lap later. Gordon led the race nine times for 26 total laps, but was outside the top-10 for most of the race's early stages. Once he got settled in the top-10, he finished on the upswing in fourth place.

"What a weekend we had," said Gordon, who won the DieHard 500 here back in April. "Yesterday was just miserable, but to come back and bring the backup car out and to have the type of run we had from 43rd today, my hat's off to the team. They did an excellent job. I'm tickled to have fourth. I said earlier in the day it's just a crap shoot as to who is going to come out up front and who's not."

Gordon rolled the dice on lap-168, opting to pit a bit earlier than the rest of the field. As the pressed the brakes to steer down pit road, Bobby Hamilton and Mark Martin got together, sending the No. 4 Chevrolet and No. 6 Ford spinning recklessly behind Gordon. As he pressed the brakes and let up on the throttle, he barely escaped the accident unscathed.

"I didn't know what in the world was going on," Gordon said. "I was just coming to pit road, waving my hand like normal. I got on the brakes and the next thing I know I saw cars in my mirror so I let off the brake to try to get ahead of them. We got really lucky that nobody got into us.

"I tell you, with all the bad luck we had yesterday, I sure am glad God was looking over everyone today. We were all using our heads. It didn't seem like it at times, but the results were good, so I'm proud of that."

By finishing fourth, Gordon notched his second-straight top-5 run at the mammoth 2.66-mile venue. Overall, he now has seven top-5s here, including two victories. The No. 24 team has endured a mediocre season by their standards, but the future looks quite bright. They're coming together - three top-5s in the past six events strongly attest to that. They had just six in the 24 previous races.

Sunday was yet another step. 43rd to fourth isn't so easy, especially at Talladega.

"It was pretty hairy at times," Gordon said, "white knuckling it through some areas where I never thought my car -- I don't know how wide my car is, but I know there are some spots out there that weren't as wide as my racecar that I was putting it in.