When the green flag waves on Sunday, July 5, for the Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Todd Gordon will achieve a milestone of his own. Gordon, who currently serves as a crew chief for Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 Ford Mustang team for Team Penske, will reach 300 races as a Cup crew chief.
A native of Camden, New York, and a graduate from Clemson University with a mechanical engineering degree, Gordon has an extensive racing background, where has worked in roles that includes a fabricator, mechanic, engineer and crew chief for multiple NASCAR teams from 1998 to 2010, teams that include ppC Racing, CJM Racing, Baker Curb Racing and Diamond-Waltrip Racing.
In 2011, Gordon was named crew chief for the reigning NASCAR Xfinity Series’ championship-winning No. 22 Dodge team for team owner Roger Penske. On July 8, Gordon achieved his first NASCAR win as a crew chief at Kentucky Speedway with Brad Keselowski. He would win four more races with Keselowski and one with Kurt Busch for the remainder of the 2011 season. At the conclusion of the season, the No. 22 Penske team finished fifth in the owners’ standings while achieving six wins, six poles, 16 top-five finishes and 24 top-10 finishes in 33 races with five different drivers, (Brad Keselowski, Kurt Busch, Sam Hornish Jr., Parker Kligerman and Jacques Villeneuve).
The following year, Gordon was promoted to the NASCAR Cup Series as a crew chief for Penske’s No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge team with driver A.J. Allmendinger. Through the first 17 races, Allmendinger finished in the top 10 only three times, which included a runner-up finish at Martinsville Speedway in April. On July 7, prior to the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway, Allmendinger was suspended for failing a random drug test and Gordon was paired with Hornish Jr. for the remainder of the Cup schedule. Hornish’s best result was a fifth-place finish at Watkins Glen in August.
In 2013, when Penske changed manufacturers from Dodge to Ford, Gordon was paired with Joey Logano, Penske’s newest driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford in the Cup Series. On August 18, the crew chief notched his first Cup win with Logano at Michigan International Speedway. The duo would make the postseason Playoffs the following month and settle in eighth in the final standings.
From 2014 to 2016, Gordon and Logano would notch 14 race victories, 10 poles, 54 top-five finishes and 76 top-10 results while finishing runner-up in the 2016 Cup standings. The duo also achieved the 2015 Daytona 500. After winning once and missing the Playoffs in 2017, the duo would win three races, make the Championship Round and claim the NASCAR Cup Series championship the following season. Last season, Gordon won two races with Logano and the two also achieved two poles, 12 top-five results and 21 top-10 results despite missing the Championship Round and finishing fifth in the final standings.
This season, following a major driver-crew chief shuffling at Team Penske, Gordon was paired with Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 Ford team while Paul Wolfe assumed crew chief responsibilities of Logano and the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford team. Through the first 15 races of the 2020 Cup season, Blaney and Gordon have notched seven top-10 results and won their first race together at Talladega Superspeedway on June 22. They are ranked second in the regular-season series standings and trail points leader Kevin Harvick by 52 points.
Following last weekend’s Pocono Raceway doubleheader, in 299 races as a Cup crew chief, Gordon has achieved 22 race wins, 18 pole, 108 top-five results and 169 top-10 results along with the 2018 title.
This weekend’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, along with the 300th career start, will mark Gordon’s ninth race as a crew chief at the famed racetrack, where he has achieved six top-10 results and finished runner-up in 2015 and 2019 with Logano.
The Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 at Indianapolis will air on July 5 at 4 p.m. ET on NBC.
