Jeff Gordon has been in this position before. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of position he or any other driver wants to be in just four races in the Sprint Cup books.
A year ago Gordon entered his native California sitting 23rd in points, looking at an early hole he had to climb out of to make the Chase. When he takes the green flag on Sunday, he again finds himself looking up. Gordon’s 21st in points, the lowest of the Hendrick Motorsports group as his three teammates sit in the top seven.
“Unfortunately, yes. We’re pretty far back,” said Gordon Friday in California. “We were running so strong last week and we didn’t run good at Vegas last year either. The only difference at Vegas was we actually still pulled off a 15th place finish.
“We weren’t so lucky this year with that. We’ve got ourselves in a hole that we’re going to have to climb ourselves out of. We’ve got a great team and fast racecars. We can certainly do it again, but it’s not something you want to do.”
Entering the 2013 season Gordon said his Drive to End Hunger team put their focus on trying to be as stable as they could. In order to protect their point position, they acknowledged they have to knock off consistent finishes. Instead, it’s a sense of déjà vu.
They had to scratch and claw their way into the 2012 Chase. Gordon didn’t win a race until July at Pocono, coming albeit aided when the leaders wrecked in turn one, giving him the lead as the rain came. The rest of the summer it was a fight with Kyle Busch for the final Chase spot, which Gordon took from Busch at Richmond. He then won the season finale in Homestead, but had been out of championship contention halfway through the Chase.
Time will tell if the 24 team finds themselves playing that role again. But four races into a new season the bad luck bug has already found them. Gordon had been leading late in last Sunday’s race at Bristol before he blew the right front tire and hit the wall, ending his day.
The performance was the best Gordon’s had this year, but not having a big enough hose to cool the tires led to him stressing the right front just enough that it didn’t hold up. A car he says that should have finished in the top five, wound up in the garage.
“I was not hard on the brakes at all. We went back and looked at all the other cars in our stable and I was probably using the least amount,” said Gordon. “It’s not a brake thing, it’s really more of just there is still heat being generated over there radiating things and it was too much. We can do a better job to make sure that doesn’t get up into the bead and cause too much heat.
“I was definitely harder on the right front on that run because I was out front, I had clean air and I was running faster lap times. It was putting more stress on that right front that ultimately caused it to blow.”
With Bristol now in the rear view mirror, Gordon finds his excitement in racing in California. He’s a former winner of the big two-mile track and reveals he loves the facility and being able to search around for different grooves. Even joking, that if he were to qualify in the rear of the field it wouldn’t bother him, he’s ready to go racing.
The good news, he qualified in the top 20. He’ll be able to see the leaders when the flag flies and he’s prepared for a fight, both on Sunday and as the season progresses.
“We’re fighters, we just don’t give up. We’re a much stronger team than we show in the results and this team is a tight-knit group,” Gordon said. “We went through this last year and came out strong. We just kind of hoped that momentum would carryover so we could start the season off strong.
“Don’t count us out, that’s for sure.”
