Gordon's recovery is slowed by wreck

The vicious crash involving Sam Hornish Jr . and Jeff Gordon on Monday at Watkins Glen Interna-tional looked worse than it turned out. But for Gordon, the lingering effects might last for months, if not longer.

Although Hornish and Gordon walked away from the crash, it was a setback for Gordon as he tries to work through severe back pains.

"It wasn't that hard of a hit; it's just my back can't stand too many hits," Gordon said. "I really was concerned for Sam (Hornish). He took a heavy hit into the wall, a heavy hit by me and Jeff Burton . I saw him go off into the grass and I knew he was going to come out in front of me and I was just hoping to squeeze by and didn't make it.

"It's just not what I needed, you know. You take three or four steps forward up to this point, and you take a hit like that and you take a couple steps backwards."

Hornish was knocked off course by Kasey Kahne . His car caromed off the tire wall and in front of on-coming traffic. His car spun wildly in circles and was struck by Gordon. Hornish continued to spin; Gordon turned head-on into the wall.

Gordon has been nursing a bad back all year. He's already had one procedure to ease the pain. Monday's accident didn't help his slow recovery.

"I'm hurting. Everything feels good except my lower back where I've already had issues," he said. "It will just take a couple of weeks for it to heal. By then we'll go to Bristol and get through that then we'll be all right."

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: Officially, Hendrick Motorsports has four teams. In reality, it has six counting the two-car effort at Stewart-Haas Racing.

Satellite operations are the way some car owners are working around NASCAR's four-car restriction. Although some teams work under different names, some teams are expanding to increase their resources.

Stewart-Haas is the first group to make the satellite system work. Other unions haven't been as lucky.

"The Hendrick teams, and Stewart-Haas, seem to be working better together than any satellite team I've really seen," Denny Hamlin said.

"Believe me; Tony has done a good job of doing it all on his own now, too. They're developing stuff just as quick as Hendrick is because they got just as good of drivers now. They got a lot of their personnel from there to come over."

When NASCAR banned testing at all of its tracks, the need for additional input made satellite teams more valuable.